Steve Rowell

NATURAL STATE

2026

• Introductory Film: A 360° spherical view recorded atop a vehicle moving beneath a forest canopy. Captions explain how and why we evolved to see, tracing the journey of photons from the sun’s core as they cross space, enter atmosphere, and reflect off the surfaces of a lit and warming planet.
• Main Film: A documentary of all four research sites, captioned with text to ground the viewer in the specificities of each biome.
• Ceiling Projection: Sequences of CGI 3D point clouds derived from aerial LiDAR and photogrammetry, projected as a circular overhead element. These render the landscape through the digital architecture of the scan.

• 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 bog / forest 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 octagonal 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.