Forest Inventory

The Land and Wildlife Branch’s most time and data intensive project over the last five years was the settlement wide forest inventory, which included an update to the Meskwaki Forest Management Plan that is updated every 10 years in accordance with BIA requirements. The inventory was used to gather necessary information for the land managers and Tribal leaders to make educated decisions based on the data that was collected. The decisions are used daily in an effort to maintain forest management projects, maintain culturally sensitive components of the forests, and allow opportunities for Tribal members to become employed in the natural resources field through grant funded management projects. 

The inventory work took three years to complete. The areas of the Meskwaki forests were broken into three sections. 1) South Farm, Pine Stands, and Phase 5 Housing area. 2) Upland forests along Meskwaki Road and 305th Street. 3) Bottomland/Floodplain Forests. Only forests within Trust land was inventoried based on BIA requirements for grant funds, but based on known inventoried acres educated assumptions can be made about the health of non-inventoried acres of forest by also correlating forest stands to elevation, slope, slope direction, land acquisition date, etc. In total, approximately 1,537 acres were inventoried in detail; which includes mature trees and small regeneration trees, totaling 8,961 trees counted by hand. Staff collected diameter of every tree counted, and every height of each species that was counted first at each sample plot. This data allows MNR to run data simulations to determine how the forests are potentially evolving over the next few decades or hundreds of years. 

The biggest questions that MNR staff worked to answer through the inventory process is “How is the forest regenerating?” In simpler terms, “when the mature/large trees fall or die, what is taking its place?”  There are constant concerns over invasive species that prevent the forests from regenerating new trees that fill in the gaps from dead or fallen trees. Over time, there is a threat of losing forests due to no smaller trees growing; only thick shrubs that provide no known value to land and wildlife. By determining areas of greatest concern for forest regeneration, MNR is able to devise a plan of action and prioritize areas of management. Management may include mechanical removal of shrubs using either chainsaws, brush saws, or the skid steer forestry mower. Management can also include planting trees to give the forests an opportunity to fill age gaps in the forest stand. 

The attached heat map of shrub coverage shows a negative correlation to tree regeneration and shrub coverage. As seen in real time ventures through the Meskwaki forests, it’s clear that thick shrub coverage on the land has a heavy impact on the mature tree’s ability to produce seedlings to replace it in the future. 

With all of this information in hand, MNR staff have also held discussions within the community on potential uses of invasive species, such as black locust trees which are fast growing trees that provide very hard, rot resistant wood. Staff have also worked with the community in discussions on how to move forward in managing the forests with the Meskwaki culture in mind, especially thinking of heavily impacted areas from the 2020 storm. 

While MNR now has a thorough baseline on the conditions of the Meskwaki Forests, the 2020 Derecho caused significant enough damage to solidify the need for new inventories to be added to the calendar to immediately update the database of tree data rather than waiting the standard 10 years between inventories. MNR staff work closely with the regional BIA forestry office to gather necessary information and funding to make this program sustainable and successful in the long term. Future funding will support the office for new inventories and continued management projects.

Each plot MNR staff collected plot photos which consisted of one photo at each cardinal direction: North, East, South, and West. This photo data is used for reference checks while working with the data in the future.

BIA forestry specialist Joe Mortzheim assisted with training MNR staff, and takes an attempt at collecting a diameter of a honey locust, which can be quite daunting at times with the thorns that grow along the trunk of the tree.