Project Area
The Meyer Preserve encompasses oak savanna and woodlands, non-forested wetlands, and restored mesic prairies. The area is popular for recreational birding.
Management Goals
The Nature Conservancy's overall goal for the Meyer Preserve is to maintain and restore high quality, biodiverse natural communities including oak savanna and woodlands, non-forested wetlands, and dry to mesic prairies. Carbon stewardship is also a management goal on the Preserve, where the focus is on optimizing (not maximizing) carbon within the context of ecosystem integrity and climate adaptation.
See the Management Plan (available below in "Project Documents") for detailed management objectives for each natural community type.
Climate Change Impacts
Meyer Preserve managers identified multiple site-level conditions that affect local climate vulnerability, including:
- Loam-rich soils without steep slopes decrease erosion risk compared to site with steeper topography that increase erosion risk
- Topographic diversity in the glaciated landscape, along with a relatively large intact property, promote landscape resilience; however, the Preserve is disconnected from other nearby protected lands (e.g., Crooked Lake, Lulu Lake and Pickerel Lake State Natural Areas)
For oak savannas and oak woodlands:
local factors expected to increase climate change risk include:
- degraded starting point (low species diversity, high % cover of invasive species)
- deer browse pressure across the property
- low fuel levels in some woodland blocks make it challenging to carry fire
local factors expected to decrease climate change risk include:
- site is suitable for prescribed fire (e.g., appropriate edge ratio, contiguous area, low-density development in surrounding properties), with a history of successful prescribed fire in some woodland blocks
- diversity of oak age classes on property
- dominant native species have broad geographic ranges and are at low risk of range shifts
For non-forested wetlands:
local factors expected to increase climate change risk include:
- neighboring agricultural properties, especially in the northeast corner of the property
- subdivision development nearby
- calcareous fen plant communities have higher risk from climate change
- heavy infestation of non-native cattail
- reed canary grass in the neighboring uplands
- social/human/permitting constraints for fire management in the wetlands
local factors expected to decrease climate change risk include:
- less intensive agriculture in the surrounding landscape (i.e., hobby and horse farms)
- local ordinances that have protected wetlands
- wetland is groundwater fed
- pockets of high-quality wetlands with native vegetation and better conditions with respect to invasive species than 'average' wetlands in the area
- dominant native species have broad geographic ranges and are at low risk of range shifts
- site is suitable for prescribe fire (e.g., trails and roads on edges help containment)
- site is at high elevation in the watershed, reducing climate vulnerability in multiple ways:
- most neighboring properties drain away from Meyer
- none/few CAFOs located high in the watershed
- less affected by extreme precipitation events compared to downstream areas
Adaptation Actions
There is increasing interest from land managers to understand how climate mitigation and carbon management goals can be considered alongside other management goals. Project participants combined the Adaptation Workbook with additional discussions and activities (see 'Optimizing Carbon Management' PDF in "Project Documents section below) to develop several adaptation actions for this project, including:
(see PDF of entire Management Plan below in "Project Documents" section, which includes more discussion about carbon considerations alongside climate adaptation actions)