saint croix floodplain forest inundated

by Regina Flanagan

Regina Flanagan photographs landscapes over long stretches of time, exploring how changeable, yet resilient they are. Floodplains—like the one in Afton State Park along the St. Croix River pictured here—allow rivers the space to spread out and slow down. They store water in times of flooding, releasing it slowly over land and deep in the ground. These areas create rich, biologically diverse ecosystems of plants, fish, and birds; habitats are destroyed and new ones emerge with each flooding event.

Floodplain forests are dynamic systems that rely on disturbance for their health, yet in recent years a number of record-breaking disturbances have been attributed to changing global weather patterns. Flanagan’s photographs wrestle with this tension. While her picture appears pastoral at first glance, on closer inspection you can see a landscape littered with dead trees suffocated by the water; in Flanagan’s words, “the forest is literally floating away.”