Treesearch

The City of Albuquerque has funded the Constructed Wetland Pilot Project (CWPP) since 1995 at the City's Southside Water Reclamation Plant (SWRP). Results from CWPP and other wetland treatment projects indicate that appropriately designed surface-flow wetlands could increase the cost-efficiencies of wastewater treatment, as well as help the City meet present and future discharge limits for nitrate, ammonia, organic nitrogen, various metals, biological oxygen demand, and total suspended solids, among other constituents. Results from CWPP also support the option to construct a 5-acre or...

Many wetland creation and restoration projects have successfully restored or created appropriate hydrologic conditions for the support of wetland ecosystems but have not been as successful in establishing a diverse biota of native wetland vegetation. Recent work in the propagation and transplanting of native wetland plant seedlings offers promise for increasing biodiversity while reducing the potential for invasive species to create monotypic stands of low habitat value.

Shrubs and trees have invaded semiarid grasslands throughout much of the Southwestern United States. This invasion not only has decreased grass cover, but also increased runoff and erosion. In fact, sediment from rangelands constitutes the single largest source of nonpoint stream pollutants within the state of New Mexico. Fire, which was a natural factor that shaped and maintained the grasslands, is a management tool that may aid in restoring and maintaining grass cover. However, fire also poses the risk of increasing erosion and further degradation because protection afforded by vegetation...

These proceedings are an outcome of a symposium and workshop of the same title held June 2-5, 1998, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hosted by the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Bosque Improvement Group, in collaboration with partners from a variety of public and private sectors, the symposium was designed to report on current research, development, and educational activities in the Middle Rio Grande Basin. Participants shared information and developed ideas for sustaining and conserving Middle Rio Grande Basin ecosystems, especially...

Environmental problems are social issues, embedded in economic and political contexts at the local, regional, national, and global levels. Placing environmental issues on the scale from local to global clarifies conflicts between the level at which problems originate and the level at which they must be addressed. Local issues today often originate in sources distant in time and space, increasing the difficulty of discerning and addressing them. Conflicts in environmental management can be approached by understanding their broader context and the appropriate level at which to manage them.

The successful restoration of riparian ecosystems to sustainable conditions requires that we understand the dynamic historical relationships between humans and the environment. Research is needed that measures the continuing effects of past human activities on contemporary ecosystem structure and function. An interdisciplinary approach is needed that incorporates expertise from archaeology, paleoecology, plant ecology, and geology. In this paper, I discuss how prehistoric peoples have altered ecological processes and changed the vegetation and overall physiography of northern New Mexico’s...

The acequia irrigation systems of northcentral New Mexico and southern Colorado are the oldest, continuously functioning water management institutions in the United States. For a period of four hundred years, 1598-1998, the acequias have sustained the agropastoral economies of the region while protecting the watershed resources on which downstream water stakeholders depend. The acequia customs of sharing and system of self-government provide a framework for sustainable resource use into the twenty-first century in a time of changing and often conflictive values. Continuance of these...

One of today's critical questions for ranchers is how to gain economic benefits from natural resources without damaging biodiversity. Ranchers today face declining beef prices, escalating resource prices, and taking on costs once covered outside the industry. Ranchers join environmentalists and agency personnel in the struggle to meet evolving needs of the American people.

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) listed the southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii exigua) as federally endangered in 1995, new incentives, controversies and energy were generated to conserve and restore southwestern riparian ecosystems. Close attention has been focused on river and stream conservation in the Southwest since at least 1977, when the U.S. Forest Service and other partners hosted a symposium entitled "Importance, Preservation and Management of Riparian Habitat" in Arizona (Johnson and Jones 1977). Although the symposium and other volumes (e.g., Rea...

Twenty-two stands of advance lodgepole pine released with overstory removal were sampled to determine height growth response. Tree and site characteristics correlated with release response were identified, and a mathematical model was developed to predict height growth in years 6 through 10 after release as a function of residual overstory basal area, height at release, percent rock cover, five-year cumulative growth prior to release, logging damage, stand elevation, and habitat type. Lodgepole pine responded to release with increased height growth in 97% of the trees sampled. Growth was...