Predicting the impact of climate change on forest composition, deer, and outdoor recreation using structural equation modeling (SEM) in northeastern Minnesota

Climate change will cause shifts in ecosystems and habitats by the end of the century, which will affect forested areas at the southern edge of the boreal biome such as the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province of northern Minnesota. We use a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach and climate projections for three future time periods, 2040–2059, 2060–2079, and 2080–2099 to generate predictions for forest composition, deer, and outdoor recreation, under climate change for the Laurentian Mixed Forest. We find that Minnesota's current boreal forest, dominated by aspen-birch and spruce-fir, will shift to a deciduous forest dominated by oak-hickory by 2100. With climate change and the change in forest composition, deer are predicted to have large increases. Most recreation categories are predicted to increase under climate change, driven largely by warmer temperatures, but cross-country skiing is predicted to suffer large declines. Our study provides predictions on outdoor recreation using a systems modeling framework with multiple interacting drivers (climate change, forest composition, deer populations), incorporating multiple types of variables (exogenous, endogenous, latent, compound), and models with and without a reciprocal interaction between forest composition and deer.