There are 3 million acres of peatland forests in Minnesota. This proposal will identify management actions that maximize ecosystem benefits of peatland forests, including wildlife, water, timber, and native plants.
Develop and implement a fungal filtering system that combines the benefits of both waste wood chips and soil fungi to sequester and degrade PFAS leachate from contaminated waste sites.
Provide professional development workshops at three Greater Minnesota locations for 60 teachers to use phenology education curriculum and community science resources, reaching >7,000 students in the first three years.
We propose to develop application methods to apply native plants that can adsorb salts to be planted on the roadside to address the environmental concerns over deicing road salts.
Pollinators play a key role in ecosystem function and in agriculture, including thousands of native plants and more than one hundred U.S. crops that either need or benefit from pollinators. However, pollinators are in dramatic decline in Minnesota and throughout the country. The causes of the decline are not completely understood, but identified factors include loss of nesting sites, fewer flowers, increased disease, and increased pesticide use. Developing an aware, informed citizenry that understands this issue is one key to finding and implementing solutions to counteract these factors.
The Pollinator Ambassadors for Urban Gardens project will enhance outreach capacity for pollinator education by creating an outreach toolkit and training educators and youth for engagement in native pollinator education.
Pollinator Education in the Science Classroom will provide professional development for 58 science teachers to use pollinator education curriculum and outreach materials, ultimately reaching >6000 students annually.
This research will test whether plantings for pollinators can remediate soils impacted by metals (like lead) and emerging contaminants (like microplastics) through the redistribution of toxins to safer areas.
Healthy prairies contribute numerous benefits, such as providing habitat for wildlife and pollinators, maintaining and improving water quality, stabilizing roadsides, and providing a sustainable source of materials for bioenergy production and other products. Since European settlement the once vast expanses of Minnesota prairie covering 18 million acres have been reduced to small remnants totaling about 235,000 acres. With this decline has also come a drastic reduction in the genetic diversity of the various species typical of Minnesota prairies.
We will predict the ranges of native aquatic species in Minnesota using recently available high quality datasets and information on past and present ranges coupled with powerful statistical techniques.
Brushlands provide critical habitat for >250 wildlife species. We compare effects of spring, summer and fall burns on birds and vegetation, providing much needed management guidelines for this key habitat.
Minnesota's 48 native orchids are at risk. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum will expand conservation of species through propagation and banking and begin restoration planting research in the program's second phase.
We propose to integrate Minnesota Wildflowers Information, an online tool for plant identification, with the Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas, to preserve and extend this popular ENTRF-supported resource for future use.
Minnesota's only population of ball cactus is threatened as a significant proportion of the population is on private, unprotected lands. Moving plants to protected land will better protect this species.
Earthworms are common throughout much of Minnesota, but few realize that they are not native to the state and were in fact introduced from Europe and Asia. Earthworms are invasive in Minnesota and have been shown to have large and potentially irreversible impacts on hardwood forest biodiversity and regeneration. As dispersal by human actions is the primary means of introduction and spread of invasive earthworms, there exists great potential to arrest the current spread of earthworms already present and prevent the introduction of additional species.
This project helps Minnesota entities that directly or indirectly cause PFAS and microplastics contamination stop the flow of the contaminants by developing strategies to manage solid waste streams.
Because Minnesota is at the juncture of three distinct types of ecosystems - western prairie, northern coniferous forest, and eastern deciduous forest - the region is particularly sensitive to changes in climate conditions. Understanding how the plants, animals, and waterways of Minnesota might respond to these changes will help the state plan for and manage the potential impacts. The University of Minnesota's Department of Forestry is using this appropriation to analyze past climate conditions in Minnesota and make estimates pertaining to changes expected in the foreseeable future.
Oak savanna is imperiled and threatened ecosystem with only 0.2% remaining of historically 5.5 million acres in Minnesota. This project will demonstrate the use of silvopasture to restore this ecosystem.
Wastewater contains many environmental contaminants including pharmaceuticals, personal-care products, PFAS and micro-plastics. They are not removed by treatment plants. We propose to remove them using commercially available drinking water coagulants.
Spruce budworm is native to Minnesota and the most significant tree killer in spruce-balsam fir forests. This project studies why populations increase to improve management opportunities in affected forests/regions.
Create a semi-automated system to acquire, process, and deliver new satellite derived water quality data (water clarity, algae, turbidity and color) for all Minnesota lakes ~biweekly and in near real-time
We propose to quantify the amount, type, and source of microplastics in the water, sediment, and fishes of a range of Minnesota lakes in collaboration with MN DNR.
We will quantify the capacity of restored peatlands to store and accumulate atmospheric carbon and their capacity to prevent release of accumulated mercury into streams, rivers and lakes.
Minnesota decadal increases in precipitation have increased runoff, groundwater recharge, and infrastructure damage. We will assess and define selected quaternary settings to better define hydrologic response to extreme changes.
Rainfall runoff in urban areas contributes to localized flooding and washes contaminants and excess nutrients downstream affecting water quality. Systems to mitigate these problems can be challenging to implement in urban areas due to existing infrastructure and competing demands for land use. However, one option is to find alternative applications for the excess rainwater and use it replace the potable water that is currently being used for certain purposes. Researchers at the University of Minnesota are using this appropriation to evaluate alternative uses for captured rainwater.
Increasingly many youth are disconnected from the outdoors and the natural world and many of these same youth, nearly 50% in Minnesota, are also not proficient in science. Yet such experiences and knowledge are necessary components for this next generation to understand and participate in solving the complex environmental challenges facing our world.
Red-headed woodpeckers are a flagship species of threatened oak savannas in Minnesota. We aim to better understand red-headed woodpecker population ecology and develop a unified management plan for restoration.
We will investigate road salt alternatives and pavement innovations that will reduce or eliminate the flux of chloride from road salt into our lakes, streams and groundwater.
The Raptor Center proposes to foster long-lasting environmental stewardship and literacy in Minnesota youth in underserved schools through providing engaging, multi-unit, standards-based environmental curriculum programming featuring positive interactions with raptors.
The research will collect samples of microplastics to establish relationships between physical and remote sensing characteristics of microplastics for cost effective monitoring of microplastics in Minnesota natural and engineered waters.
Carbon markets incentivize carbon sequestration, but significant cost-barriers exist for landowner participation. Leveraging remotely sensed data, cost-effective fieldwork, and robust modeling will enable climate-smart activities that benefit all Minnesotans.
