Treesearch

Pikes Peak Highway is a partially paved road between Cascade, CO and the summit of Pikes Peak (4300 meters). Significant gully erosion is occurring on the hillslopes due to the concentration of surface runoff along the road surface and adjacent drainage ditches. As a result, large quantities of sediment are transported to the surrounding valley stream networks causing significant damage to riparian, wetland, and aquatic environments. This study addresses the rates of gully erosion along the Pikes Peak Highway.

Water quality is a measurement of the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water against certain standards that can be ecological or specifically related to human needs. The production of bioenergy feedstocks and their conversion to solid, liquid and gaseous biofuels for heating, power and transport can drastically affect water quality in aquatic ecosystems, with impacts on biodiversity and human health. Depending on how a bioenergy system is located and managed, it can lead to deterioration or improvements in water quality. This chapter focuses on the impacts of bioenergy...

We report the first observations of formaldehyde (HCHO) flux measured via eddy covariance, as well as HCHO concentrations and gradients, as observed by the Madison Fiber Laser-Induced Fluorescence Instrument during the BEACHON-ROCS 2010 campaign in a rural, Ponderosa Pine forest northwest of Colorado Springs, CO. A median noon upward flux of ~80 μg m-2 h-1 (~24 pptv m s-1) was observed with a noon range of 37 to 131 μg m-2 h-1. Enclosure experiments were performed to determine the HCHO branch (3.5 μg m-2 h-1) and soil (7.3 μg m-2 h-1) direct emission rates in the canopy. A zero-dimensional...

Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) populations in the southern Rocky Mountains are severely threatened by the combined impacts of mountain pine beetles and white pine blister rust. Limber pineʼs critical role in these high elevation ecosystems heightens the importance of mitigating these impacts. To develop forest-scale planting methods, six limber pine seedling planting trial sites were installed extending from the Medicine Bow National Forest in southern Wyoming to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in southern Colorado. Seedlings came from the Colorado State Forest Service...

Pine forest in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, USA, are experiencing the most severe mountain pine beetle epidemic in recorded history, and possible degradation of drinking-water quality is a major concern. The objective of this study was to investigate possible changes in soil and water chemistry in Grand County, Colorado in response to the epidemic, and to identify major controlling influences on stream-water nutrients and C in areas affected by the mountain pine beetle. Soil moisture and soil N increased in soils beneath trees killed by the mountain pine beetle, reflecting...

The wolverine is one of the least studied carnivores in North America, particularly in the contiguous United States where it occurs at the southern extent of its range. This project documented the distribution of wolverines in the eastern portion of Yellowstone National Park and adjoining areas of national forest and their population characteristics, habitat requirements, and movements.

Although oaks (Quercus spp.) have historically dominated much of the forest land in eastern North America, a great deal of fragmentary and sometimes anecdotal evidence suggests that they have been yielding dominance in recent decades to other, typically more shade-tolerant species. Using FIA data, our work formally quantifies the change in oak abundance in the eastern U.S. during the period of 1980-2008. The results indicate that most areas in the eastern U.S. experienced some decline in oak abundance, but the decrease was not universal either geographically or among species. Declines were...

Micrometeorological flux towers provide spatially integrated estimates of net ecosystem production (NEP) of carbon over areas ranging from several hectares to several square kilometers, but they do so at the expense of spatially explicit information within the footprint of the tower. This finer-scale information is crucial for understanding how physical and biological factors interact and give rise to tower-measured fluxes in complex landscapes. We present a simple approach for quantifying and evaluating the spatial heterogeneity of cumulative growing season NEP for complex landscapes. Our...

Variability in soil respiration at various spatial and temporal scales has been the focus of much research over the last decade aimed to improve our understanding and parameterization of physical and environmental controls on this flux. However, few studies have assessed the control of landscape position and groundwater table dynamics on the spatiotemporal variability of soil respiration. We investigated growing season soil respiration in a ~393 ha subalpine watershed in Montana across eight riparian-hillslope transitions that differed in slope, upslope accumulated area (UAA), aspect, and...

Growing season soil CO2 efflux is known to vary laterally by as much as seven fold within small subalpine watersheds (