Project Area
Plum Creek Conservation Area is a 1,611-acre parcel of rugged land located just north of Wauzeka in Crawford County. The property includes over five and a half miles of frontage along the west bank of the Kickapoo River and over two miles along both banks of Plum Creek, a Class I trout stream. It is next to DNR's 1,927-acre Kickapoo Wildlife Area-Wauzeka Unit that includes the 635-acre Kickapoo Wild Woods State Natural Area. These protected areas, now enlarged by the Plum Creek Conservation Area, support one of the highest concentrations of rare forest-interior breeding birds in southern Wisconsin, including many considered high conservation priorities in eastern North America. The Plum Creek Conservation Area lands are stewarded by the Mississippi Valley Conservancy.
Management Goals
There are many goals and objectives for this property, defined for the various natural communities on the property: dry prairie and dry cliff, oak openings/oak woodlands; upland forests; floodplain forests; open wetlands (emergent marsh and sedge meadow); streams; ag lands (pasture, row crops, and hay fields); and forest interior bird habitat.
Site-wide the management goals are to:
- Increase perennial native cover
- Identify and research areas of high ecological value
- Promote biodiversity, functionality, and overall health of native ecosystems
- Reduce fragmentation
- Reduce invasive species cover site-wide in favor of diverse, native, perennial species
- Demonstrate innovative land use practices to community
Climate Change Impacts
For this project, anticipated climate change impacts likely to have an impact on the project site:
- Temperatures are projected to increase by 5.6 to 9.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century (2071-2100).
- The frequency and intensity of heat waves is expected to increase.
- Earlier and potentially wetter springs combined with rapid warm-up could alter opportunities for prescribed burning.
- Longer dry spells between rain events are likely, and on droughty sites this may help stave the invasion of undesirable woody species.
- Harmful impacts from non-native invasives, insects and diseases, and deer may increase as they benefit from longer growing seasons and reduced winter snowpack. Drought and pests/pathogens may increase fuel loads and wildfire risk.
- Longer growing season and warmer temperatures may result in greater evapotranspiration losses and lower soil-water availability, especially later in the growing season.
- Soil erosion and flood events may increase with heavy rainfall events.
- Loss of plant cover following drought, wildfire, or pest infestations may exacerbate erosion.
WICCI Plants and Natural Community Group led a series of Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments (WICCI CCVA), below are key considerations from those assessments:
- Target habitat types, such as Dry Prairie (listed as ‘Moderate’ vulnerability in WICCI CCVA) and Oak Woodland (‘Moderately Low’ vulnerability in WICCI CCVA), at this site it may have higher vulnerability due to small size, invasive species pressure, cattle/UTV access, shade pressure, and lack of prescribed fire.
- Southern Mesic Forest will have moderately low vulnerability due to regenerating canopy trees, diverse canopy species, and cooling seeps.
- In oak-dominated habitats, dominant species have favorable projections, but lack of oak regeneration is a major concern, as is the abundance of non-native invasives.
- Adaptative capacity is conferred by the matrix of related communities across a large within this varied landscape.
Challenges and Opportunities
Climate change will present challenges and opportunities for accomplishing the management objectives of this project, including:
Challenges
Extreme weather may affect planted oak species establishment.
Changing burn windows during traditional fire seasons.
Herbicide efficacy to manage invasive species may be reduced by changing environmental conditions.
Increased invasives due to broader shoulder seasons. Seed sourcing may need to change to ensure plants align with changing conditions.
Fluctuating water levels and flashiness in flood flows.
Opportunities
Increased prescribed fire (Rx) season opportunities.
Existing roads, agricultural fields and streams may make burn units easier to delineate and defend.
Oak forests are well suited to cope with warmer, drier conditions.
Perennial species are compatible with increased fire.
Droughty conditions and Rx fire may be more impactful on woody shrubs.
Longer growing seasons may enhance and support establishment of native species in riparian buffer areas, and revegetate degraded streambanks.
Connectivity to adjacent protected lands provides further resilience and potential for coordinating management.
Adaptation Actions
Project participants used the Adaptation Workbook to develop several adaptation actions for this project, including:
Area/Topic
Approach
Tactics
Communities with Trees
Create a diverse mix of forest community types, age classes, and stand structures to increase the overall health of the forest community.
Communities with Trees
Mitigate windfall and heavy downpours by feathering forest edges.
Manage for understory herbaceous cover for water infiltration to mitigate heavy rain events.
Wetland Communities
Lift up the bottom of Plum Creek using beavers and/or grade control structures.
Reshape steep and eroded banks by removing alluvium.
Xeric and Anthropogenic Areas
Match species to local conditions such as slope, aspect, and microsite - increase perennial cover through planting natural areas or compatible agriculture.
Plan grazing practices to provide conservation benefits, such as passive invasive control and grassland habitat diversity
Monitoring
Project participants identified several monitoring items that could help inform future management, including:
Visual inspection for erosion after storms to identify the establishment of erosion features (gullies, rills, and head cuts).
Perform baseline surveys on vegetation, birds, fish, bats, and other species of interest, periodically re-surveying to gauge impact of management on desired species and tweak management as needed.
Observe survival rates on plantings through survival checks during monitoring visits with criteria of 5-10% mortality per year during establishment phase, depending on species.