Fire history of the Southern Rockies  

 

R. Scott Anderson's Fire History of the Southern Rockies project, largely funded by the USGS and Los Alamos National Laboratory, seeks to determine the long-term relationships and history of fire, vegetation and climate in the Southern Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico.

Dr. Anderson and his colleagues chose to concentrate on the mixed conifer forests and spruce-fir forests, partly because they knew little about the history of fire there, and partly because appropriate sites are more abundant at those elevations.

The sites consist of small lakes, bogs and wetlands, found in the southern Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, and the northern Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains of Colorado. These sites are found mostly to the west of the Rio Grande Valley, but they are adding sites to the east side as well. 

Photo 1: Little Molas Lake, San Juan Mts, Colorado (Spruce & Fir Zone)

Photo 2: Laguna Tonito, NM (Pine - Oak Woodland Zone)