Peat Keepers: Healing Minnesota’s Carbon-Rich Landscapes

Note date change: Thursday, March 12. This will be online through Zoom only. MNNPS members, check your email for instructions.

Presenter: Meredith Cornett – MNDNR Peatland Resilience Project Planner

Program: Peat Keepers: Healing Minnesota’s Carbon-Rich Landscapes

Description: With more peatlands than any other state in the US outside Alaska, Minnesota has a role to play in sustaining and restoring peatlands as part of a multifaceted climate mitigation strategy. The state’s Climate Action Framework recognizes the power of peatlands, naming the restoration of partially drained peatlands as an important strategy for climate mitigation. The 2023 Minnesota Legislature created the MNDNR’s Peatland Protection and Restoration Demonstration Project as a first step toward implementing the Climate Action Framework’s peatland strategy. We will dive into peatland restoration work being planned for the DNR’s Winter Road Lake Peatland Scientific and Natural Area in Lake of the Woods County, including our approach to monitoring pre-restoration conditions for vegetation, hydrology and greenhouse gases. For more information about the project: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/wetlands/peatland-resilience-initiative.html

Biography: Meredith Cornett is the Peatland Resilience Project Planner at Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR), a role she has held since January 2024. She has come full circle in returning to the DNR, where she began her professional career in conservation as a Community Forest Ecologist in the Twin Cities Metro Area. For nearly two decades, Meredith served as Director of Science for The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Over the years, she has also enjoyed working with students and faculty at the University of Minnesota through an adjunct appointment in the Conservation Sciences Graduate Program. She lives with her family in Fredenberg Township, where they harvest sunlight, tend beehives, protect pine seedlings from deer browsing, and coexist with human and other neighbors.