Alpine vegetation composition, structure, and soils monitoring for Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve: 2010 summary report
Ashton IW. 2011. Alpine vegetation composition, structure, and soils monitoring for Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve: 2010 summary report. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/ROMN/NRDS—2011/152. National Park Service, Natural Resource Program Center. Fort Collins, Colorado
Alpine ecosystems are important monitoring targets for the Rocky Mountain Inventory and Monitoring Network (ROMN) for a number of reasons, including their value to park visitors, wildlife, and water resources in the West and because the alpine is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Here we present a summary of our efforts in 2010 to monitor vegetation composition, structure, and soils in four sentinel sites in the alpine of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (GRSA). This was not a full monitoring event; in 2010 we spent 3 days in GRSA collecting and replacing temperature dataloggers that were deployed in 16 locations in July 2009. We did not conduct vegetation surveys, because active fires made access to the sites unsafe during July. This report also includes soil chemistry analyses from 2009 that were completed in the winter of 2010. The intention of this report is to provide a timely release of basic data sets and data summaries. We expect to produce reports with more in-depth data analysis and interpretation when we do the second full sample event (5 years) or as needed for park management and interpretation. In 2010, we found the following: (1) Soil texture was similar across summits in the GLORIA target region. We found soil texture to be a sandy clay loam or sandy loam. The highest summit, SIX, tended to have higher nutrient concentrations than the lower peaks. (2) The alpine is characterized by a short growing season and cold temperatures with temperatures decreasing at higher elevations. All summits showed similar daily patterns in temperature suggesting they are in the same climate zone. Continued monitoring of the vegetation and temperature at sentinel sites will allow us to determine whether climate change correlates with changes in biodiversity in select locations in GRSA’s alpine. Warmer temperatures may contribute to the extinction of some plant species while simultaneously increasing the elevation and latitudinal limitations of other species.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Ashton, Isabel
- Date of Issue
- 2011-03
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Natural Resource Program Center
- Units
- GRSA , NRSS , ROMN
- Keywords
- Alpine, Alpine Vegetation Monitor, Climate Change, GLORIA, Soil Temperature, Vegetation