Fire and vegetation history of the Jemez Mountains

Historic patterns of fire occurrence and vegetation change in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico have been described in detail by using multiple lines of evidence. Data sources include old aerial and ground-based photographs, historic records, charcoal deposits from bogs, fire-scarred trees (Figure 1), tree-ring reconstructions of precipitation, and field sampling of vegetation and soils. The forests and woodlands that cloak the Southwestern uplands provide the most extensive and detailed regional-scale network of fire history data available in the world (Swetnam and Baisan 1996, Swetnam et al. 1999, Allen 2002).