The Wisconsin Intermediate Red Pine site is located in the Washburn Ranger District of the northeastern section of Chequamegon National Forest. A member of the northern coniferous-deciduous biome, surveys from the mid-19th century indicate the region consisted of a mixed stand of red, white, and jack pines. After extensive timber harvesting, wildfires, and farming activity, the region turned into a fragmented mosaic of stands of various ages and composition. The intermediate red pine site is one of ten sites that collectively represent the successional stages of development in the predominant stand types of a physically homogeneous landscape. Thinned every 7 years until they reach 100 to 150 years of age, the red pine plantations of all ages occupy approximately 25% of the region.

The research and science objectives of the Wisconsin Intermediate Red Pine are as follows: 1) Enhance our understanding of landscape-level carbon exchange in disturbed land mosaics, taking into specific consideration age structure and the area-of- edge-influences (AEI); 2) Determine how the cumulative NEP of a landscape is determined by the land mosaic; that is, the various ages and types of ecosystems present, as well as their arrangement; 3) Investigate the temporal and spatial changes in landscape structure and vegetative composition across a landscape managed for multiple uses within the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin; 4) Quantify the developmental changes in Carbon fluxes following stand replacing disturbances; 5) Investigate the common factors that might explain the observed variability among the closely spaced, but diverse, forest ecosystems that represent a disturbed, actively managed and climatically homogeneous forest landscape; 6) Quantify the role of soil moisture in affecting ecosystem respiration; 7) Identify landscape-level patterns in the temperature and moisture response of ecosystem respiration as determined by forest functional type and stage of development. (Project Overview by Primary Investigators: J. Chen and K. Brosofske; Bresee et al., 2004; Noormets et al., 2007; Noormets et al., 2008)