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Excerpts:
New Mexico Land Conservancy first speaker series:
Research ecologist Craig Allen, PhD on the STATE AND FATE OF OUR MOUNTAIN FORESTS Tuesday, January 28, 2020 starts at 6:30 pm New Mexico Land Conservancy Headquarters WE HAVE LIMITED SPACE SO RSVPs ARE IMPORTANT [click here]. The speaker series is being hosted by New Mexico Land Conservancy at its headquarters in Santa Fe, located at 5430 S. Richards Avenue, near the Oshara subdivision on the way out to the Santa Fe Community College (the entrance is kind of hidden so look for our new white and red signs).
Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey, looking over an area scarred by wildfires in the Santa Fe National Forest on Sept. 7, 2015. Photo credit: Nick Cote for The New York Times
If you’ve ever driven along Highway 4 from Los Alamos as it winds through the Jemez Mountains en route to the Valles Caldera, you’ve seen some effects from a series of high-severity fires that have greatly altered the eastern half of the Jemez since 1996 .. . seen the bright green carpet of undergrowth beneath the charred trunks of the former conifer forest. . . and likely noticed the shrubby oak and New Mexico locust filling in where tall pines and Douglas-fir once dominated . . .
Ecosystems are inherently dynamic, but the pace and magnitude of forest change has been accelerating in Southwestern landscapes in recent years. Climate-related forest disturbances, particularly drought-induced tree mortality and large, high-severity fires from increasingly warm and dry conditions, are altering forest ecosystems and mountains watersheds, along with associated ecosystem services society depends on – including our precious water supplies. Such changes have been increasingly apparent and particularly well-studied in our local Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
If you’re interested in learning more about what’s happening to forests and watersheds in the Jemez as well as other mountain forests in northern New Mexico and beyond, please join us on TUESDAY, JANUARY 28 at 6:30pm for our new Speakers Series at the New Mexico Land Conservancy in Santa Fe. Our speaker, Craig Allen, PhD, is a research ecologist with the USGS (U.S. Geologcial Survey) Fort Collins Science Center, and is Station Leader of the New Mexico Land, and long-time leader of the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station (formerly the Jemez Mountains Field Station), co-located with land managers at Bandelier National Monument in the mountains of northern New Mexico as a place-based ecologist with the U.S. Dept. of Interior since 1986. Craig conducts diverse long-term research on the ecology and environmental history of Southwestern U.S. landscapes, using multiple approaches to document and interpret past and ongoing landscape changes, particularly the responses of Western US mountain ecosystems and Earth’s forests to accelerating global change.
Craig will discuss the current status and trends of our Southwestern forests, address some myths about forest management circulating these days, and share with us some of the innovative forest restoration and climate adaptation work being implemented in northern New Mexico.
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