Managing for Change in the Jemez Mountains Building Resilience in a Singular Mountain Range Solis David © Climate change is well underway in the A Million-Acre Storehouse of southwestern U.S. Warmer temperatures Biological Diversity and more erratic rainfall are already As the southern tip of affecting native plants, animals and the Rocky Mountains, the © Paul and Jill/Flickr Jemez Mountains provide Pueblo Indian people have made the habitats in ways we can see and measure. an outpost for northern Jemez their home for at least 900 years. species such as the ermine Any action we take now to build ecosystem resilience to and the bog birch. This volcanic mountain range’s isola- rapid climate change will help us protect our natural areas tion from other montane environments allowed unique and the clean water, clean air, and wildlife habitat they species such as the Jemez Mountains salamander and the provide in the decades to come. The Nature Conservancy Goat Peak pika to evolve. has joined with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest, the Wildlife Conservation Society, USDA Forest Service, People Are Part of the Jemez the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Western This landscape provides water, livelihoods and recreation Water Assessment, and the University of Washington to for thousands in surrounding communities. People have form the Southwest Climate Change Initiative (SWCCI), been part of the Jemez for centuries. This mountain range whose aim is to provide climate adaptation information and has the highest density of archaeological sites in the U.S. tools to conservation practitioners in vulnerable landscapes The people of Jemez and Santa Clara pueblos still make of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. their homes here. The Jemez Mountains: The Jemez Mountains Are Showing Stress A Remarkable Landscape At Risk From a Changing Climate In the last three and a half decades, this landscape has The Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico grew suffered a series of large destructive forest fires, a severe warmer, faster, in the 20th century than any other place in drought that killed nearly all mature piñon pines, and a the state. The Jemez is one of four vulnerable landscapes measurable reduction in the flows of important streams. selected by the SWCCI to develop and test ways to help The challenge to the conservation community is to natural areas cope with climate change. manage the Jemez Mountains to avoid the most adverse impacts of climate change. “Managers must recognize RElatIVE INcrEASE IN MOIstURE STREss 1970-2006 IN NEW MEXIco that changes are occurring and anticipate future changes. As Wayne Gretzky put it, we need to ‘skate to where the puck is going to be’.” CraIG ALLEN U.S. Geological Survey ThoUghts ON AdaptatION PlaNNING Todd Ringler, Los Alamos National Laboratory © Bob Parmenter © Bob Parmenter • This is a century-long exercise. Regularly monitoring stream and fish community health, and expanding prescribed fire are two practical climate adaptation strategies. • Think 10 by 10: Adaption plans with 10-year milestones, Creating Practical Climate ecological processes that shape the Jemez Mountains: fire revisited 10 times. and stream flow. These impacts include: • Manage toward the high-end Adaptation Strategies estimate of change: +5C, -25% • Increased frequency and severity of drought. In April 2009, the Conservancy and our partners brought precipitation, +episodic drought. • Reduced snow, more rain than snow, earlier peak stream together local scientists and managers to share information • Look for win-win scenarios, i.e. flows, and more frequent and intense floods. about the known and projected local impacts of climate climate adaption practices that • Longer fire seasons and increased fire frequency, size change – and to start developing practical strategies meet additional objectives. and severity. to reduce its adverse effects. Fifty land managers and • Our understanding of climate • Extreme post-fire erosion post due to decreased surface scientists representing 22 federal, state and tribal change will evolve, build flexible cover and infiltration. agencies participated. The focus on the workshop was adaptation plans. • Increased stream temperatures and post-fire ash deposition. on two critical ecological processes that shape the Jemez • Monitor, monitor, monitor... • Large-scale forest dieback and increased frequency of bark Mountains: fire and stream flow. beetle outbreaks. Participants reviewed two likely climate change scenarios • Intensified browsing by elk as vegetation is stressed by for the landscape given the current rate of greenhouse drought, and as less snow cover makes aspen and shrubs CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ADAPTATION STRATEGY gas emissions: available year round. Increased fire frequency, intensity Use forest thinning and controlled burns to restore forest structure and 1. Within 10-30 years, mean annual temperature is expected and size. natural surface fires. Increase use of natural ignitions. Prepare for the After agreeing upon likely impacts on forests, fire, streams to rise 2-4°C with increased drying. There will be sporadic inevitable large crownfires. and springs, workshop participants identified strategies extreme events in the first half of the century, with preci- to help these habitats remain viable in a changing pitation reduced overall but coming in the form of less Increased insect/disease outbreaks Apply forest thinning strategically to reduce moisture stress and tree dieback world. Examples of climate change impacts and strategies and tree mortality. and increase tree and shrub species and genetic diversity, thereby reducing frequent, but larger, storms. to address them are shown in the table (right). vulnerability to insect and disease outbreaks. 2. After 30 years, mean annual temperature will rise 2-6°C Under the less severe climate scenario, fire and thinning Reduced frequency of flooding, Reduce competition from non-native invasive plants, restore native vegetation, with increased drying and increased frequency of extreme remain critical restoration activities. But, given the current reduced groundwater recharge and and manage grazing by elk and livestock such that the groundwater table events, (for example, extremely deep droughts) occurring forest condition, the rate of restoration, and a lengthening dropping water tables resulting in remains high enough to support native streamside vegetation. by mid-century. fire season, more large crownfires are inevitable. Substantial degradation of streamside ecosystems. Managers and scientists also identified actual and potential Reduced snowpack and greater Apply forest thinning and controlled burning methods that maximize moisture variability in precipitation, reduced infiltration into the soil. Maximize snowpack retention while providing optimal effects of past and projected climate change on two critical Continued on back stream base flows. shade to minimize sublimation and evaporation losses. resources will be needed to prevent erosion and exotic Lessons from SWCCI weed invasion after these crownfires and natural tree Landscape Workshops reestablishment will be extremely slow. The more severe climate scenario will require new strategies entirely. This Our climate adaptation workshops at four landscapes in includes managing large expanses of the landscape as it the Southwest have yielded valuable lessons that can be transforms from forest to woodland or grassland. The applied to other important natural areas: remaining refugia for native fish will require active protection • We know enough about climate change to take local as water temperatures rise, and yearly streamflows become action: Though the pace of climate change is uncertain, more variable. we have enough information to act now to reduce the The good news to emerge from the workshop is that most likely adverse impacts. many of the restoration strategies already being planned • Conservation organizations are already doing a lot to or implemented in the Jemez Mountains can be used to restore and maintain ecosystems—but climate change prepare for climate change. But we don’t have all the means we must do more and do it smarter. answers. What we do know is that we must accelerate • “Climate-smart conservation” means adjusting and expand work that improves the health of forests and the pace, scope and sequencing of management streams in order to make them more resilient to rising activities, and coordinating our work regionally, temperatures and deeper droughts – and we have enough across multiple ownerships. information to act now. • Some management objectives may become unattainable; we must be agile and adjust our sights, perhaps aiming Taking Action to Build Resilience to conserve processes (such as stream flow) and functions (such as water supply) as much as species and habitats. The Conservancy and our land management partners are • More than ever, conservation success will require that following up on the adaptation workshop by engaging in monitoring be tightly integrated into planning several projects that will help species and habitats of the and management as landscapes are transformed by Jemez Mountains cope with climate change. climate change. • The Southwest Jemez Restoration Strategy will help restore • Workshops, while productive, represent only the 210,000 acres of forest, woodland and streams in beginning of a long-term process for understanding the Santa Fe National Forest and the Valles Caldera and responding to the challenge of climate