"It's kind of neat to think I'm actually trying to save a sand dune, in northern Minnesota. I've never seen anything like this before."
- Ryan Haspel, Natural Resources major, Detroit Lakes, Minn.

The term "erosion" usually conjures up negative images, of things taking a turn for the worst and eventually wasting away.

But some of Wendell Johnson's freshman biology students at the University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC) are not only promoting erosion in the wilderness near Fertile, Minn., they're working up a sweat making it happen. The students, 10 of them in all, are taking part in a Service Learning project that by definition involves them in projects outside the traditional classroom that benefit the community around them. What sets Service Learning apart from typical community service is that the projects are directly tied to class curriculum.

This semester, Johnson's students are hiking through the Fertile Sand Hills until they reach, in Johnson's terms, "death valley," a particular dune that's being choked out by a proliferation of aspen trees around its borders and creeping juniper that's found its way within its margins. According to Johnson, the wind no longer blows through the dune with the force it once did, whipping up sand along the way. The trees, getting larger by the year, are protecting the dune from the gusts, and that has made it easier for the juniper to take root in the sand.

The Department of Natural Resources is concerned enough about the future of the Fertile Sand Hills, Johnson said, that it would prefer the trees and juniper be eradicated if doing so increases the chances of the dunes' survival. In Johnson's words, his students are "reclaiming" the dunes, which are located in the Agassiz Environmental Learning Center (AELC). The Center's management plan includes the reclamation of the dunes.

"Many years ago, the natives burned naturally around here, then the Europeans grazed it; both activities kept it nice and open," Johnson explained while helping his students pull up and chop juniper roots. "Now, through succession, we have plants replacing plants, something that's been made worse by a string of wet years. It's closing the dune off to the wind it needs."

In addition to removing the juniper, Johnson's students are spraying the trunks of the aspen trees around the dune's perimeter. A year from now, they won't leaf out, Johnson said. Then they'll be removed.

Cutting, chopping and pulling juniper one recent blustery afternoon, freshman Ryan Haspel of Detroit Lakes, Minn. said he felt he was making a difference in the world around him. Like the rest of the students at the site, Haspel is majoring in natural resources.

"It's kind of neat to think I'm actually trying to save a sand dune, in northern Minnesota," he said. "I've never seen anything like this before."

Johnson knows that, years from now, some of his students will forget what they did in the Fertile Sand Hills during freshman biology. But the experience will stick with many, he adds.

"For some of these students it's what I like to call a marker moment," Johnson said. "They'll never forget having been here."