Winter Webinar Series 2024
Peatland Conservation in Finland: The Landscape Rewilding Program
Presenter: Dr. Tero Mustonen, Founder and President of Snowchange Cooperative
Peatlands are not just unique to the Sax-Zim Bog or northern parts of Minnesota! In the right conditions, peatlands can be found all over the world and are a critically important ecosystem to a wide range of species. Importantly, peatlands are excellent (albeit relatively unknown) carbon sinks, sequestering carbon at a rate of tons per year! Finland is covered in peatlands, with roughly 30% of its land area “bogged” down with peat. Dr. Mustonen has been working in peatland restoration and conservation since the early 2000’s and started Snowchange Cooperative in 2000, beginning an amazing network of communities together to help restore formerly degraded peatlands. Restoration work began with 988 acres in 2018 and presently more than 86,000 acres of peatlands have been restored in Finland! This is important work and we are excited to have Dr. Mustonen sharing more about this work with us!
Watch the recording of this Webinar here: Peatland Conservation in Finland: The Landscape Rewilding Program
Winter Webinar Series 2022-23
Minnesota Wild Bee Survey: A Summary of the Statewide Bee Survey and What we have Learned
Presenter: Nicole Gerjets, Bee Survey Specialist, Minnesota Biological Survey
Bees are incredibly diverse and provide important ecological services such as pollination. However, baseline information such as faunistic surveys and habitat associations are lacking for most bee species in Minnesota. The goal of this project was to document the bee diversity in the state to inform conservation decisions. The bee diversity in Minnesota was largely undescribed prior to investments in this project. We initiated a statewide wild bee survey in 2015 that has increased the statewide list to just over 490 bee species. Field surveys using passive trapping and hand netting off flowers have covered all counties in Minnesota. Results of the project will be presented, along with a vision for future bee surveys and monitoring.
Watch the recording of this Webinar here: Minnesota Wild Bee Survey: A Summary of the Statewide Bee Survey and what we have learned
Peat and Re-Peat: Re-wetting Drained Peatlands as a Natural Climate Solution in Minnesota
Presenter: Kristen Blann, Freshwater Ecologist, The Nature Conservancy
Peatlands are abundant in Minnesota, covering 6 million acres or more, representing more than 10% of the state by area and an estimated 37% of stored terrestrial carbon. However, drainage of peat soils has caused and continues to drive significant carbon losses to the atmosphere due to oxidation and decomposition. Globally, peatland restoration and avoided peat impacts were identified by Griscom et al. 2017 as two of the potentially most important Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) pathways for holding warming to <2 °C; however, they also had some of the highest uncertainty bars, in part due to uncertainties about the balance of CO2 vs CH4 fluxes.
The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota is quantifying NCS potential for MN peatland conservation and restoration by mapping drained, partially drained and intact peatlands and extrapolating initial estimates of GHG (CO2 and CH4) stocks and fluxes from literature and monitoring at peatland sites in MN. We are also working with USFS, UMN, and other peatland science experts to measure and model net GHG fluxes across a gradient of partially drained, restored, and undegraded peatland sites–primarily at the Sax Zim Bog– to evaluate the short- and long-term effectiveness of restoration as a climate mitigation strategy.
Watch the recording of this Webinar here: Peat and Re-Peat: Re-wetting Drained Peatlands as a Natural Climate Solution in Minnesota
Nestling Diet and Factors Influencing Nestling Condition and Post-Fledging Survival and Dispersal in Boreal Chickadees
Presented by Kara Snow, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota-Duluth
This talk features some really exciting work on Boreal Chickadees in northern Minnesota! Kara’s research utilizes DNA metabarcoding technology to reveal the diet of nestling boreal chickadees, but also features a component of radio telemetry to track the movements of boreal chickadees after they leave the nest. This project has been active for the last 4 years, with research starting in the Sax-Zim Bog! Presently, the project’s focus area has been in the Red Lake Wildlife Management Area in Beltrami Island State Forest. This should be a great talk if you are curious to learn more about the biology of these charismatic northern birds!
Watch the recording of this Webinar here: Nestling Diet and Factors Influencing Nestling Condition and Post-Fledging Survival and Dispersal in Boreal Chickadees
Road to Recovery: Continental Conservation of the Evening Grosbeak
Presented by David Yeany II, Avian Ecologist, Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program
With a 92% population decline since 1970, evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus) was cited as the steepest declining landbird in the continental United States and Canada by Partners in Flight (2016 Landbird Conservation Plan). Causes for the decline are not fully understood, but may be a combination of several factors including: spruce budworm (Choristoneura spp.) population cycles, mature forest loss, collision and disease mortalities, and possibly climate change impacts on habitat.
Since 2017, the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (PNHP-WPC) and the Powdermill Avian Research Center at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (PARC-CMNH) have collaborated on tracking studies of evening grosbeak winter populations in western Pennsylvania. We use cutting edge tracking devices to follow individual evening grosbeaks within the region and through their migratory and irruptive movements. Using newly available satellite tracking tags we have tracked grosbeaks from Minnesota’s Sax-Zim Bog and northern Maine in near real-time and formed an international Evening Grosbeak Working Group. Come learn more about this exciting project that began in a western Pennsylvania backyard and is now working toward conservation for the continental population of the evening grosbeak – including more efforts at Sax-Zim Bog this winter!
Watch the recording of this Webinar here: Road to Recovery: Continental Conservation of the Evening Grosbeak
Winter Webinar Series 2021-2022
Northern Hawk Owl Winter Ecology: What do we really know?
Presenter by Hannah Toutonghi, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota-Duluth
The Northern Hawk Owl Project, led by Hannah Toutonghi, just finished the first full field
season of tracking hawk owls in Northern Minnesota. We will discuss the species, what we
previously have known about hawk owls, and the novel preliminary results of using telemetry
to track individual hawk owls throughout the winter season! Please come with your curiosity
and questions about this nomadic denizen of the Northwoods!
Watch the recording of this Webinar here: Northern Hawk Owl Winter Ecology: What do we really know?
*** UPDATES COMING SOON!! ***
Webinars, Clinton’s Critters Videos, and Bog Venture Videos will be moving to a new location over the next few weeks. We are working on consolidating and re-recording some of our older webinars so folks can view them whenever and wherever!
Our videos will be moving to our new YouTube Channel: Friends of Sax-Zim Bog! A link to this channel can be found here. As videos make the move from the website to the YouTube site, you will no longer find them in the categories below.