SKIBO — The air smelled of smoky wood, but birds were singing in the northern remains of the Jenkins Creek Fire.
A blanket of green was sprouting around charred and blackened trunks and stumps on June 17, in clear view of blue skies without a tree canopy overhead.
The occasional pickup truck passed through the trees on the rocky forest roads driven by private contractors and foresters with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on their way to survey the aftermath of the wildfire.
After burning more acres than the size of Cass Lake, the Jenkins Creek Fire has been completely contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s live monitoring website. The fire is the sixth-most destructive fire since 1992, according to MinnPost.
The fire, one of two in the Brimson Complex, began 14 miles southeast of Hoyt Lakes on May 12. The Camp House Fire ignited just a day before, burning upwards of 12,000 acres before reaching complete containment as of June 13, according to the Fire, Weather & Avalanche Center. The Brimson Complex fires destroyed roughly 150 structures in the first week of burning.
Minnesota has had 1,143 wildfires so far this year as of May 14, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The state had 1,380 wildfires total last year. It reached a peak of 2,222 wildfires in 2021.
Foresters have begun taking stock of the conditions the forests are in, said Megan Eiting, a forester for the DNR in Eveleth. Once foresters have evaluated what techniques and tools to use, they will begin helping the forest recover, harvesting timber and replanting in the areas that need the most diversity.
Some of the most important resources for managing the forests are the DNR-contracted loggers, Eiting said, although the market for certain wood species has been difficult for the past couple of decades. Aspen and pine do fairly well, but others like fir, spruce, birch and maple typically do not. The char on a lot of the wood can also make it less usable.
The poor market, as well as the time it takes to make contracts and buy seeds and saplings, affect what foresters can do and how soon they can do it, Eiting said.
“We’d like to get in there and evaluate it right away, see what needs to happen and then get a plan moving,” she said. “And sometimes, we are limited on those tools as far as loggers that are able and willing to help out with that or contractors.”
For the time being, foresters have focused on evaluating the impact of the fire, paying close attention to the areas that burned the hottest, she said. The effects of fire on forests depend on a lot of conditions, such as the fire’s intensity and what fueled it.
“A lot of our forests in Minnesota, especially in Northern Minnesota, are fire-dependent,” Eiting said. “They evolved with fire. They need that disturbance to regenerate.”
Regular regenerative fire gets rid of timber and underbrush that could fuel more massive and destructive fires, Eiting said. The cleared canopy also means less competition for vegetation to grow and allows the sun to heat the nutrient-rich soil, benefiting species like blueberries, jack pines and birch.
However, a fire with a higher intensity can kill a lot of trees, she said, making way for diseases or insects to move in and threaten the healthier trees around them.
Tree damage from spruce budworm was an issue for the forests in the area before the fires began, though the fires reduced their food supply, said Corey Skerjance, another forester in Eveleth. The native insect feeds on fast-growing and aromatic conifers like balsam, killing the tree and providing ample fuel for wildfires. They’ve become widespread in northeast Minnesota over the last few years.
Insects like bark beetles and woodborers are also major concerns for young or weak trees, especially after wildfires, said Eric Otto, a forester who specializes in insect diseases.
Lakes and streams likely sustained a harsh impact as well, said Charles Filstrup, an applied limnologist at the University of Minnesota’s Natural Resources Research Institute.
Filstrup studied the effects of the 2021 Greenwood Fire on the bodies of water in the burn zones. That fire began about 10 miles southwest of Isabella and burned more than 26,800 acres in the span of six weeks, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
High levels of nutrients ran off into the water, which can lead to lower oxygen levels and fewer fish, he said. These effects lasted roughly three years after the fire.
Filstrup will also research the effects of the Camp House and Jenkins Creek fires on the waters in those burn zones. He said he expects results similar to the Greenwood Fire.
“The waters will have more nutrients in them, and they're going to be a little murkier,” he said. “They're probably going to look more like a glass of tea.”
More nutrients can also mean more algae, including cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, that produces toxins harmful to people and pets, he said. He also said the researchers are still unsure how increased mercury from wildfires in the water might affect fish populations.
To prevent and reduce these effects, Filstrup recommended taking steps to manage stormwater like buffer strips along shorelines to stop surface runoff. Replanting would also help soak up the nutrients so there are fewer in the water, he said.
Foresters will begin replanting the areas that need it next spring and likely replant some more the spring after, Eiting said. Some forest areas come back naturally and need less help bouncing back from the fires.
“It takes years for it to really come back,” she said. “Our job is to go out and make sure that we’re watching it and making sure that it’s making progress.”
Funding for this environmental story was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
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