Mississippi Park Connection

grant award: $100,000; year awarded: 2022

The tree canopy of floodplain forests helps offset heat from the built environment, but dry soil conditions and drought caused by climate change are threatening floodplain tree species, which are adapted to high moisture. The resulting loss of nearly 100% of the ash trees across the Midwest is leaving floodplain forests vulnerable to erosion, species invasion, and habitat loss. This mainstreaming project will allow Mississippi Park Connection (MPC) to deepen and broaden adaptation practices within a 72 mile stretch of the Mississippi River floodplain forest and catalyze future implementation projects in national parks across the Midwest region. For this project, MPC will continue to collect, analyze and share data from their original CAF implementation project, host workshops and tours of the plots for three networks (The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, Minnesota's National Parks, and the entire Mississippi River), and support more collaboration across the Midwest and Mississippi River regions. Through mainstreaming, they will help scale adaptive silviculture techniques to the geographies of these three networks.