Treesearch

The forest owl conservation assessments emphasize the relationship between flammulated, boreal, and great gray owls and the forests in which they occur. The habitat requirements of the owls and their principal prey bear strongly on the conservation status of the owls. Establishing the characteristics of the owl/habitat relationship is not a trivial or straightforward process. This discussion provides background on the study of habitat associations that will place the literature on owl habitat in theoretical perspective.

This report describes the soils of the Lost Lake, West Glacier Lake, and East Glacier Lake watersheds of GLEES and presents the methods used in conducting both the field and laboratory work. In addition, general statements about the nature of the mapping units used in making the soil maps are provided.

GLEES is contained within the Snowy Range Observatory. This Observatory consists of many weather stations, precipitation monitors, and stream gages scattered throughout the Snowy Range. These sites have been operated by the Wyoming Water Research Center (WWRC) since 1968. Data from the sites are available from the WWRC and were last summarized by Wesche (1982).

Generally, the annual snowpack at GLEES is established in November and lasts into July. Figure 10.1 is the 1987-91 recession curve of the snow-covered area fraction versus degree days. About 20% of the area consists of rocks, which are usually blown clear of snow, and trees. The trees may hide some of the snow in the aerial photographs that were used to develop the curve. The remnant area fraction of snow cover represents the permanent snowfield on the cliff face overlooking the lakes.

Wilderness ecosystems in the United States are federally mandated and set aside by the Wilderness Act. They are managed to minimize human impact using methods that leave these systems, to the extent possible, in their natural state uninfluenced by manipulation or disruption by humans. Management often involves controlling or minimizing visual impact by enforcing strict use rules such as no roads, motorized or mechanized equipment, structures, or harvesting. In addition to human-caused impacts, natural and anthropogenic environmental stresses affect the rates and magnitudes of natural...

This landscape habitat description is based on a ground reconnaissance of the Lost Lake, West Glacier Lake, and East Glacier Lake portions of GLEES conducted during 10 days in July-September 1986 and on subsequent photo interpretation of 1:6000 scale color-infrared photographs. A ground check was conducted in July-August 1987. The classification used is a physiognomic classification of vegetation/landscape types in the study area. As such, it is based on the structural, rather than floristic, characteristics of the vegetation. Preliminary information on the floristic composition of the...

The Medicine Bow Mountains have a core of Precambrian rocks. They contain the boundary, the Cheyenne Belt, between the Wyoming Province to the NW and the accreted Proterozoic continental crust to the SE (Karlstrom and Houston 1984). The Wyoming Province consists of Archean rocks that are locally intruded and (or) overlain by rocks of Proterozoic age, including the lithologies present in the West Glacier Lake drainage basin.

Three Parshall flumes were installed within East and West Glacier Lakes watersheds during the summer of 1987. Each Parshall flume was prefabricated fiberglass construction fitted with a hypolon liner to bring as much groundwater flow as possible to the surface so that it could be measured by passing the water through the flume. The liner was buried as deep as was practical in front of the flume and to the sides of the flume for as reasonable a distance as was possible to intercept groundwater moving through the area. Some difficulty was encountered in burying the liner at all locations...

Within the GLEES boundary there are three alpine lakes and several streams and ponds. The selection of GLEES as a research site for investigating of the effects of chemical and physical climate change was in part based on the accessibility of these low alkalinity "sensitive" aquatic ecosystems. This chapter provides a brief description of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the GLEES aquatic ecosystems.

The initial habitat classification as described in Chapter 2 was conducted in 1986 and 1987 based upon field identification of plant species. A field collection of vascular plant species was made during the 1988, 1989, and 1990 summer seasons. The plant species collected were identified and verified in cooperation with the Rocky Mountain Herbarium at the University of Wyoming. Voucher specimens are archived at the Herbarium. A complete set of voucher specimens (one or more for every terrestrial taxon) is also located at the Rocky Mountain Station's Centennial laboratory for use during the...