New Mexico Landscapes Field Station: Forest Ecosystem Research
Below are ongoing or completed research projects related to forest ecosystems at the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station.
Impacts of drought and disturbance regimes on forest ecosystem resilience in the Southern Rocky Mountains
Principal Investigators - Ellis Margolis and Andreas Wion
Increasingly extreme drought, heat waves, fires, and forest mortality are transforming forest ecosystems across the western United States. Large areas of forest are converting to grass-shrub systems and post-fire flooding and debris flows are affecting communities and riparian ecosystems downstream. The goal of this project is to investigate effects of drought variability and land use on long-term ecosystem dynamics and changing disturbance regimes, with a focus on forests of the southern Rocky Mountains. We build upon our unique, long-term, place-based data sets from forested landscapes of northern New Mexico that are part of larger, regional to continental networks to: investigate patterns and drivers of long-term changes in fire regimes, assess vegetation dynamics and resilience in response to drought and disturbance, examine the drivers and dynamics of changing tree mortality and forest ecosystem resilience, develop ecological forecasts of tree demography, and quantify seasonal drivers of the phases of cell production that make up tree ring growth.
Drivers and Dynamics of Tree Mortality
Principal Investigators - Ellis Margolis and Andreas Wion, with Craig Allen – University of New Mexico emeritus
Scientific understanding of the process drivers and spatial patterns of tree mortality is surprisingly limited, constraining our ability to model forest responses to projected drought variability. The onset of regional drought since the late 1990s has resulted in extensive die-off episodes of multiple tree species across millions of acres in the Southwest, fostering substantial collaborative tree mortality research in this region. Ongoing tree mortality research in northern New Mexico includes: monitoring of forest and woodland demography (tree mortality and regeneration); development of ecological forecasts of tree die-off; measurement of cottonwood mortality; remote-sensing of landscape-scale patterns of forest stress and die-off; documentation and synthesis of regional, national, and global patterns of forest die-off; and efforts to improve models of tree mortality processes.
Southwest Ecological Forecasting Cooperative
Principal Investigators – Andreas Wion and Ellis Margolis
Prediction is a first principle of science, and forecasting is an important part of applying ecology to management and decision making. At the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station, we are on the frontlines of developing near-term, ecological forecasts of tree demographic processes, including mast seeding and tree die-off. Soon, (FY24) forecast maps, trends, and interactive data visualizations will be housed at this URL.
Southwestern sagebrush ecosystem dynamics
Principal Investigator: Ellis Margolis
Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems are understudied in the southwestern U.S. but are highly valuable for sagebrush-obligate species such as the federally threatened Gunnison sage-grouse. We are researching changing ecosystem dynamics in two sagebrush-dominated landscapes of the Southwest: 1) the Upper Gunnison Basin, CO and 2) the Taos Plateau, NM that is part of the BLM Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. In the Gunnison Basin we combined tree-ring fire scars from locations where sagebrush and forests overlap with vegetation surveys after recent fires. We found that repeated, low-severity fire burned in these locations for hundreds of years prior to fire exclusion in the late 1800s, and that native herbaceous vegetation was more diverse and had greater cover in recently burned areas. In the Rio Grande del Norte we compared General Land Office (GLO) records from 1881 with sagebrush ages and modern vegetation surveys to find that sagebrush has increased, and grass has declined over the last 140 years, and that overgrazing was likely a contributing factor. Understanding how ecosystems change with past changes in human land use are important for understanding the effects of modern land management decisions.
Impacts of changing climate and disturbance regimes on forest ecosystem resilience in the Southern Rocky Mountains
The New Mexico Landscapes Field Station
Below are ongoing or completed research projects related to forest ecosystems at the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station.
Impacts of drought and disturbance regimes on forest ecosystem resilience in the Southern Rocky Mountains
Principal Investigators - Ellis Margolis and Andreas Wion
Increasingly extreme drought, heat waves, fires, and forest mortality are transforming forest ecosystems across the western United States. Large areas of forest are converting to grass-shrub systems and post-fire flooding and debris flows are affecting communities and riparian ecosystems downstream. The goal of this project is to investigate effects of drought variability and land use on long-term ecosystem dynamics and changing disturbance regimes, with a focus on forests of the southern Rocky Mountains. We build upon our unique, long-term, place-based data sets from forested landscapes of northern New Mexico that are part of larger, regional to continental networks to: investigate patterns and drivers of long-term changes in fire regimes, assess vegetation dynamics and resilience in response to drought and disturbance, examine the drivers and dynamics of changing tree mortality and forest ecosystem resilience, develop ecological forecasts of tree demography, and quantify seasonal drivers of the phases of cell production that make up tree ring growth.
Drivers and Dynamics of Tree Mortality
Principal Investigators - Ellis Margolis and Andreas Wion, with Craig Allen – University of New Mexico emeritus
Scientific understanding of the process drivers and spatial patterns of tree mortality is surprisingly limited, constraining our ability to model forest responses to projected drought variability. The onset of regional drought since the late 1990s has resulted in extensive die-off episodes of multiple tree species across millions of acres in the Southwest, fostering substantial collaborative tree mortality research in this region. Ongoing tree mortality research in northern New Mexico includes: monitoring of forest and woodland demography (tree mortality and regeneration); development of ecological forecasts of tree die-off; measurement of cottonwood mortality; remote-sensing of landscape-scale patterns of forest stress and die-off; documentation and synthesis of regional, national, and global patterns of forest die-off; and efforts to improve models of tree mortality processes.
Southwest Ecological Forecasting Cooperative
Principal Investigators – Andreas Wion and Ellis Margolis
Prediction is a first principle of science, and forecasting is an important part of applying ecology to management and decision making. At the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station, we are on the frontlines of developing near-term, ecological forecasts of tree demographic processes, including mast seeding and tree die-off. Soon, (FY24) forecast maps, trends, and interactive data visualizations will be housed at this URL.
Southwestern sagebrush ecosystem dynamics
Principal Investigator: Ellis Margolis
Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems are understudied in the southwestern U.S. but are highly valuable for sagebrush-obligate species such as the federally threatened Gunnison sage-grouse. We are researching changing ecosystem dynamics in two sagebrush-dominated landscapes of the Southwest: 1) the Upper Gunnison Basin, CO and 2) the Taos Plateau, NM that is part of the BLM Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. In the Gunnison Basin we combined tree-ring fire scars from locations where sagebrush and forests overlap with vegetation surveys after recent fires. We found that repeated, low-severity fire burned in these locations for hundreds of years prior to fire exclusion in the late 1800s, and that native herbaceous vegetation was more diverse and had greater cover in recently burned areas. In the Rio Grande del Norte we compared General Land Office (GLO) records from 1881 with sagebrush ages and modern vegetation surveys to find that sagebrush has increased, and grass has declined over the last 140 years, and that overgrazing was likely a contributing factor. Understanding how ecosystems change with past changes in human land use are important for understanding the effects of modern land management decisions.