Eli Sagor

Many public agencies make foresters available to answer landowners’ land management questions. We gathered data about landowner calls to private forest management (PFM) foresters employed by a Minnesota state agency in 2017 and 2018. We used a mailed questionnaire to assess the outcomes of these contacts, including land management actions taken and factors most influential the landowner’s subsequent decision process. The most common topic landowners called about was enrolling in a property tax program, followed by harvesting and planting trees, obtaining financial assistance, and controlling forest pests. Eighteen months after the initial call, implementation rates and intent were high, ranging from 73%–91%. Across management actions, information from a PFM forester, likelihood of timely implementation, and expected benefit were highly influential. PFM calls also informed landowners about additional land management actions, many of which they implemented. Our results offer new insight into the value of landowner contact with public sector foresters.

Innovation and knowledge exchange are critical to foster adaptive management and continual learning. Across the spectrum of knowledge exchange, ranging from peer-reviewed research to anecdotes, there is a largely untapped middle ground: real-world silvicultural case studies implemented and documented by foresters. The University of Minnesota Great Lakes Silviculture Library is a novel, freely available platform designed to enable foresters to exchange these case studies. Five years after its launch, we conducted focus groups with foresters from Minnesota and Wisconsin, USA, and Ontario, Canada, to explore the platform’s usage and value. Participants valued having access to examples of silvicultural treatments and their outcomes that they could easily digest, apply, and share. They gained new knowledge from management across administrative boundaries. They also appreciated the consistent, relatable case study format. However, participants noted that limited time was the primary barrier to wider authorship and readership. The Library enables information exchange across agencies and disciplines within natural resources, giving greater voice to practicing foresters and supplementing other sources of forestry knowledge.

Effective delivery of continuing education programs can improve their impact. Using the first of four two-week modules of a professional short course, we tested outcomes of a flipped classroom approach, comparing professional foresters’ completion rates, preference for, and perceived value of pre-module content delivered via video and reading. Participants in the National Advanced Silviculture Program self-reported significantly higher pre-module completion rates, preference for, and perceived value of video over reading. This simple study suggests the potential for video to serve as an accessible and preferred format for delivery of key content to supplement an in-person continuing education program.

Recognizing intergenerational differences sets the stage for sharing and learning across the generations. An intergenerational land transfer education class was designed to engage families around the issue of parcelization and development of forested lands. A post-class survey of the Intergenerational Land Transfer class was used to evaluate outcomes. Recognizing intergenerational differences in learning was found to be important in catalyzing family discussion and protect working forestlands. This article provides an example of a multi-generational approach to teaching. This approach has implications for program areas beyond agriculture and forestry.

With shrinking budgets, staff reductions, and increased availability and access to digital technologies, Extension educators will be seeking ways to convert face-to-face programs to alternate formats. When converting Minnesota's biomass harvesting guidelines for online delivery, we learned many lessons while planning, developing, and testing our curriculum that can help others through a similar process.

Extension continuously seeks novel and effective approaches to outreach and education. The recent retirement of a longtime content specialist catalyzed members of University of Minnesota Extension's Forestry team to reflect on our instructional capacity (internal and external) and educational design in the realm of maple syrup production. We responded by developing an educational maple blog series that incorporated faculty and community expertise through a participatory, peer-to-peer approach. The blog series expanded and strengthened the state's maple knowledge network, met contributors' and users' content needs and expectations, influenced maple practices, and retained program flexibility for adaptation.