Jed Meunier

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Researcher at Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Heterogeneous spatial patterns are an important characteristic of forests and central to forest functioning and resilience. Old forests typically have complex structures and provide useful starting points from which to understand processes assembling forest communities and in turn managing for resilience. In the U.S. Lake States, extant old growth...

Heterobasidion root disease (HRD), a destructive disease of conifers, is a growing management concern. Infection by HRD fungus (Heterobasidion irregulare) most often occurs when spores, usually produced when temperature is between 5 and 32 °C, land and germinate on freshly cut surfaces. Older stump surfaces are generally unsuitable for colonization...

Background Drivers of fire regimes vary among spatial scales, and fire history reconstructions are often limited to stand scales, making it difficult to partition effects of regional climate forcing versus individual site histories. Aims To evaluate regional-scale historical fire regimes over 350 years, we analysed an extensive fire-scar network,...

Oaks (Quercus spp) are one of the most important sources of timber, mast for wildlife, and ecosystem services across the eastern US. Increasingly, this genus is at risk from diseases including oak wilt, which is one of the most serious threats to oaks, caused by the fungus, Bretziella fagacearum. The upper Midwest has over 5 million ha of oak fores...

Fire regimes in North American forests are diverse and modern fire records are often too short to capture important patterns, trends, feedbacks, and drivers of variability. Tree‐ring fire scars provide valuable perspectives on fire regimes, including centuries‐long records of fire year, season, frequency, severity, and size. Here, we introduce the...

Background The Lake States experienced unprecedented land use changes during Euro-American settlement including large, destructive fires. Forest changes were radical in this region and largely attributed to anomalous settlement era fires in slash (cumulation of tops and branches) following cutover logging. In this study, I place settlement era fire...

Peatlands contain one-third to one-half of global soil carbon, and disturbances, specifically fire, directly influence these carbon stocks. Despite this, historical variability of peatland fire regimes is largely unknown. This gap in knowledge partly stems from reconstructions of peatland fire regimes with methods limited to evaluating infrequent,...

Background The Lake States experienced unprecedented land use changes during Euro-American settlement (settlement) including large, destructive fires. Forest changes were radical in this region and largely attributed to anomalous settlement era fires in slash (cumulation of tops and branches) following cutover logging. In this study I place settlem...

Woody plant expansion is one of the greatest contemporary threats to fire dependent ecosystems. Reducing woody plant prevalence is often a primary objective of prescribed burns, yet little attention has been given to understanding the efficacy of burning to reduce their abundance. Fire intensity characteristics and plant phenology/physiology, which...

In the Great Lakes Region, minor differences in soils and location (e.g., proximity to the Great Lakes) can lead to strong differences in vegetation; thus, the utility of broad-scale mapping often depends on capturing subtle landscape features and local processes. Similarly, vegetation patterns are in part a result of disturbances that have changed...

Examining fire regime characteristics across temporal and spatial scales is critical to understanding relationships between fire and landscape physiography. In the Lake States (Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota) we have often relied on either broad extrapolation from local studies, and/or interpretations of coarse-scale Euro settlement era records tie...

A key challenge to maintaining resilient landscapes is adapting to and maintaining dynamic ecological processes. In fire‐dependent ecosystems, this includes identifying and defining mechanisms through which fire influences forest structure and functionality. Interpretations of tree patterns via land survey records in the Lake States have often high...

Oak wilt is a serious disease affecting oaks, especially those in the red oak group. Despite concern around a lack of oak regeneration and increasing mortality from oak wilt, there has been little effort to connect the two in relation to common forest management practices to regenerate oak. Oak management commonly includes clearcut harvesting, part...

Tallgrass prairie, arguably the most fire-dependent system in North America, is a Biome that has been essentially eliminated and is now exceedingly rare. Absent frequent disturbance, remnant tallgrass prairie rapidly converts to a dominant cover of woody plants. This creates unique challenges for conservation of prairie-specialist insects dependent...

Revisit the past and rediscover the beauty and insight of Aldo Leopold’s writings. Leopold continues to be one of the most enduring and important names in forestry and conservation. This volume collects 46 of Leopold’s seminal papers, letters, presentations, and other writings published in the Journal of Forestry and other outlets. With new introdu...

The occurrence of wildfire is influenced by a suite of factors ranging from “top-down” influences (e.g., climate) to “bottom-up” localized influences (e.g., ignitions, fuels, and land use). We carried out the first broad-scale assessment of wildland fire patterns in northern Mexico to assess the relative influence of top-down and bottom-up drivers...

Extensive changes in montane forest structure have occurred throughout the U.S. Southwest following Euro-American settlement. These changes are a product of confounding effects of disturbance, climate variability, species competition, and modern land use changes. Pronounced forest reproduction events in the Southwest have generally occurred in clim...

Nothing I do frees me the way hunting does. When I am afield, time is measured by daylight, by thirst, and by hunger; my mind wanders, all the while keeping a singularity of purpose that is rare in my overscheduled life. For me, hunting is a pilgrimage-a transformational journey that involves leaving home and coming back a different person. In prac...

a b s t r a c t Characterizing climate controls on fire regimes, and disentangling the effects of human relative to climate influences, has been difficult in forests of the western U.S. due to the nearly ubiquitous legacy of fire exclusion that began in the middle to late 19th century. However, the Sierra San Luis of northern Mexico, just across th...

Background/Question/Methods A documented shift away from historical pre-Euro-American settlement structure provides the scientific justification for manipulating forest structure in extensive areas of montane forests throughout the U.S. Southwest. These changes are a product of confounding effects of disturbance, climate, species competition, and...

We estimated fall (10 Sep–8 Nov) survival rates, cause-specific mortality rates, and determined the magnitude and sources of mortality of 1,035 radio-marked American woodcock (Scolopax minor) in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin during 2001–2004. In all 3 states, we radio-marked woodcock on paired study areas; 1 of which was open to hunting and ex...

Quality of recently used foraging areas is likely an important predictor of fidelity to specific locations in the future. We monitored movement and habitat use of 58 adult female American woodcock Scolopax minor at three study areas in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, USA, during autumn 2002 and 2003, to assess the relationship between foraging h...

ABSTRACT Investigation of bird migration has often highlighted the importance of external factors in determining timing of migration. However, little distinction has been made between short- and long-distance migrants and between local and flight birds (passage migrants) in describing migration chronology. In addition, measures of food abundance as...