It is difficult to accurately envision the future, especially when considering the complex interplay among forests, water, urban centers, and people. Scientists worked with local stakeholders to develop scenarios to guide landscape modeling of four distinct possible futures for forests, water, and people in and around Duluth, MN.

Most people envision the future as an extension of their past experience, but there are many plausible alternative futures that may radically differ from the past. Northern Research Station scientists conducted a series of virtual stakeholder engagement sessions with over 80 participants from northeastern Minnesota to develop four scenarios depicting different futures for a large, multiple county watershed feeding into Lake Superior. The watershed includes a rural-to-urban gradient extending north and west from Duluth, where the majority of forests are actively managed by diverse public, private, and tribal entities.

Scenarios were designed with input from stakeholders on issues that are both highly uncertain and are likely to have a significant impact on the forest ecosystems and the communities they support. As a first step in scenario development, stakeholders were asked to rate a series of issues for importance and uncertainty. The two highest rated issues were financial security of individuals and communities, and policy to address climate change; these served as the two axes around which four starkly different future scenarios were built. In parallel, scientists developed a baseline scenario derived from recent trends in the LANDIS-II modeling framework. The alternative future scenarios and baseline model were presented back to stakeholders for further input and refinement. These model outputs will be useful in guiding decisions as land managers aim to achieve desired future conditions. The goal is to support current-day planning by providing a glimpse of what could come.