Steve Rowell
NATURAL STATE
2026
NATURAL STATE is a moving-image project developed across four of Minnesota’s leading climate and ecological research stations:
- Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (University of Minnesota), focused on biodiversity, grassland ecology, and long-term climate experiments that test ecosystem responses to warming, drought, and shifting seasonal patterns.
- Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories (University of Minnesota), where forest and freshwater systems are studied through long-term ecological monitoring and climate-sensitive field research. Operating since 1907/1909, one of the oldest continuously operating field stations in the US.
- Cloquet Forestry Center (University of Minnesota), dedicated to forest management and the future of northern forests as rising temperatures reshape species composition, growth, and disturbance cycles. The University is also in the process of returning the land to the Fond du Lac Band.
- The Marcell Experimental Forest (U.S. Forest Service), a globally significant peatland research site investigating hydrology, carbon cycling, and how warming accelerates carbon release in wetland ecosystems. Established 1962, the longest-running peatland research program in the world, with continuous hydrological and climate data since 1960.
Together, these sites function as real-world testbeds for Minnesota’s plausible climate futures—more frequent extreme temperatures, warmer winters, intensified heat stress on vegetation, and the cascading effects of rising atmospheric CO₂ on forest, prairie, and peatland systems. In these environments, climate change becomes measurable not as an abstraction, but as shifts in growth, respiration, water balance, and carbon exchange. NATURAL STATE situates research stations as both laboratories and cultural spaces—places where heat, CO₂, and ecological thresholds are modeled, measured, and made visible.
Over multiple visits in spring, summer, fall, and winter, I filmed alongside scientists, graduate students, technicians, and land managers. My process included recorded interviews, observational cinematography of field experiments, drone-based landscape imaging, macro plant documentation, 360-degree environmental audio, and 3D photogrammetry scans of vegetation and research infrastructure. The work examines how knowledge about climate change is produced on the ground—through instruments, repeated measurements, and long-term stewardship.
Material from NATURAL STATE will be exhibited at Watershed Art & Ecology (Chicago) in March–April 2026, presenting moving-image works developed through this field research.
A public event is scheduled for May 16, 2026 at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve. This workshop will invite members of the local community, surrounding counties, and the Twin Cities to engage directly with the project. Activities will include presentations of drone imagery, demonstrations of mobile 3D vegetation scanning using phone-based photogrammetry, discussion of how research plots and monitoring systems function, and conversation about how visual media can translate climate science for broader publics.
More detail on each site featured in the project:
- Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (University of Minnesota), focused on biodiversity, grassland ecology, and long-term climate experiments that test ecosystem responses to warming, drought, and shifting seasonal patterns. Core experiments: BigBio (342 plots, one of the world's longest-running biodiversity experiments, begun in the late 1980s); BioCON (Biodiversity, CO₂, and Nitrogen — one of the world's few Free Air CO₂ Enrichment experiments, also among the longest-running elevated CO₂ studies globally); and RESCUE (Rescuing Ecosystems and Species Currently Undergoing Extinction — the newest experiment, testing whether seed inputs can rescue species in fragmented habitats in hexagonal plots of various sizes).
- Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories (University of Minnesota), where forest and freshwater systems are studied through long-term ecological monitoring and climate-sensitive field research. Operating since 1907/1909, one of the oldest continuously operating field stations in the US. The 49-acre campus is entirely within Itasca State Park, near the Mississippi headwaters. It runs intensive residential field biology courses for students (bunkhouses, dining hall, full immersive program), has 11 research labs across six buildings, and maintains collections of birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and a herbarium. The library holds over 2,000 student research project reports accumulated across decades. Aquatic instrumentation on Lake Itasca and Elk Lake.
- Cloquet Forestry Center (University of Minnesota), dedicated to forest management and the future of northern forests as rising temperatures reshape species composition, growth, and disturbance cycles. The primary climate research is B4WARMED (Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in Danger), a DOE-funded experiment using infrared lamps and underground soil-heating cables across 96 plots to warm ten tree species by 2°C and 4°C — temperatures projected for northern Minnesota by 2050 and 2100. The site sits at the boreal-temperate ecotone, where the "competition" between forest types makes it especially sensitive to warming. The University is also in the process of returning the land to the Fond du Lac Band.
- The Marcell Experimental Forest (U.S. Forest Service), a globally significant peatland research site investigating hydrology, carbon cycling, and how warming accelerates carbon release in wetland ecosystems. Established 1962, the longest-running peatland research program in the world, with continuous hydrological and climate data since 1960. Six instrumented experimental watersheds. SPRUCE ran 2016–2025 (now decommissioning): 10 open-topped hexagonal aluminium enclosures, DOE-funded, run in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. SPRUCE asked whether warming will release 10,000 years of accumulated peat carbon — peatlands hold a third of global soil carbon despite covering only 3% of land.
Made possible with support from:
The Minnesota State Arts Board.
Steve Rowell is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.