The central purpose of these guidelines is to provide world-class opportunities for today’s educators and scientists to conduct classes and cutting-edge research in field biology, ecology, and environmental sciences, without compromising future use or degrading UMBS’s habitats. Careful planning of land usage and management is needed to protect and enhance the property’s value.
This document describes our process for regulating research and teaching uses, and our policies and current plans for managing the UMBS landscape.
Research and Teaching Use Policies
For all teaching and research uses:
• Remove markers, flagging tape, and equipment at the conclusion of projects. Requests to leave permanent markers must be approved by the Director or a deputy.
• Replace disturbed soils at the conclusion of projects.
To effectively structure research and teaching use of UMBS property without subjecting projects to undue obstacles, the permissions required of uses increase with the scale of the project’s intended modification of habitats. Uses are organized by categories of intensity:
1. Observational. These uses should leave no discernible impact on habitats.
Examples:
• Extractive sampling of 1 invertebrate or herbaceous specimen per species.
• Deployment of markers and non-disruptive equipment.
Expectations:
• Projects are permitted across the entire UMBS property without special permission. Do not to disturb other projects.
2. Light. These uses may disturb habitats in limited ways which will be substantially undetectable 3 years later.
Examples:
• Harvesting or manipulating animals or understory plants either 1) in plots which are less than 25 square meters in total (terrestrial) or 4 square meters in total (aquatic), or 2) which amount to a negligible fraction of populations of interest over the area being sampled.
• Minor disturbances to individual overstory and midstory trees (e.g. coring, installing sap flow sensors, or shades).
Expectations:
• Obtain advance approved from the Director or a deputy.
• Report methods and location to the Information Manager.
• At the Director’s discretion, obtain approval of the Site Use Committee for any use of Inviolate Areas (see below).
3. Intense. These uses produce lasting effects on the composition or function of habitats. Use of Experimental and Timber Lands is strongly preferred.
Examples:
• Research harvests or manipulations which exceed the limitations of light uses.
• Habitat management activities (e.g. prescribed fire, demonstration plots).
• Timbering.
Expectations:
• At the Director’s discretion, obtain approval from the Director or the Site Use Committee.
• At the Director’s discretion, submit a description of use to a broad pool of stakeholders, allowing a reasonable window for feedback before the project begins.
• Report methods and location to the Information Manager.
Land Management Policies
Property-wide. These expectations apply to all UMBS lands.
Use restrictions:
• Existing vehicle access restrictions and hunting sanctuary areas remain in effect.
• Recreational use by full-size vehicles is prohibited on UMBS-owned two tracks.
Management activities:
• Respond to invasive species and other biological threats in accordance with the UMBS Biological Threat Response Framework.
• Enact manipulations (e.g. prescribed fire) which preserve composition, structure, and function by closely emulating natural processes.
To accommodate diverse uses, preserve the property’s ecosystems, and leverage research histories and land use legacies, we regulate management and use activities partially according to the following spatially-distinct categories:
1. Inviolate Areas. In these sensitive areas of the UMBS property, our intent is to sustain biotic community composition, ecosystem structure, and habitat integrity.
Examples:
• The slopes and headwaters of the northern portion of the Carp Creek Gorge.
• Riffles of the Maple River (habitats of the Hungerford’s water beetle).
• Coves at Maple Point and Sedge Point which provide loon nesting habitat.
• Bryant Bog, Gates Bog, and Gleason Bog, and any other bogs or fens.
• All permanent inventory plots.
• Native American archaeological dig sites (exempt from soil and vegetation disturbance restrictions).
Management activities:
• Install infrastructure (e.g. bog bridges) to reduce impacts of use.
2. Experimental and Timber Lands. These areas provide opportunities for experimental manipulations, demonstration ecosystems, rehabilitative manipulations, and forestry to fund greater station goals. Lands in this category include those with a history of disruptive use, and parcels selected to provide representative examples of landscape ecosystems that are common on the property.
Examples:
• All historical pine plantations which retain a substantial component of planted species.
• All lands subject to timber cuts and other disruptive land uses.
• Areas between the 1983 and 1985 timber cuts along Bryant road.
• Greenstar meadow.
• Portions of the Pellston Plains determined to be at high wildfire risk.
Management activities:
• Manipulations which introduce novel ecological conditions (e.g. burn plot and aspen clearcut chrono-sequence) to enhance teaching and research.
• Install infrastructure (e.g. culverts) to reduce impacts of use.
• Forestry to alter red pine plantations into a more natural community composition, where appropriate.
• Forestry to harvest funds and thin red pine plantations into a more natural community composition, in select dense plantations lying close by roads.
3. Research Preserves. These areas provide opportunities for research and other uses which do not substantially manipulate biotic community composition, ecosystem structure, or habitat integrity. They include all lands that are not included in Inviolate Areas and do not have a history of substantial modifications.
Research Preserves include:
• All surface streams, lakeshores, and wetlands, with a 30 meter buffer.
• Areas within the FASET, AmeriFlux, and burn plots study footprints.
• The Chase Osborne Preserve property.
• The Colonial Point property.
Management activities:
• Install infrastructure (e.g. bog bridges, trails, culverts) to reduce impacts of use.
• Transition to Experimental and Timber Lands category in anticipation of or response to a critical degradation threat.
