Driftless Area - Transition

Treatment: actively facilitate change to encourage adaptive responses

Management Goals

Professionals gathered together outside in a clearing in the Driftless Area ASCC site.
Field tour in June 2021 to the Yellow River State Forest in Iowa and the Bridle Trail area in Wisconsin. Photo Credit:
Courtney Peterson, Colorado State University.
  • Two-cohort stand with greater structural complexity
  • Encourage native and novel future-adapted species that are drought tolerant, disease resistant, and/or adapted to fire
  • Increase species that are absent or minimal
  • Increase species and functional diversity of tree community
  • Provide hard mast for wildlife
  • Encourage future-adapted species with potential economic value
  • Reduce prevalence of invasive species

Strategies & approaches

  • Invasive shrub treatment
  • Midstory removal
  • Site preparation including prescribed fire if conditions allow
  • Underplant with future-adapted species
  • Clearcutting with reserves (a.k.a. variable retention harvest): retain 20% overstory; some aggregated (0.25-0.5 acres in area) and some dispersed
  • Increase future-adapted species, including native and new, future-adapted species (white oak, northern red oak, black walnut, bur oak, shagbark hickory, mockernut hickory, pignut hickory, Shumard oak, post oak, tulip poplar, shortleaf pine)

check out other treatments

Resistance

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Resilience

Site Leads & Partners

Miranda Curzon (Iowa State University) is the site lead for the Driftless Area. Key partners include Bruce Blair and Jeff Goerndt (Iowa Department of Natural Resources), Brad Hutnik and Greg Edge (Wisconsin Division of Forestry), and Mike Reinikainen and Paul Dubuque (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources).

Miranda Curzon
Driftless Area ASCC Site Lead

Assistant Professor
Natural Resource Ecology and Management
Iowa State University
234 Science 2 2310 Pammel Dr Ames, IA 50011-1031
Phone: 515 294 1587
mcurzon@iastate.edu