Workshops
Workshops are your chance to learn and apply new skills and methodologies.
Pre-registration for workshops is required and includes a nominal fee to cover workshop expenses. Sign up for workshops when you register for the conference. Please note that these sessions may be held concurrent with other conference content (working groups, roundtable conversations, field trips, and concurrent sessions), so check the conference schedule before you sign up. Space in each workshop is limited, and sign up is first-come-first-serve, so register early to make sure you get into your desired workshop. Note that workshop fees are non-refundable.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Black Ash Plaited Basket-Making
Time: 1:30 – 4:30 pm
Registration fee: $75*
*No discounts applicable to this workshop fee.
Instructor: Liandra Skenandore, enrolled tribal citizen, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin
Liandra Skenandore
Plaited baskets are simple, beautiful, strong holders for many precious and humble items. In this class students will make one small black ash plaited basket (smaller than image shown). Participants will work with already prepared base/weaver pieces to create a basket in the diagonal plaited weave style. Participants will learn how to finish this basket by tucking in the base/weaver pieces within the walls of the basket. A log pounding and splint splitting demonstration will showcase the intricate process of attaining ash splint material. Registration fees include all basket-making supplies.
Liandra Skenandore represents the Oneida, Prairie Band Potawatomi, Muscogee Creek and Seminole Nations . Through the 2020 Mentor Artist Fellowship Program with the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, she apprenticed under renowned weaver April Stone (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) to learn the traditional art of Black Ash basket weaving.
Wetland Themed Linocut Print Making
Time: 1:30 – 4:30 pm
Registration fee: $20*
*No discounts applicable to this workshop fee.
Instructor: Samantha Foster (Wisconsin Wetland Association)
Samantha Foster
Create your own wetland themed greeting cards using linocut printing. All materials will be provided. You may carve your own design or use provided references as carving inspiration. Create beautiful, unique greeting cards (2), with envelopes, for someone special. Your carving is yours to keep and thus affords the opportunity to print additional cards after this workshop. No experience necessary, just a desire to make art!
Samantha Foster joined Wisconsin Wetlands Association in the Spring of 2019. She has a degree in Biology, with an emphasis in Ecology and Field Biology. Her passion has always been being outdoors and enjoying nature. She has a particular fondness for wetlands and has spent time in the middle of local wetlands doing Blanding’s research and paddling many local waterways with camera in hand, capturing many of the birds and turtles that make our wetlands home. In addition to capturing local wildlife in photos, Samantha enjoys water color painting, pastels and dry point and relief printing.
Wetland Natural Communities of the Driftless Area
Time: 1:30 – 4:30 pm
Registration fee: $30
Instructors: Ryan O’Connor (Wisconsin DNR) and Pat Trochlell (The Prairie Enthusiasts)
This workshop will focus on wetland natural communities of the Driftless Area with a special emphasis on characteristic plant species, hydrology, and soils. Participants will learn how to correctly classify wetland communities and determine restoration and management needs in this hands-on, skills-based workshop. We will review various classification schemes and practice using wetland characteristics (vegetation, soils, hydrology, landscape setting) to identify different wetland natural communities using the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’s community classification. Participants will also practice using standard resources to evaluate threats to a given wetland, including past land use history, hydrologic alteration, invasive species, and climate change. The workshop will culminate with participants applying what they know about the soils, vegetation, and hydrology of an example site to determine what management or restoration approaches may be needed.
Photo by Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Pat Trochlell is a wetland ecologist who worked for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for over 35 years. Her areas of expertise include wetland botany, soils, natural area restoration, site assessment, and education. She is a state-licensed hydrologist and soil scientist. She currently surveys, assesses, and manages wetland and upland plant communities for The Prairie Enthusiasts, other land trusts, and individuals and is a Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program instructor.
Ryan O’Connor
Ryan O’Connor is an ecologist and conducts biotic inventories of natural communities for the Wisconsin DNR’s Natural Heritage Conservation program. His professional interests include providing land managers with high-quality data to make better decisions, developing climate adaptation resources, and hunting for rare and invasive plants. He received his master’s degree from the University of Michigan and has spent much of his time in Wisconsin helping to develop floristic quality benchmarks for wetland communities.
How a Loner Learned to Collaborate
Time: 1:30 – 4:30 pm
Registration fee: $ 45
Instructors: Leigh Fredrickson (Wetland Management and Educational Services, Inc.) and Colleagues
Leigh Fredrickson
In this session, Leigh Fredrickson and colleagues will tell the story of how they learned to collaborate and why collaboration is essential to success in wetlands and other natural resources fields. Like many of us, Leigh was attracted to the field of natural resources because he was interested in nature and in spending his life and career immersed in the natural world. Early on, he envisioned that this work would allow him solitude and the ability to avoid too much human interaction. He soon learned how wrong he was and how the success of our work in wetlands and other natural resource fields depends not only on interaction with nature but on developing close collaborations with scientists, land managers, and other humans. Leigh will be joined in this session by several of his Wisconsin-based long-term colleagues, including Kevin Kenow and Jim and Ruth Nissen. Together they will tell their stories of collaboration and the great variety of ways we interact, and they will extoll the benefits and challenges involved in successful partnerships. Finally, they’ll discuss approaches we all can take (introverts and extroverts) to create meaningful collaborations and partnerships. This session is especially aimed at students and young professionals but should be interesting to all.
Leigh Fredrickson has nearly 80 years of wetland experience including an academic career focused on wetland ecology. He has taught university courses and given hundreds of wetland workshops. Frederickson has examined wetlands in all 50 states and assessed wetland conditions on National Wildlife Refuges, state lands, and National Forests and Parks.
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Identification of Wisconsin’s Aquatic Plants
Paul Skawinski
Time: 1:30 – 4:00 pm
Registration fee: $55
Instructor: Paul Skawinski (UW-Stevens Point Extension Lakes)
Wisconsin is blessed with more than 170 species of submergent and floating-leaved aquatic plants. This workshop will introduce participants to our underwater forests using laminated plant specimens and hi-resolution photography. Paul will cover aquatic plant species that tend to occur in and around wetlands, including common species and some rare ones. This workshop includes a copy of Aquatic Plants of the Upper Midwest for each participant.
Paul Skawinski is the author of Aquatic Plants of the Upper Midwest and the Statewide Educator for the Wisconsin Citizen Lake Monitoring Network. Paul has taught Aquatic Plant Taxonomy at UW-Stevens Point for 12 years and has taught aquatic plant ID workshops at conferences around the Midwest for over 14 years.
Side Events: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Note: The following workshop are side events that are not officially part of the Wetland Science Conference program but may be of interest to (and are open to) conference attendees. Registration for these workshops will be handled separate from conference registration (see details for each workshop below for information on how to register)
Optimizing Riparian Forest Plantings for Trout Streams
Time: 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Registration information: TBD
Instructor: Sara Strassman (Trout Unlimited’s Driftless Area Restoration Effort)
Riparian vegetation is an important contributor to trout stream health while also providing semi-aquatic and terrestrial habitats for a wide variety of insects, birds, herptiles, and mammals. Managing riparian vegetation requires landowners to make decisions about what species to choose, how herbaceous and woody vegetation communities perform as habitats and interact with the stream system, how much maintenance may be required, and how to account for a changing climate, among numerous other considerations. The goal of this workshop is to explore how riparian forests benefit trout streams and to develop some specific guidelines and criteria that may help landowners (private and public) make informed decisions about species, planting recommendations, regulatory coordination, tree stock sources, and other key considerations. We intend to collate the discussion and resources presented at the workshop into a summary document for future use.
Town's Workshop
Time: 1:30 – 4:30 pm
Registration information: TBD
Instructor: Erin O’Brien (Wisconsin Wetlands Association)
More information will be made available soon!