Integrated upland vegetation and soils monitoring for Bandelier National Monument: 2012 summary report
DeCoster JK and Swan MC. 2016. Integrated upland vegetation and soils monitoring for Bandelier National Monument: 2012 summary report. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SCPN/NRDS—2016/1037. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
The National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program was designed to determine the status and monitor the conditions of park natural resources, providing park managers with a scientific foundation for making decisions and working with other agencies and the public to protect park ecosystems. The Southern Colorado Plateau Network (SCPN) is monitoring vegetation and soils as overall indicators of upland ecosystem integrity (Thomas et al. 2006). SCPN and park staff selected 2 ecological sites for long-term monitoring of upland vegetation and soils at Bandelier National Monument (BAND): the Mesa Top Pinyon-Juniper and Mixed Conifer ecological sites. For the sake of simplicity we refer to these as ecological sites, but they do not exactly conform to the concept of ecological site as described by the U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS). An ecological site is a landscape division with characteristic soils, hydrology, plant communities, and disturbance regimes and responses, and its classification is based on soil survey data (Butler et al. 2003). In 2012 we sampled 31 plots in the Mixed Conifer ecological site and 6 plots in the Mesa Top Pinyon-Juniper ecological site. We will only report data for the Mixed Conifer ecological site here. The Mixed Conifer ecological site is characterized as a high elevation forest. It faces numerous threats, including changing fire regimes, climate change, and invasion by nonnative species. In 2012 we established and sampled 31 plots in this ecological site following the Las Conchas Fire of 2011. In this report, we document monitoring activities in the Mixed Conifer ecological site of BAND during the 2012 field season. We report these data which represent baseline conditions for our monitoring of this ecological site.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- DeCoster, Jim; Swan, Megan
- Date of Issue
- 2016-08
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- BAND , NRSS , SCPN
- Keywords
- long term monitoring, Mesa Top pinyon-juniper, mixed conifer, soils monitoring, upland vegetation