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The nature conservancy, Minnesota

grant award: $100,000; year awarded: 2021

Minnesota’s Eastern Broadleaf Forest is a regional transition zone between dry areas to the southwest and humid areas to the northeast. The forest provides essential ecological functions such as habitat, water quality, flood attenuation and carbon sequestration. However, through land conversion the forest has been reduced by nearly 80% of its original area. Climate change is rapidly exacerbating the stressors placed on this ecosystem. This project aims to transition the Eastern Broadleaf Forest to a climate-adapted ecotone by reforesting  1 million acres by 2040. To meet this scale of impact, the project team will build a coalition of public, private, and grassroots seed collectors to develop its own supply chain for large-scale reforestation using tree species that are best suited to future climate conditions. Availability and access to climate-adaptive seeds is often a barrier to mainstreaming adaptive planting efforts and is one of the barriers directly addressed by this project.