Valles Caldera National PreservePage 18 sur 36
Valles Caldera's Natural Resources: A Seven-Resource Health Check
Wetlands restored in Valles Caldera National Preserve are holding water longer, and songbird numbers there are in good condition. Those are among the results of a Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA), a National Park Service study that reviews what is known about chosen resources in a park, how they are changing, and what data are missing. Albright and colleagues published this one in 2022.
Valles Caldera National Preserve (NPS photo).
The preserve
Valles Caldera became a unit of the national park system in 2014. It lies in the Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico, about 77 miles northwest of Albuquerque and 30 miles west of Los Alamos. The 88,900-acre preserve borders the Santa Fe National Forest, the Pueblo of Santa Clara and Bandelier National Monument. Its elevations start at 8,000 feet, so all of it is a high-elevation ecosystem of wetlands and wet meadows, montane grasslands, woodlands and coniferous forests, in contrast to the lower, drier parts of New Mexico. A primary road leads to the visitor center and the historic Cabin District, headquarters for sheep and cattle ranching from the 1860s; the area also preserves the homeland of ancestral native peoples. The preserve has the second largest elk population in New Mexico.
The assessment examined seven resources. Four got a condition assessment, a thorough evaluation of current condition, and three a gap analysis, which shows what is and is not known and suggests what to collect, depending on available data. Each assessment also looked at the drivers and stressors behind change, such as climate change, disease, invasive species, human disturbance and air pollution.
What was found
| Resource | Finding |
|---|---|
| Landscape connectivity | The more connected a landscape, the easier it is for organisms to move. Connectivity is good for upper montane habitats, good/fair for lower montane and riparian/valley bottom, and fair/poor for shrubland and grassland, making the average of five ecosystems fair/poor. The preserve sits in a highly connected landscape, but connectivity falls away from its boundary, especially to the east |
| Scenic views | Views at seven locations were rated good. Detractions include fencing, roads, downed and unhealthy trees and powerlines. More sites are needed to judge the whole preserve |
| Redondo Peak species diversity | In the first comprehensive inventory of plants and animals in the peak's high-elevation communities, 98 of 101 plant species recorded were native. Thousands of moths of 60 species were recorded, four of them new to the preserve, and at least 75 species of spiders. The assessment recommended monitoring chosen species, such as the American pika, as a sign of the peak's health |
| Wetlands | They make up about 7-8% of the preserve. Nearly 150 years of livestock grazing, road building and logging degraded them. Restoration began in 2011 in about ten areas, and since then flow duration has increased significantly and wetland plant cover has grown, a good condition with an improving trend, though drought and climate change make short-term monitoring hard |
| New Mexico meadow jumping mouse habitat | Listed as endangered in 2014; one of 22 known populations in New Mexico is in the preserve. The mouse was confirmed there in 2018 after about four decades without records. Four creek-side habitat patches met the minimum size the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers able to support resilient populations |
| Jemez Mountains salamander | Endangered, and lives most of the year underground, surfacing usually after late-summer rains when air temperatures average 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Many areas where it once occurred are now empty, others hold fewer animals, and most places where it had been seen burned in severe wildfires in 2011 and 2013 |
| Songbirds | In good condition: all or nearly all potential species in five habitat types are present, trends in species of concern look stable and key indicator species are present. The checklist now holds 196 bird species, 117 of them known or suspected to breed there |
American pika live in felsenmeer rock fields on Redondo Peak (NPS photo by Sally King).
Panorama view of one of the seven locations evaluated at Valles Caldera National Preserve, rated very good (NPS photo).
A rock structure used to restore stream habitat (NPS photo by Scott Compton).
Putting the findings to use
Knowing a resource's condition is only the first step, so a manager-scientist discussion linked findings to action. What the team learned:
- Several stressors affect each resource and make protection hard.
- Warming temperatures and more frequent and intense droughts affect the water or habitat of every resource studied.
- Managers' greatest needs include on-the-ground actions, education and interpretation, and new partnerships. For example, keeping trespass cattle out and working with angler groups could further improve riparian habitat for the meadow jumping mouse.
- Managers want new partnerships for landscape-level problems such as wildfire and wildlife corridors, while keeping existing ones such as the Southwest Jemez Mountains Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.
- They also want more citizen science, completion of the identification of invertebrates collected at Redondo Peak, and a stronger Tribal partnership to understand and monitor traditional-use plants.
The assessment points to birds as one reason to care: North America has an estimated decline of almost three billion birds since the 1970s.
Sources
- National Park Service, "Condition of Valles Caldera's Natural Resources and Scenic Views: 2022 Assessment" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/nrca_vall_2021.htm), summarizing J. Albright and others, 2022, Natural resource conditions at Valles Caldera National Preserve: Findings & management considerations for selected resources, Natural Resource Report NPS/VALL/NRR-2022/2409; elevation figures that disagree on the page are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.