From Firefighting To Forests: A Wild Woodland Journey

Discover the secrets of revolutionary forest management with Brian Huberty, a seasoned expert whose career spans from firefighting to pioneering digital mapping systems that monitor our planet’s landscapes.

Brian unpacks how the Minnesota Forestry Association boosts forest management, fire safety, and carbon storage. We compare family forest ownership in Minnesota to international standards, especially Finland.

Wildfire management takes center stage as we explore the factors behind increased wildfire risks. We'll see how different forest types respond to fires and the crucial role of detailed forest inventory maps. Brian explains why increased wildfires demand better coordination and resources. Tune in for a behind-the-scenes discussion on preserving our natural landscapes. Don’t miss it!

Today's episode is brought to you by the Joan of Arc Scroll Medal, a beautiful brass alloy medal, designed by award-winning artist, Pat Benincasa. This uniquely shaped medal is ideal for holiday or as a special occasion gift!    Visit www.patbenincasa-art.com
For international listeners the medal is available on Etsy.

Please Note: The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcaster.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Forestry, Remote Sensing, and Innovation
• 8:56 Global Impact of Forest Management
• 21:40 Wildfire Management and Resource Allocation
• 27:35 Forestry Advocacy and Future Sustainability
• 42:33 Building a Sustainable Future for Forests

Transcript

Pat
Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat
Hi, I am Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill To Capacity. Today, Episode # 79, "From Firefighting To Forests: A Wild Woodland Journey." My guest is Brian Huberty. 

Now talk about interesting background. He is a forestry expert with a passion for cutting edge technology. Yeah, he has his degrees in forestry from University of Minnesota. His career spans firefighting, mapping the black forest in Germany and pioneering digital mapping systems from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Brian has led groundbreaking projects in remote sensing, GIS and wetland mapping. 

By the way, GIS stands for geographic information system. It's a framework for gathering, managing, and analyzing spatial and geographic data. Now as president of the Minnesota Forestry Association MFA, he's driving innovation with the Timber view, Woodland Mapping System. Oh, and I didn't mention his German Shepherd Rescue named Pixel, who is at his side right now. Well, welcome Brian. We have lots to talk about.

Brian
Good morning. How are you?

Pat
I'm good. I wanna start with what is Remote Sensing? 

Hey, listeners, before Brian answers this question about remote sensing, I want to clarify that Remote Sensing is not Remote Viewing. You know, sort of like spy versus spy!  Remote Viewing is the practice where people see and describe details about far away or hidden objects using what they call extrasensory perception or ESP. During the Cold War, the US government explored remote viewing for intelligence gathering. Okay. With that said, let's go back to Brian's answer about remote sensing.

Brian 
Yeah. Ironically, I was just outside with a dog and it is taking pictures from a distance, and right above me was an airplane. And I looked up on my flight aware app and I was like, oh, that's interesting. They're taking imagery. So I think it's a geologic survey going on as we speak over the Western end of the Iron Range. It's something that I used to do for the Minnesota DNR when I worked up here in Grand Rapids. I would take aerial photography for them back in the late eighties. And it's a fun job because you're up in an airplane if you like airplanes and looking down on the earth, it's not a bad gig.

Pat
So Brian, your career has taken you from fighting forest fires to remote sensing and mapping wetlands. What inspired you to pursue such a diverse range of roles in forestry and remote sensing? What drives you?

Brian 
Well, what I think what drove me is thinking about it. I was a boy scout at one time, and our boy scout leader was the former naturalist of the Itasca State Park. And he had, he taught at the Wilmar Community College at the time, but he also, during scouts, he actually showed me a color infrared aerial photograph. And I looked at it, I'm going, what the heck is this? And I think that was the start of, I had an interest in forestry at the time, and natural resources, you know, agriculture, uh, wetlands and so forth. So that really probably is what triggered it. And luckily, I had a very good aerial photo interpretation, s directors. My name was Dr. Merle Meyer. He learned his craft in World War II in China of all places. He did bomb damage assessment and did weather for him.

Brian 
And he came back and got his PhD and taught at the University of Minnesota. And that's where I sort of learned old school, how to take aerial photographs with film, you know, in the film days. But at the same time there, the digital evolution was happening as well. So that's probably the best way I can describe it. And yeah, it started from county trees, forest inventory to getting into the mapping game with a bunch of agencies, Forest Service, SGS, Fish and Wildlife Service. And now this project we're working on with the Minnesota DDNR called TimberView,

Pat
DNR stands for Department of Natural Resources. And what is 

TimberView? What's going on with that?

Brian 
Well, basically the idea is how to better collaborate with neighbors through a map. And the challenge for woodland owners across the state as well as the country is they don't even know who their neighbors are and what they're up to because they're dealing with crops that can span a century.

 So the idea is to sort of work with not only our neighbors, and then it could be the forest service, it could be tribes, it could be DNR land, it could be county land, it could be another private landowner. Just get them connected to say, here's your point of contact. You might have an action you wanna harvest or 10 acres on your land, but it's not enough. Maybe your neighbor's gonna do something similar. So we're hoping to get people to think about the forest type instead of their ownership. Manage the forest for how it should be. And our forests are, even though that we call 'em the crops at times, they're very complex and they do vary from conifers to,  Aspen Forest. Oak Forest, and also mixed forest variety of types, I should say forest stripes.

Pat
Well, it sounds like timber view goes from micro to macro, that instead of individual plots, you're mapping a larger connection. 

Brian
Well, what we're really doing is the DNR is doing the heavy lifting on the mapping, and we'll be tapping into that, but we're using the map as sort of a interface, as sort of a collaboration tool. But it's also a secure tool because people get a little bit paranoid, but it's gonna be on a back end, where you'd have to log in to see it. But it's gonna be very similar to Call Before You Dig. 

If you call Gopher State One and you wanna dig a hole in your backyard, it's a same process is they go for the state. People have to contact the utility companies, the cable companies, the sewer people to figure out what bids buried in your landscape. Well, it's sort of the same thing with us,  we need to contact who our neighbors are in terms of state forest and you know, what do you got? But also keep it on a secure end because there are companies that wanna keep this private more or less, but it will just be limited to an area near the neighbors.

Pat
Okay. 

Brian
And it's, and it's gonna be all voluntary. It's not regulatory anything.

Pat
Okay. Hey, when Brian is talking about digging on your property and calling a utility company, like Gopher One, they come and tell you if there are sewers, gas lines, whatever. You just can't get your shovel and start digging. 

You have to be kind of careful. And that's what he was referencing. You've been at the forefront of Remote Sensing and GIS in forestry. How have these technologies transformed forest management over the years?

 Brian 
In some cases, it's been very innovative and also it's been very slow because believe it or not, in the film days, the film cameras, even to this day, have better resolution than the digital camera systems in terms of coverage. And actually, the listeners can't see Pat and see what's behind me. But there's a photograph on my back wall, and it was a classified system back in 1986 where you'd see four-inch-wide parking lot lines. It was a program called Hexagon. And one of my good friends was part of that large program for the Defense Department. That's where the innovation really came from. How do you get high resolution imagery on a global basis, but also get it down to the masses, in other words, the foresters, individual landowners, and so forth. And that's truly has been the revolution as digital imagery, whether it's an airborne platform like an airplane we talked about, or a drone or in space.

Brian 
You can literally get a picture anywhere in the planet today, every day if you wanted it through some of the different companies that are out there. So we're more conscious about our landscape, our planet for that matter. I mean, how it's changing and obviously, on the defense side, people wanna make sure that there's no bad actors going on. But at the same time, it's also been a revolutionary from the standpoint that we can see dynamically what's changing every day, every minute, almost every hour, versus waiting for a photograph to get developed and delivered to you within a year. Which might only happen every 10 years. There's been a lot of good stuff, but even today, it's still a challenge to produce a good forest inventory map. Meaning, can I see the species, the height of the tree and the density of the trees in my backyard?

Brian 
It really doesn't exist. And that's what the Minnesota DNR is working on in collaboration with a lot of folks, is how to better portray our landscape, because it's important for two major reasons. One is if there's a fire, you do not wanna send people into harm's way into like a jack pine forest. You need to know the size density of those tree species out there, especially on private land. And that information, in some cases doesn't exist. But also more importantly for the long haul is climate change, is our trees, our forests are really growing and storing carbon. So how can we better manage that for the future for everybody? 

And we, we will see it probably within our next 10 or so years, is these carbon companies, they're going to be pressuring, we should see more pressuring of forestry and forestry management because that's the only sector that actually grows and stores carbon. Everything else we're doing, even agriculture for the most part is using carbon.

Pat
Is this a combination of aerial view and sensors in soil and in areas?

Brian
It will eventually get to that point. There are soil sensors out there on devices, but measuring the carbon is not as automatic or as easy as one would think about it. 

Actually, forestry is probably the easiest landscape feature to do that, but wetlands is another one. But that's a whole other issue. It's muddy and water goes up and down and it's a little bit more complex, but forestry is measurable. Even if you harvest a forest, you're actually storing more carbon because the forest, usually the forest products go into things like houses. And the houses may last for 200 years. And that's a concept that's sort of foreign to a lot of people now. We're just not promoting, we we're gonna go slick all of our forests off like we did a hundred years ago, but if we do a better job at managing that, we should be able to increase our carbon over time.

Pat 
So what is the Minnesota Forestry Association? What are you guys about?

Brian
The association was started in 1876 by a bunch of actually politicians and business leaders. There's only one forester in the group. I was actually just reading it this morning, but they started because they were concerned even in 1876 about how much timber was just starting to be harvested. At the time the timber barons were just moving into the state, but they were concerned. The first president was a railroad president, and I think a lot of 'em came from Europe. And they also had that European experience is you don't just go slicking this stuff off and not replanting it. But one of their first actions was publishing a tree planning manual. Another thing I learned, they paid for like the first 10,000 forestry textbooks to be published, which went to 14 different colleges at the time. This is over a hundred years ago. 

Brian
I was really intrigued when I was reading a newspaper article about one of their annual meetings that they actually were going to start promoting Minnesota as a vacation spot. And sure enough, a year later there's, at the University of Minnesota Archives, there's a 1917 statewide map called the State Highway Canoe and Lake Map of Minnesota. And it was probably published to help promote tourism in the state. 

So the organization was very fundamental. It was really the only organization for forestry, but they helped push for state and federal programs at the time. And then it sort of wilted from the 30’s to world WW2 and then the 70’s, it sort of was reinvigorated to help the private woodland landowners, which there's over 200,000 of them. There's twice as many woodland owners as there are farmers in the state. That sector of private woodland owners are very well intentioned and they do the best they can, but they do need help to, to manage their forest because it's quite complex. It's not as easy as managing a farm.

Pat 
I noticed that on your website you talk about, education and advocacy to promote stewardship and you refer to family forest ownership, and I was kind of surprised by that. Can you tell us, how prevalent is family forest ownership in Minnesota and for that matter worldwide?

Brian 
Oh, God, worldwide. Well, Minnesota, I can tell you that the Minnesota private forest is larger than the state, larger than the forest. In terms of that pie chart that you might visualize. But the private forest landowners own more land than the state or the “Feds,”  Forest Service, I'm former federal, so I always say the Fed, so I apologize to the folks there. So in other countries it will vary. 

Like in Canada, you have crown lands, and I'm really not up to speed on some of that in Europe. Finland's a perfect example. It's like 70% is private woodlands. And our annual meeting here in September, it's called the Polaris meeting. We're actually having a panel session of 3 people who just returned from Finland on a forestry tour. John Rajala (Rajala Timber and MN Forest Resources Council,) Vandy Johnson (General Mills IT Director, Retired) and Ida Rukavina who's the IRRB (Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation Board) Commissioner. And they're gonna tell us about their experiences of, you know, what Finland forestry is, how do they engage the woodland owners, how do they provide the incentives because they're much more actively managed in Finland than they, than we're here in the United States. I think it's a different mindset, but there also may be other incentives going on.

Pat 
In getting ready for this podcast. I have to admit, for the last two weeks I have been reading about the life of forests, I'm mean, I'm in it, so meaning ecosystem. So listeners, a forest ecosystem is like a busy neighborhood where trees, plants, animals, and tiny organisms all live and interact with their surroundings, such as soil, water, and weather. It's a balanced system where plants make food from sunlight, dead plants and animals break down to nourish the soil. And different species depend on each other for survival. Forests offer crucial benefits like housing diverse wildlife, cleaning the air by storing carbon regulating water supplies, and preventing soil erosion. To keep these benefits, we need to manage and protect forests wisely. So how does the Minnesota Forestry Association support the balance and health of forest ecosystems?

Brian
Probably the best thing that we do is we have a thing called Call Before You Cut. It's where we go visit with landowners to sort of see what's happening on their land for like a half a day or for like an hour or two. And the whole idea is to see what the major problems are, but also to help educate the woodland landowners to get engaged with like a consulting forester and start learning how to better manage their lands holistically. 

 And what I recommend to anybody is take like a basic ecology course, because that's the fundamentals of like prairie systems or forestry systems. They're very complex. But once you understand that you understand some of the dilemmas, like some of my colleagues from college are dealing with right now with sugar beet issues, that they have resistance to herbicides. And in other words, the weeds are developing resistant to herbicides.

Brian 
Well, that's just a fundamental rule of ecology is in monocultures, that's like our farm plants will adapt. But in more native or more competitive systems like we have in forest or prairies, there is always this interaction going on. So the health is much healthier. The health of the forest, health of the prairie systems, they're much more resilient to drought. They're much more resilient to the disease, so they can sustain themselves over time. 

And there are some very good farmers, ranchers that I know that adopt some of these practices and they do quite well. And even on the forestry side, it's not like up here we're, you know, planting rows of forests. It's mostly native regeneration after harvest in the Aspen for example, we are learning on how to work with nature much better than trying to use the past mindset of, oh, we gotta clear cut everything and plant a bunch of trees.

Pat
There's an American expression. “Let's talk about the elephant in the room.” And that means when you wanna talk about the elephant in the room, there's something so obvious and huge to talk about. 

So no matter where we live, we are experiencing dramatic weather changes. How is climate change affecting forests here in Minnesota and again worldwide? What are we seeing here, Brian?

Brian
Well, at least locally, especially after this year here up in northern Minnesota, nobody's ever seen a snowless winter like we had here in this region. It was not just here, it was Ontario, neighboring states and so forth. And then it flipped into a monsoon season in May and June. And the mosquitoes are nice and hungry out there, up here in Minnesota. 

I thought we were gonna have like California, I thought we were gonna see forests and towns burn up this year, but that luckily did not happen. But it will happen in time. It's just a matter of when. 

But on a global basis, I've been watching this over the decades of how some of the course resolution satellites called Landset have been looking at land cover change and like in the Amazon or Indonesia and so forth. And there are numerous organizations that watch these things over time. And basically, it's the forest are an indicator of our global population demand for resources, and they get pressured. Brazil's doing a little bit better job lately. But overall, the natural systems are always gonna continue to get pressured for harvesting. The best reserve of forest, right now is probably Siberia or Russia

Pat
Really,

Brian
I mean, they do harvest their stuff, but it's not like it's being removed permanently. And the tropical forests are much less resilient once you harvest or clear cut. If they're doing selective harvest, then they're a little bit better. But if they're doing clear cuts for cattle raising, then that's where you just lose the forest and it's very, very hard to come back. It just takes time.

Pat
I'd like to shift gears. In the summer of 2023, Canada experienced a record-breaking wildfire season with over 6,132 fires burning and more than 40.7 million acres of land. Now, this was significantly higher than their average of about 6 million acres burned annually in previous years. And this is from the NASA Earth Observatory. 

The Canadian fires were so bad that here in St. Paul, Minneapolis, the air was hazy for weeks. It actually burned your eyes when you walked outside.

Now in the US the wildfire season was also intense with many large fires across the states. As of late June, 2023, there were 73 large active fires being managed nationwide, covering about 500,000 acres. And this is from the National Interagency Fire Center. 

Now, what are the primary conditions that increase wildfire risks?

Brian
Just in general? It's fuel and it's climate. Fuel, meaning the vegetation, well, we saw that in Hawaii that was,  in the Lahaina, a relatively small fire, but they had some sort of grass. I've never been there, but it just dried out. And wind came along and a spark started somewhere and just rolled right through the town. And we've seen this for decades where some of are more deadly fires are not that large, but they just get into these forest systems and they just roll up the hill. That's why it's sort of ironic, we're working on this forest inventory map for Minnesota. Part of the back where the brain is, is for it from a fire standpoint is because in order to understand and fight these things, you have to understand where the fuels are. There is not a forest inventory map that is detailed enough in the United States.

Pat
I'm surprised by that.

Brian
Oh yeah, there are maps. The Forest Service has them, the state DNRs have them, the industry folks have theirs. But when it gets into private woodlands to be able to show, and I wanna be very clear about this, about the forest species size and density. That's what's critical about understanding that vegetation makeup. And that's very, it's somewhat difficult to do, and yet we're working on it here. But again, that light bulb has not gone on in Washington or in St. Paul that we have to do this on a regular basis because guess what? Trees grow.

Pat
Excuse me, I I wanna ask, so if you're looking at a, primarily a birch and poplar forest, are you suggesting that a jack pine forest will burn differently than a birch or poplar? 

Brian 
Oh God, Yes! Oh yes. A Jack Pine is, they exist because of fire. A good friend of mine from the forest service used to call the Aspen hardwoods like asbestos forest. They just don't burn that often. But Jack Pines are usually in dry sandy soils, and they just tend to dry out. And then a fire comes through and then they get regenerated over time. So again, it's a variable landscape that we have to think about and be able to put our resources near where those occurrences are. And actually, the Forest Service and the DNRs have been doing that quite well. The ground resources like fire, where they put people and so forth, it is strategically placed. And that go dates back to the 1990s when they started looking at all these landscapes. And how do we sort of prepare for the future

Pat
If we just jump forward into the future based on these inventories? Could we possibly see a time when a fire breaks out in some region they pull up that data and information, this is a forest primarily of pine and this and that, they'll know how to address the fire. Is that what you're saying?

Brian
They'll be able to address it much better as far as what they have, what they understand in terms of the landscape. Right now, they just throw people out and around and try and, you know, tamp it down. But I think in time they'll get these models figured out, they'll have better systems to identify where the fire fronts are, which actually this may surprise you that the Forest Service only has a couple airplanes that does this nationally. Well, they don't move that fast on average, but you would think in this increasing fire frequency, we'd have more resources like that. The state of Colorado has invested in those aircraft, but here in Minnesota, they have, I think something through the state patrol helicopter that they throw up at times. But in general, we talked about this decades ago, is in reality, every region should have these aerial to be able to re to be responsive in any of these events, because if they get going and they get going fast, it's not good.

Pat
It strikes me that in the United States, each state has what's called a National Guard. It's a local army unit based in each state. This seems like it'd be something where a state could partner with National Guard to use their airplanes.

Brian 
They're already in the system. They get tasked when it gets to be a certain level of a fire emergency. Generally, the DNRs and this Forest Service, they have contractors with tankers like Colson Aviation .... Columbia is a big one. And then there's, air tractors with floats that actually made in St. Paul. But once it gets to a level where the resources are just getting stretched, then they can go pull in the, not only the National Guard, but also the US Army. So there is that connection. 

Pat
I'm kind of curious. The Minnesota Forestry Association advocates for responsible forest stewardship state and local levels. What kind of advocacy do you guys do? Like are you at the state capitol? How do you reach out to movers and shakers and people in a position to make a difference?

Brian 

We have a group that monitors, you know, state legislation and so forth, and we suggest legislation periodically, like the Sustainable Forestry Incentives Act, which Woodland landowners can sign up for, which gets them a, a rebate or there's another part of that which reduces their property taxes. But we're trying to keep it as simple as possible for landowners to sort of engage in these systems. 

But getting back to the advocacy we had for the previous two years, we, I actually went to the capitol with some of my members on March 21st, and we'd go there and put a little, little notice in the mailbox for the members saying, Hey, this is the, the International Forestry Day is March 21st. You know, if you wanna talk forestry, come up to some office room in the capitol and we'll, you know, answer your questions. And in both years, we only had one representative in each of those years show up.

Brian 
Again, it's just a little bit of timing on our part and getting the word out. Again, it's not on the forefront of our representatives that forestry is a very significant feature for our economy, but also for our climate. All the money, all the funding goes, oh, well it's gonna go to agriculture, it's gonna go to the farmers. Well, I got news for 'em. Yes, they can produce crops and so forth. They're very good at doing that, but they're not as efficient as what forest are. It doesn't even come close in terms of capturing carbon into like tree bowl.

Pat
I'm curious, are there other countries that are very forest oriented in terms of caring for them?

 Brian
Oh yeah. I mean, Canada for example is an easy one. In Europe, in general, they go back centuries. The Scandinavian countries, Germany, France, England, part of that was driven by the military because they needed tall masts for their ships to go across the ocean. So there was sort of that legacy.  In South America, there's the tropical forestry programs from what little I've been tracking there improving much better. The Amazon is not being ripped apart as fast as it was, but there's still problems across the globe.

Pat 
So how can woodland owners balance the economic benefits of timber with the need to preserve forest health and biodiversity? How do they juggle that?

Brian 
We can make suggestions either way, but it really, the ultimate decision is it up to the woodland landowners on how they want to treat their forest. But again, going back to this timber view project we're working on, we really wanted to get them engaged with maybe thinking holistically this concept that, well, we're gonna conserve and preserve our landscape. Well, I got news for them. Forest are dynamic and they keep changing whether we're here or not. 

Duluth used to be in a prairie ecosystem 10,000 years ago. Yeah, Duluth, you go to Duluth and you think there's a prairie here? Yes. 10,000 years ago, that was after the glaciation and Prairie fires came through, and over time, nature adapted. And we just need to think, get people thinking about not only their forests, but also who their neighbors are and how we can better work together to manage these ecotypes. In some cases, we've had landowners say, well, I want to harvest this. And we tell 'em, no.

Brian
It's, it's not a good thing to do. And in other cases, like they're, they may be against harvesting and we say after we've done with them showing them what can be done, then they say, oh yeah, maybe I do need to harvest this section. Again, it depends on what's in your backyard or in your woodland and how to best maintain it for not only current generations, but also for future generations.

Pat
Now people know that Minnesota's known as the land of 10,000 Lakes, but according to the Minnesota Farm Bureau, forests cover 33% of this state spanning 17.7 million acres. The Minnesota logging industry does about a $17.2 billion business in timber sales, and they have about 60,000 jobs. Now, this brings me to composite lumber. Composite lumber mixes, wood fibers and plastic to create a durable low maintenance plank that mimics real wood. And they do it by using waste materials like sawdust and wood chips mixed with high density polyethylene or PVC polyvinyl chloride. It's heated and formed into sturdy uniform boards. These eco-friendly boards require minimal maintenance, they resist rot decay and insect damage, making them much more durable than traditional lumber. 

Brian, given these factors, what impact do you think that the rise of composite lumber will have on traditional lumber industry in Minnesota's forests?

Brian 
Boy, that's a good question. The composites have been around actually a long time. When you think of plywood, plywood is a composite, and plywoods been around for decades. But back in the 80’s we had this push in Minnesota, these, uh, chipboard plants or wafer board plants where they take these wafers or slices of the tree and compress them with glues. They weren't using the plastic glues they were using, was it formaldehyde?

Pat
Formaldehyde.Yeah, press board. 

Brian
I know what's gonna pressure the industry is how to be also more sustainable in terms of those entire process. And I think I was just reading where they're trying to use lignin, which is usually removed paper making process to somehow, take advantage of that and use it in some other wood product. 

Pat 
And what is that material called?

Brian 
Lignin. It's part of the tree that provides some of the glue. And that's what the paper industry sort of removes to separate the fiber. It's the cellular fiber so they can make paper,  like for you artists. That might be painting and watercolor. That's how your paper is made. It's how do we get to that sustainable system? 

You know, even artists, I just learned this the other day, is there's a University of Minnesota professor by the name of Darren Hauser who teaches sustainable art, and it's up in University of Minnesota, Duluth. And you try and use materials, not just wood, but also the paints to help students they understand is how can you produce this without using like heavy metals or other non-renewable resources. So it's, it's a good question.

Brian
I think we're going to see more developments of cellulose products. I mean, the thing that's intrigued me the most is Potlatch, which is a, a well, formerly potlatch, it's PotlatchDeltic now out of Cloquet, Minnesota. It's a big paper mill, a fair portion ... goes into making clothing.  I didn't realize it was that large in the market. So for example,  I purchased like bamboo shirts in the Mayfield bamboo fiber, but I had no idea that they're doing the same thing with trees out of Minnesota. So that's an area that we're gonna see probably moving forward in the future. But it still gets back to the fundamental question is if we do make lumber products, whether they're just log cabins or two by fours or some composite material, those will be maintained much, much longer if they're put into some kind of a structure. So that's where they get stored over time.

Pat 
About 10, 15 years ago, greeting card companies were making paper outta seed. So when you're done with your greeting cards, you throw 'em in the backyard to get wild flowers. It's a beautiful idea of being conscious of this constant recycling. I like how you referred to the, the forest as being dynamic. Well, the things we use can be dynamic and go back into to a sustainable environment.

Brian 
Yeah. Recycle, but also reuse. We probably don't do enough reusing. We always have the statute; we'll just throw it in the landfill and be done with it. And ironically, the other biggest sector that actually stores carbon in our landfills.

Pat 
Really?

Brian 
Yes. I mean, it's a sliver. Well at least here in Minnesota, there's a graphic in simulator, but it's basically forestry's the largest sector. There's a little bit of landfill and everybody else is, you know, transportation, farming, so forth is using carbon.

Pat
So what do you see as the future of forestry in Minnesota, especially in light of climate change and the increasing environmental challenges?

Brian
There should be a growth curve, and it's not happening as fast as I thought, but there, I think it's a matter of society and realizing this is an important resource, we gotta better manage. And I think we'll see much more intensive, or let's call it active management across the state into the future. 

But what's also gonna be pressuring us, unless there's some change, is what's called sustainable aviation fuels. I'm a pilot and we have to use  gasoline and fly airplanes around, and the jets have to use what's called jet fuel. Well, I can tell you that the battery technology and hydrogen technology is not gonna allow us to fly in airliners across the pond over to like Europe. So there is a pressure called sustainable aviation fuels to develop that into the future. And basically it's producing jet fuel from like biomass of some sort.

Brian 
And of course, the corn farmers are gonna push for more of that, but the, the systems that produce the most carbon are forest. But how do you convert that forest to a fuel is still, a lot of work has to be done, but that's where the potential is to get the most bang for the buck. That could have some pressure on us maybe in a decade or so from now, maybe two decades. But there is like sustainable aviation fuel credits already, being pushed actually by the state of Minnesota and others that's gonna have an impact. 

As you pointed out, these composite wood-based systems are going to be there, but at the same time, we're gonna also have to come up with a better or long-term plan of how do we still produce these things, but also maintain our forest ecosystems across the state, across the region. And yes, we do have plans scattered around between the state and federal and so forth, but really we have a bunch of silos and we gotta get these silos to sort of work better together.

Pat
 So Brian, with your incredible background and all those amazing skills, I like how you just say, oh yeah, and by the way, I'm a pilot and then you carry on. So with all your amazing skills, how do you see yourself steering the ship at the Minnesota Forestry Association?

Brian 
Part of our challenges is most of our members are retired, and we're sort of in the old analog school. We still send out a, a printed newsletter. And we do, we have a great newsletter staff that does that. That's actually where most of our expense goes. But it's really this communication tool and getting enough people and resources volunteering to actually do some of the heavy lifting. And there's a few of us on, on the board that are, you know, actively doing our best to do this. 

We don't have a full-time staff. Nobody's paid other than the newsletter people. And our, our website manager, thankfully we have one of the better websites out there thanks to Marissa. That's it. It's all just, uh, donations. And actually, we we're basically living off of a former artist donation to MFA. Her name was Julia Marshall out of Duluth back in the nineties.

Brian 
She died years. Oh, how do we, it's really gonna be a communication and collaboration. We have to be able to get beyond our stove ice. It's not just MFA, it's uh, working with the soil and water conservation districts, the DNR, how do we have this cohesive voice that gets down to the local level? It has to be led by people, and people have to get out and bring their neighbors out there and say, this is how you do this and this is what you wanna look out for. We just can't do it all ourselves. We have to  find the professionals out there. And then we have a great bunch of consulting foresters across the state. 50 or 60. Yeah, there's more than that across the state, but they're running around from each landowner to helping them build problems like prescribed fires, uh, harvest, maybe putting in some practice that helps enhance their forest for some particular bird or wildlife. The, the challenge is how to get people engaged and how they can be collaborative with their neighbors and hence why we're working on this TimberView application. 

Pat 
Brian, I'm curious, when folks talk about the Minnesota Forestry Association and they talk about, oh yeah, Brian Huberty, he's the guy that ...fill in the blank.

Brian
I know everybody.  I should say that, but everybody usually bugs me about some issue. I mean, this has been going on for 20 years and part of the reason is that this employment history I had, it was not by designed by by me. It was just the way the Forest natural resources, uh, job market was at the time. But I was fortunate to work for like the Forest Service, the DNR, the US Geological Survey, fish and Wildlife for almost 20 years is a natural resources conservation service and private industry and the university. So, you know, I've been sort of around the block in terms of how do we look at our landscape now at a local level, but also on a global level. And one of my last projects that I worked with that was funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is we got the Canadians on board and we mapped the entire Great Lakes basin using both commercial satellite and radar imagery from the Canadians with a university and a group called Shared Geo Collaboration.

Brian 
That had never been done at that scale, at that resolution ever. Well, part of the reason we were able to do it was we got some great help to get access to a supercomputer through the Polar Geospatial seminar... Jennifer Corcoran did the RFP vet to get the dollars from the Forest Service to actually dive into it. But it was a very unique collaboration crossing an international border with Canada. And it was just because of personal contacts. We were able to do this great demonstration project with the Great Lakes. And it was not to show forests, but it was actually to help map wetlands. We were using the height measurement of forest wetlands from shrub wetlands down to emergent wetlands to figure out, hey, there might be a better way to do that. So again, it just takes a little bit time and expertise and resource and, and collaboration.

Pat
What an outstanding achievement. Brian, thank you so much for sharing your incredible journey and insights with us today. And it's exciting to hear about people, communities, organizations, and countries working together to care for and sustain forests for future generations. Thanks again for joining us.

Brian 
Yeah, no problem. Thanks Pat. Thanks for all your listeners for listening in.

Pat
Hey listeners, that's you. Thanks for joining us today. Bye.