Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve

Who? The program and content level is designed for adults, ages 16+ recommended.

When? The series is scheduled for the second Tuesday of every month, 11:30AM - 1:00PM. The 2023 series will be virtual during the winter months (January - March, November - December), and offer a hybrid option during the growing season (April - October). 

Where? During winter months, the program will be virtual only, using a Zoom webinar format. Click this link to pre-register and access the webinar for the monthly talk: https://z.umn.edu/2024LWAS

During the growing season, the program will be hybrid. Those wanting to participate in person can join us in the Lindeman Center located at 2660 Fawn Lake Dr. NE, East Bethel, MN, 55005. No registration is required to attend in person. Those wanting to participate virtually will use the Zoom webinar format. Click this link to pre-register and access the webinar for the monthly talk: https://z.umn.edu/2024LWAS. The presentation will be streamed live from Cedar Creek. See additional information below.

Additional information for hybrid participants: The hybrid option from April - October will include a guided outdoor field tour related to the research for in-person participants only. No registration is required for in-person participants.

Need help with Eventbrite or Zoom?

Instructions to navigate Zoom can be downloaded here: Registration tutorial

Instructions to navigate Zoom can be downloaded here: Joining a Zoom webinar

Questions can be directed to Kara Baldwin at baldwink@umn.edu(link sends e-mail)

Recordings of past programs can be viewed here.

Recently, the Superior National Forest completed an Assisted Migration Plan detailing how the Forest
would adapt their reforestation program, which plants hundreds of thousands of trees each year, to
climate change. Assisted population migration (or assisted gene flow) was the most widely
recommended adaptation strategy in the Superior’s plan. APM involves planting tree species already
present on the Forest with seed sources from a climate analog zone farther south, where unique genetic
adaptations to warmer climates are likely to occur. Cedar Creek is in the Superior’s longer-term analog
zone so we are collecting seed samples from here to plant in seed orchards and seed production areas
that will produce genetically diverse, climate-adapted seed in the future.

About the Scientist 
Nick LaBonte grew up in Milwaukee, WI and has been interested in trees for a long time. He has a B.S. in
Forest Ecology and Management from UW-Madison and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Forest Genetics from
Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. He is currently the Regional Geneticist for the USDA Forest
Service – National Forest System in Region 9. In this role he advises National Forests in the northeastern
US on genetics and seed sourcing.

Dr. Nittrouer will discuss the results of ongoing research efforts to monitor flow conditions and channel mobility for Cedar Creek.  This research aims to evaluate how these systems behave under changing climate conditions.

 About the Scientist

Prof. Jeff Nittrouer and his research group straddle numerous topics in geosciences, including geomorphology, hydrology, environmental science, and geology.  Dr. Nittrouer received a PhD degree from the University of Texas in 2010.  He has led international research efforts examining the Yellow River (China), the Mississippi River delta, and the Selenga River (Lake Baikal, Russia).  His current work includes examining the dynamics of peat streams – channels bounded by primarily vegetal matter – and the geomorphology of these fascinating systems.

As wildlife populations have become more established in urban areas, questions remain about how these species make a living in habitat provided in these complex environments. Furthermore, human impacts on urban landscapes can alter the activity of terrestrial carnivores and the way these species interact with each other. This research examines both the strategies that two urban carnivores in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area of Minnesota — coyotes and red foxes — use to survive in this novel environment, and how human activity affects the interactions between these competitors.

About the Scientist

Geoff Miller is a PhD candidate in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior department at the University of Minnesota. Geoff leads research on the Twin Cities Coyote and Fox Project, which uses GPS tracking collars to determine how humans affect the interactions between coyotes and red foxes in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minnesota. He is also interested in broader biogeographic questions related to the range expansion of coyotes in the Americas.
 

Minnesota is home to millions of acres of wetlands that provide critical habitat and services. However, we have lost almost half of our historic wetlands, and our existing wetlands experience ongoing threats. The Minnesota Wetland Conservation Act was created in 1991 to help protect the quantity, quality, and biodiversity of Minnesota’s wetlands. At the Department of Natural Resources, we monitor wetland quantity and hydrology to evaluate the state’s wetland extent, and to identify potential drivers of wetland loss. This year, we established a new station in our wetland hydrology monitoring network at Cedar Creek.

About the Scientist

Amy Kendig received her PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota in 2017, where she studied the effects of nutrients on plant disease. She then researched invasion ecology as a post-doc at the University of Florida. In 2022, she became a biometrician and wetland research scientist for the Minnesota Biological Survey at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). In addition to wetland monitoring, she assists with study design and data analysis of vegetation and rare plant monitoring.

To learn more about the Minnesota DNR Wetland monitoring, visit: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/wetlands/index.html

Plants in a changing world

Cedar Creek scientists have been studying how plant communities respond to global change drivers such as elevated CO2, nutrient (nitrogen) deposition and biodiversity loss. Using a multi-decadal study, Neha Mohanbabu is trying to understand if what we know about plants from short-term studies can predict their responses over longer time scales, as is true under ongoing climate change. The talk will focus on the responses of some common prairie species and consequences for productivity and stability of ecosystems in a changing world.

 About the Scientist

Neha Mohanbabu received her PhD from Syracuse University in 2021 and is currently a postdoctoral associate at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in understanding how species interactions respond in a changing world and as a postdoc is examining long-term trends in plant responses to global change drivers. In the past, Neha has explored the impacts of changing resource supplies such as rainfall and phosphorus on plants and large mammalian herbivores in East Africa using both theoretical and empirical methods.

June's Lunch with a Scientist will highlight two recent installations at Cedar Creek, exploring the use of earthen materials, such as rammed earth, slip cast ceramics, and cob, in landscape architectural interventions. The first is an ongoing exploration by Jessica Rossi-Mastracci and Molly Reichert (UMN, Architecture), with the first phase installed in Fall 2023. The second is the results of a graduate interdisciplinary seminar course from Spring 2024, installed in May. After the talk, participants will walk to the site to view the two installations. 

About the Presenter

Jessica Rossi-Mastracci is a licensed Landscape Architect and Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches in landscape construction, infrastructure and systems, digital representation, and graduate design studios. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Jessica's research investigates new ways of adapting to unknown future conditions in extreme landscapes, with a focus on infrastructure, materiality, and ephemerality.

July's Lunch with a Scientist will focus on how plant communities interact with their fungal pathogen and insect herbivore communities, how these interactions are shaped by global change and what the consequences of those interactions are for ecosystem functioning. Dr. Cappelli will talk about how the long term exclusion of plant consumers has shifted plant community composition over a 12 year period at Cedar Creek.

About the Scientist 

Seraina Cappelli graduated from University of Bern in 2021 in Switzerland and is now an independent postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the interactions between plant communities and their heterotroph consumers such as fungal pathogens and insect herbivores, how those interactions are shaped by global change and what the consequences of those interactions are for ecosystem functioning. She investigated the effects of plant community composition on fungal pathogen abundance both in grasslands and in agricultural fields in Europe and now focuses on the role of the heterotroph consumers in reciprocally shaping plant community composition and nutrient cycling at Cedar Creek.

Wildlife trackers study track patterns to visualize animal movement, interpret behavior and “become the animal” they are tracking. This can include interpreting an animal’s relative speed. Trackers often infer the speed of a symmetrical gait based on the relative positions of the front and hind footprints in a track pattern, which I refer to as the overstep hypothesis. This talk will explore track pattern data from two common species, the coyote (Canis latrans) and the domestic cat (Felis catus), using the well-established correlation between stride length and speed, and present a general model of overstep as a function of stride length and relative limb phase. 

About the Scientist 

Jonathan Poppele is a naturalist, author and educator who works to help people connect more deeply to themselves, to others and to the natural world. He earned a master’s degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Minnesota, studying citizen science and ways to cultivate a personal relationship with nature, and taught at the U of M for many years before leaving to focus on his own projects. An avid outdoorsman and student of natural history, Jon is an active member of the Minnesota Astronomical Society, and is the founder and director of the Minnesota Wildlife Tracking Project. He is an Astronomical League Master Observer and is certified as a Track & Sign Specialist through CyberTracker Conservation. Jon is the author of a dozen nature guidebooks including the award-winning Night Sky: A Field Guide to the Constellations and Animal Tracks of the Midwest.

Peter Kennedy received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Peter joined Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Minnesota in 2013; he became a full professor in 2020. His lab studies the diversity and function of fungal and bacterial communities in a wide range of ecosystems, particularly those forming symbioses with plants. His research uses both field- and lab-based observations and experiments to investigate how microbial communities are structured and their ecological roles in ecosystems throughout Minnesota and worldwide.

Program Description

On a summer night in your backyard, male crickets serenade their chirpy songs to attract females. Females, on the other hand, use male songs and other courtship phenotypes to make decision about who to mate with. These behaviors evolved long before humans arrive. Today, we are changing the world rapidly. As a result, many animals are forced to attract and choose mates in a human-altered environment that is profoundly different from those where the behaviors evolved. What does this mean for the animals and what may be the consequences? In a LCCMR supported project, my lab will sample soil and invertebrate community in agricultural lands, protected natural areas, as well as urban and suburban sites across the state to understand what insecticides are found outside the application areas and at what levels. Using the local field crickets as a model system, we will then ask how sublethal level of insecticides affect reproduction and sexual selection.Beyond the LCCMR project, we are also asking novel questions on the consequences of sublethal exposure on speciation and stability of the communication systems in animals.

About the Researcher

Mingzi is an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the evolution of animal behavior. She is particularly interested in the evolution, genetics, and genomics of sexual communication systems as well as environmental and human impact on mate choice and sexual selection in natural populations. She integrates field-based behavioral and lab-based genomic approaches in answering fundamental questions about the evolution of acoustic communication using crickets as a model system. 

Mingzi received her B.Sc. from Fudan University in Shanghai, China and Ph.D. University of Oklahoma with Dr. Ola Fincke. During her Ph.D., she has also been a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where she studied the Neotropical giant damselfly in Panama for two years. Upon finishing her Ph.D., she joined Dr. Kerry Shaw's lab as a postdoc at Cornell University. Mingzi joined the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at University of Minnesota as a President's Postdoctoral Fellow in 2019 and has been promoted to assistant professor in the same department in 2022. In her free time, Mingzi enjoys dancing, playing music, hiking, cooking, and trying to out-smart her way-too-smart cat Mocha Xu.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.
 

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.

We are currently working on scheduling scientists for the 2025 season. Topics/descriptions will be updated as the schedule is finalized.