Stream community response to the 2011 Las Conchas Fire in Bandelier National Monument: Aquatic macroinvertebrate monitoring 2007–2019 (revised, December 2022)
Stumpf SE. 2023. Stream community response to the 2011 Las Conchas Fire in Bandelier National Monument: Aquatic macroinvertebrate monitoring 2007–2019 (revised, December 2022). Natural Resource Report. NPS/SCPN/NRR—2023/2491. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/2296710
Bandelier National Monument is a landscape with an extensive fire history. During the last 50 years, Bandelier experienced three major wildfires that affected streams within the park (1977, 1996, 2011). These fires led to repeated hydrologic disturbance and substantial impacts on the aquatic communities within park streams. This report investigates changes in aquatic macroinvertebrate community structure and function in two streams (Capulin Creek and the Rito de los Frijoles) following the 2011 Las Conchas Fire and the series of historic floods that followed. The Southern Colorado Plateau Network (SCPN) has been collecting aquatic macroinvertebrate data from sites on Capulin Creek and the Rito de los Frijoles since 2007 and 2009, respectively. We use a combination of multivariate analyses and permutation procedures to describe change in the aquatic macroinvertebrate community. Trend analyses are used to investigate recovery among family and functional groups in post-fire years. Finally, we take the data collected from our monitoring program and apply them to the state of New Mexico’s Mountain Stream Index to describe ecological impairment occurring at our sites over time. Our results indicate that the effects of this fire and subsequent flooding on the aquatic community are ongoing. These disturbances resulted in the decline of aquatic macroinvertebrates across all taxonomic orders. Few taxa have been able to recolonize streams following the fire. Organisms with the ability to recolonize are disturbance-tolerant taxa with functional traits that promote resilience. The loss of several sensitive taxa has likely disrupted ecosystem function at all monitoring sites. Functional feeding groups responsible for processing primary production (shredder, scrapers) experienced the largest post-fire declines, and trend analyses indicate recovery of these functional groups, as well as many other taxa, has not occurred. Recovery of community structure and function, in addition to being slow, is primarily limited to the upstream monitoring site on the Rito de los Frijoles. Data also suggest the aquatic macroinvertebrate community at the lower Rito de los Frijoles monitoring site is likely undergoing additional perturbation not experienced at other monitoring sites.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Stumpf, Stacy
- Date of Issue
- 2023-01
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- DOI
- 10.36967/2296710
- Units
- BAND , NRSS , SCPN
- Keywords
- abundance, benthic macroinvertebrate, Capulin Creek, communities, diversity, fire, recovery, richness, Rito de los Frijoles, stream, trend
- Subjects
- Ecological Framework: Water | Water Quality | Aquatic Macroinvertebrates and Algae , Ecological Framework: Biological Integrity | Focal Species or Communities | Freshwater Invertebrates