Minnesota’s largest wildfire in a century started with a lightning strike in August 2011. It burned slowly for a few weeks before more than tripling in size in a few days, driven by an unprecedented wind event. All told, the Pagami Creek Fire burned more than 92,000 acres of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Almost ten years later, the Greenwood Fire burned nearly 20,000 acres, mostly within the Superior National Forest, which prompted the first temporary closure of the Boundary Waters since the 1970s.
A paradigm shift is underway as foresters reconsider long-maintained fire suppression policies and implement prescribed burns. The Greenwood Fire offered the surrounding community a chance to apply lessons learned from the Pagami Creek Fire and further learn about the ecology of fire-dependent forests, wildlife response, fire behavior in forests managed with prescribed burns, and incident management.
A shift is also underway at GPI as our work expands to recognize the importance of working lands, including forests, in sequestering carbon. Our goal in this sector is to realize the full potential of working lands to remove and store carbon through regenerative land practices.
As part of this expansion, we’re learning about the latest policies and management practices, which includes attending conferences like the “Pagami Creek Fire: Lessons Learned” symposium.
The symposium was held over two days in Ely, Minnesota, in April 2023 and was hosted by the University of Minnesota’s Sustainable Forests Education Collaborative. Partners for the event included the Superior National Forest, Dovetail Partners, Ely Field Naturalists, and the University of Minnesota Extension. It brought together researchers, fire first responders, agency staff, and community members to explore lessons from the Pagami Creek and Greenwood Fires. These lessons can help communities understand the role fire plays in ecosystems.
The first day of the conference featured speakers on climate change, fire management and decisions, and soil and fire science. A representative from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa also spoke on the cultural and historical aspects of indigenous fires. Day two consisted of Greenwood Fire site visits, where attendees saw how forest management approaches helped control the Greenwood Fire. Tours also showed replanted sites post-fire.
Key takeaways from the “Pagami Creek Fire: Lessons Learned” symposium
High-severity fires (fires that reach the crowns of the overstory trees and burn hot and fast) are often the result of weather and drought, sometimes exacerbated by modern forest fire suppression. These elements combined lead to a buildup of dead material, fueling future fires. High-severity fires can decrease an ecosystem’s ability to recover by killing important microbes in the soil and older trees that would otherwise provide important habitat to the next generation of vegetation.
Low- and moderate-severity fires (fires that burn the understory and the occasional overstory tree) can be anthropogenic (prescribed or cultural) and naturally occurring. They play an important role in boreal ecosystems, like what we have in northern Minnesota and Canada, which includes nutrient renewal, water quality mitigation, soil and habitat creation, fuel load reduction, and parasite control. Fire regenerates vegetation and creates patches of different ages and vegetation types, increasing ecosystem resiliency to climate change, insects, and disease. The decision-making process of fire managers depends on the relationships between federal, state, and county entities, local landowners, and tribes. Cultivating and maintaining relationships in non-fire times is important to ensure the trust and collaboration needed to respond to fire incidents quickly.
The first goal in fire response is always human safety. Remaining response decisions, such as deciding whether to control, suppress, or allow the fire to burn (or a combination of the three), are based on weather and drought conditions, political and economic pressure, and available resources. Fire response crews and gear are usually deployed nationally and sometimes internationally, so resources can vary depending on the fire season in the rest of the world.
There is cognitive dissonance in policy and public perception of the role of humans in ecosystems. The federal Wilderness Act and state policies ignore historic and continued indigenous cultivation of ecosystems. These policies assume that the absence of humans is the ideal ecosystem. Because of this dissonance, policy and public perception can limit human actions needed to respond to ecosystem disturbances, such as wildfires, and human management practices that restore and maintain healthy ecosystems.
Many tribal nations in the region, including the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, see cultural burns as included in treaty rights. However, the State of Minnesota’s policies and practices may need to change to include shared management of ecosystems and policies that change liability and right to burn.
Climate change is expected to impact the makeup of Minnesota forests. The mitigation and adaptation practices we engage in will determine how our forests shift in response to increased temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and increased fire risk.
Warmer temperatures and different precipitation patterns due to climate change may allow insect and pathogen populations to increase. The impacts of native and invasive insects, such as the Eastern Larch Beetle and the Emerald Ash Borer, may increase the fuel load and, therefore, the severity of future fires. Warmer winter temperatures may shorten the winter harvest season when it is possible to remove biomass with minimal impact on the soil.
If you would like to hear more about the symposium, you can watch recorded presentations.
Lessons learned from Minnesota’s fires can strengthen resilience efforts
As climate change continues to impact Minnesota ecosystems and increases the risk of wildfires, applying lessons learned from the Pagami Creek and Greenwood fires is vital in understanding the role fire plays in fire-dependent ecosystems. They can also inform how we can respond to fires that help our ecosystems become more resilient while also ensuring human safety. Cultivating relationships across borders of nation, agency, land ownership, and even species, along with narrative and policy change that places humans back into participation with nature, will create the collaboration needed to ensure the survival of our forests.
