Forest diversification effort in Leelanau County aims to combat climate change issues - UpNorthLive.com

Forest diversification effort in Leelanau County aims to combat climate change issues

LEELANAU COUNTY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) -- There's a project in place to battle climate change in Leelanau County.

Meteorologist Trevor Roubadeaux went to the forest where it's happening.

He spoke with an expert on the work that's underway.

Palmer Woods Reserve in Leelanau County is 1,155 acres of land managed by the Leelanau Conservancy since 2016. They say the work they are doing here is a battle against an ever-changing world.

"Currently, some of our biggest issues with climate change are invasive pests and diseases. We've seen that with emerald ash borer,” Leelanau Conservancy Land Steward Caleb Garone said. “Also beech bark disease, which is currently damaging a lot of our beech trees that we have. And most recently, hemlock woolly adelgid is moving into this Leland area."

They have a lot of plans in place, but first and foremost, they must minimize damage done by invasive species. That's no easy task, so how will they do this?

"The most basic thing that we can be doing to increase forest resiliency here is to increase the species diversity,” Garone said. “So, that’s having a bunch of different tree species within this forest. Just so when that next wave of either pests or diseases comes through, it affects one species of trees. There's a great number of other trees that are here, so that minimizes the impact of whatever the next wave of invasive pests or species that comes through."

But that's not their only approach. Garone says another thing they can do is manage the age class of the trees in the area.

"Another piece is just making sure that we have mixed age class. So that's having old mature trees, middle aged trees and young trees,” Garone said. “An issue that we have currently is with the deer population. They come and browse a lot of the saplings so we're missing some age classes here."

So this past spring, the Leelanau Conservancy planted 700 trees of varying species thanks to a grant from the Americana Foundation to tackle two problems at once.

“We planted eight different kind of tree species as well. Most of those species are currently present either within this forest in low number or kind of within the surrounding greater area,” Garone said.

With change inevitable, Garone says he is eager to take action as early as possible to deal with any problems thrown at us by climate change.

"Climate change is an existential crisis that I think we're all facing in a lot of different ways,” Garone said. "When we're planting trees, we're thinking in forest time, so we're thinking in decades and centuries. So we need to be thinking a little bit ahead of our next threats. So this planting is really setting up this forest to thrive for decades and centuries to come."