Experts say Minnesota's Northwoods could disappear within 50 years. Here's what's being done about it.

[NickB79]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/minnesota/news/minnesotas-northwoods-on-the-brink-heres-whats-being-done-about-it/

"The pace of adaptation is too slow to keep up with climate change," said Julie Etterson, a University of Minnesota Duluth Biology professor and researcher.

Etterson's research reveals that warming temps are stressing our forests.

"We have been thinking about what we can do now to help our forests transition as climate changes around them," she said.

And if that help doesn't arrive soon, she and other researchers say the deep, dark boreal forests we know in northern Minnesota could become mostly grasslands within the next 50 years.

"Become mostly grasslands" is code for dies, dries out and burns catastrophically.

The Minnesota DNR is now starting to plant oaks, maples and hickories that are native to southern Minnesota hundreds of miles north, closer to the Canadian border.

[LauraInLA]

1. Wondering if they need to do this in Canada, too.

[Diraven]

2. This where I grew up

I don't know that replacing the northern pines with southern hardwood is a solution because the north is quite a bit drier. Maybe the DNR has done the research though.