Presentations

Fire regimes in northern Minnesota create a mosaic of different forest types on the landscape. We will examine how fire behavior creates these patterns, interaction of fire with other disturbances such as windstorms, and climate change impacts on the disturbance regime.

Lee E. Frelich, PhD, is Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology.  H has authored more than 195 publications with 285 coauthors from 25 countries and is listed among the top 1% of all scientists in the world in the Ecology and Environment category by the Web of Science. Frelich has provided consulting services on forest management for the U.S. Army, Air Force, National Forest Service, and National Park Service. Current research interests include large-scale fire and wind, earthworm invasion, and climate change in temperate and boreal forests.

Join us for a discussion about the unparalleled adventures beneath the waves of Lake Superior. Wally Peterson, owner of Thunder Country Diving, will tell tales of historical shipwrecks that provide a window into to our past and the freshwater species that inhabit them. Scuba diving enables curious adventurers to see these wonders of the underwater world up close and in person! Adventure doesn’t stop with scuba diving at Thunder County Diving, learn more about upcoming tours in 2022.

Wally Peterson has owned and operated Thunder Country Diving for 45 years, providing scuba diving lessons, charters, and fun events for all levels of divers. Sharing his wealth of knowledge with many, he continues to dive locally and abroad introducing many to the vast opportunities that scuba diving offers. Not only is he passionate about scuba diving, he contributes to local tourism initiatives through the Lakehead Transportation Museum Society but bring history to life on the shorelines of Thunder Bay.

Karen Klein has been a Rover since 2017. She has served on the Board for three years. Currently, she is Membership Director. She enjoys hiking, backpacking, biking, cross country skiing and her RV.

Alison Young is the Blissful Hiker. She has backpacked and hiked all over the world. Alison wowed us in 2020 with her tales of hiking the length of New Zealand’s Te Araroa, then within the same year hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. She recently was on the Continental Divide Trail earlier this year and now is on the Cape Wrath Trail in Scotland.

Wolves are considered a premier example of how large predators can transform ecosystems, with some suggesting that wolves, through the process of trophic cascades, can literally change the course of rivers and streams. However, whether wolves change ecosystems as drastically as suggested has been increasingly questioned and criticized. In many boreal ecosystems, beavers dam up rivers and streams to create ponds and wetlands, and wolves frequently prey on these dam-building, pond-creating rodents. By studying wolf-beaver interactions in northern Minnesota, Tom Gable and the Voyageurs Wolf Project have demonstrated how wolves, by preying on beavers, alter wetland creation, and in turn, impact streams and rivers.

Tom is the project lead for the Voyageurs Wolf Project and he recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He has been studying wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem since 2014 when he started his Master’s at Northern Michigan University. Gable is particularly fascinated by wolf-beaver interactions and his graduate work was focused on trying to understand this predator-prey dynamic.