Way Out West; 104; Mesic Forests

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, much good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning with you, and all As was the first news. Thank you, miss the question right now. Thank you, miss the question right now. I mentioned in the south. High, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, the University of New Mexico Distance Education Center, the USDA Forest Service

Southwestern Region. Hello and welcome to this edition of Way Out West, the Electronic Bridge. I'm your host, Tim Adelot, and in this program we're going to explore Mesic Forests in the Western United States and joining us for these explorations is one of our student demonstrators, Daniel Trujillo. What's a Mesic Forest? Well, you remember you did some studies in the Pondrosa Pine Forest and those were Xeric Forests and those were dry forests, well Mesic is just the opposite, Mesic is a moist forest.

Yeah, it's not real wet, that's even like tropical rainforests, but it'd be classified as a moist forest and the reason they're such a difference or the reason we designate the difference is that the nutrient cycling occurs in different ways in the spruce fur and the mixed conifer forests and even the sub-alpine forests that are called Mesic Forests, the nutrient cycling happens because of decay, because of the high amount of moisture. In a Xeric Forest, that nutrient cycling has to occur through cool fires that come through and then release the nutrients in ash. You ready to get going? Yeah. Let's get started. Well, this looks like a pretty good spot, we don't want you to do a sample here. Okay, well, the first thing we have to do is get a snow melt or a snow pack measurement. You're all sweaty, buddy.

It's a little bit of hard work, isn't it? Yep. And so you take your meter stick and either using the meter side or the inch side, just keep poking it down in there until you reach the bottom. And so we've got 50 centimeters of snow pack here, which I think we can squat down here. At 50 centimeters of snow pack, it's going to provide, it's going to feed water into the groundwater system and provide water for these Mesic Forests all through the spring until the late summer monsoons come. Now let's join Reggie Fletcher, the regional ecologist for the USDA Forest Service Southwestern Region. At the scene of the dog and catfire in the Santa Fe National Forest, a fire that occurred about 25 years ago. But this is what we call a standard placement fire, the fire that came through in 1971

and June of 1971, instead of being on the ground, was mostly in the trees in the crown fire. Virtually, all of the ecosystems that we have in the Southwest are adapted to fire of one intensity or another. This fire burned much more intense than what would be normal for this ecosystem. The bare patches that you see behind us burn to hot enough to kill virtually all of the trees. We have a few spots where we have trees that survived. The remarkable story on this fire is that we've recovered so much aspen so quickly, just 25 years, from very little that was left. Forest had to start over, and the soils here are less productive than normal. This is off of granite, pre-cambrian granite, and less productive than usual. And when the fire burned hot, the organics washed off, then the residual that was left, it's hard to get trees established.

It's hard to get grass established. What you see behind this, right behind this, and the light green on the hillsides are aspen. Aspen comes in normally to this extent after a fire. Aspen, some people say, is the mother of forests. Normally when you have a standard placement type fire at this elevation, and you have a rim on the aspen, the aspen come back first, and then provide a nurse crop, a shade area for the coniferous to come in. And then you go through what we call a normal succession of forests. So where would those aspen have come from? I noticed in what we have left, and in the places where the fire didn't burn, it looks like it's just a pretty dense stand of pine and conifer, or mixed coniferous forest, where are the aspen in those areas? Another unusual aspect of this particular fire is that there was such a small amount of aspen when it burned.

It had been a long time since its last fire that was hot enough to have any aspen. At this elevation, the forest normally burned so that you have small pockets that are stand replacement. Burn hot enough to kill all the trees. The aspen that are standing will die, but their roots provide what we call suckers, a large number of stems that come up and have a dense covering of the forest. When this forest burned, there were very few aspen. It's remarkable how it spread in 25 years. The normal process is for the aspen to serve as a nurse crop for the coniferous, the ever greens to come in. Then as the ever greens grow, they overtop the aspen, and the aspen are gradually crowded out. Then they're reborn, reinvigorated, after the next fire. When the fire comes through, normally these fires in this community are smaller. This fire was unusual in that it covered such a large area, but the aspen is still doing

what it's expected. What role does do these remnant or the areas that survive the fire? What role do they play in the regeneration of the forest? That's a good question, because it points out the need to look at these forests through time. There's a very different purpose to these small isolated clumps right after the fire today and a hundred years from now. And after the fire, even today, they serve as important seed sources so that we can get a variety of trees spread out, mainly by birds, into the areas where there are no trees. To add to the diversity of the pines and to the diversity of the aspen both. A hundred years from now, there'll be important components of what we call an old growth forest. What role will they play as an old growth forest with the younger trees and the different trees around them? They'll provide nesting cavities for birds. Within when the trees fall down, they'll provide an element of biological diversity that

is tied to a large, woody material on the ground. So yeah, provide some habitat for vertebrates and invertebrates on the forest floor then. That's right. They're an important part of nutrient cycling. We're going to look at a catastrophic fire that occurred here in New Mexico. It's the dome fire that burned up near Los Alamos and it was what this was 25 years ago, a standard placement fire. This is a much different place than it was three months ago. Where did all this green come from? I mean, we think of forest fires as, you know, it's devastated and you know, that's the end of it. This is beautiful, the amount of growth that's underneath here. Much of the vegetation that you see was surviving in the roots and surviving in seed. And much of it that you see is also what was seeded as part of the emergency rehabilitation

project. A lot of the shiny, the shiniest material here, the newest green is the seeded species. All of the shrubs and forbs that you see came in from the existing material. Now, this is incredible. The way this area looked three months ago and compared to how it looks now to me is just absolutely amazing. Rain that we have this summer is what's brought all of this on. Remember the winter and the spring was so dry that that was the reason we had a fire of this magnitude, this intensity. And it is a stark contrast in just 90 days. If you'll remember when we were here 90 days ago, the rock that's right behind us. Yeah, this big boulder sticking out of the side. It had roots still burning down below the surface and it was hot enough you couldn't

put your hand on the soil at the base of the rock. There is a lot of what we call large woody debris on the ground and it's critical to the functioning of this ecosystem. It forms soil dams behind it, performs seed bed and the recovery of this area is largely due to the amount of wood that we have on the ground. And then with this fire, we'll have the same thing happening in a few years. About four years from now, we should expect the trees to start falling. And it will again add nutrients to the soil, add organics to the soil, and it'll start functioning all over again. Okay, well let's go. Got snow all over my pack, Goober, this looks like a good spot. All right, let's take it and give it a shot, all right, I want to get my bag off here.

All right, the bag, you got the shovel, all right, all right, all right, this looks pretty dry too. All right, you want to make sure you're getting this, get a large quantity, make sure you get all the new chains and stuff that's in there. While Daniel collects this soil sample, let's have Brandon Friday from Chama Middle School show us one method of analyzing soil samples. Okay, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to find out the substances that are in our soil and the consistency. We have three major types of soil in their clay, sand and silk. There's also soil that is going to in between like mixtures, like silti clay loam, sandy clay loam.

The way I'm going to find out the percentage of these things in the soil is way out 100 grams. And first of all, I have to measure my filter and it's 1.5 grams. So if I have this on 1.5, then I know that I'm going to have to subtract 1.5 from my soil. Okay, and there's all 100 grams. So now, I'm going to have to open the top container of my sieve and it has screens in there so the smaller particles will fall down to the lower containers. Now I'm going to put the lid on and after shake it so the smaller particles will go down to the bottom. That way I can see the amount of soil in the different containers and come up with the

percentage. And I think it's done. So I take off the top container and I remember that the filter is 1.5 grams. So now I'll weigh how much was in the top container. And I have about 6 and 3, 4 grams. You don't have to get that specific. You can just kind of round it off. It could be 6 and a half or 7. So we'll make that 7 percent and that is 7 percent pebbles and you know, soil. And then I take container number 2. And here it says I have about 35 grams but I have to subtract 1.5 for the filter. So I have about 33.5 grams of medium sand.

So that would be 33.5 percent of medium sand in our soil. Now this container is fine sand. It's regular. It's pretty small particles. This one is about 18.5. But I have to subtract the filter again so it's about 17. That's 17 percent of fine sand. Now I have to measure the next container in the sieve. This one is about 13.5. So it's about 11, no, 12 grams of the fourth container. And now my last one, this is the finest soil particles you can have, clay.

And we have about 26.5 of this and you have to take that down to 25 for the filter. So we have 25 percent of clay. Now you have a chart here and you need to roll it and the way you do it is you find out the percentage like we had about 20 percent so all together so you have to draw on this one where see the line which is percent clay. You have to kind of draw a line parallel from that coming down from 11 percent on the percent salt side. It should look like this, this percent clay and coming down from the percent salt

side on 11 percent. And then you do the same on the percent clay side and since we had about 25 percent clay you have to draw another line parallel to the percent salt side coming straight down like that. It should make an X right there and if you want to circle that point you'll find out what kind of soil you have in the sandy loam area. That's all. So you've got done with that? Okay. And then let's cover the whole. Now let's take a look at some of the animals that make their homes in these mezzanic forests and join researchers who are studying the black bear.

Sessley Castello from the Hornocker Wildlife Institute has been studying black bears in northern New Mexico for four years as part of an eight-year study. Here she's joined by New Mexico Game and Fish Conservation Officer Don Jones as they relocate a radio calligraphy in her winter dress. They quietly sneak up to see if the mother bear and her yearling female cub are still hypernie. Right now she's got her head facing us.

What they do that is very hard to drug them because they'll just knock. Knock it out of the way. We decided before we have habitat. What type of habitat you're in, the slope, the aspect, what sort of den they have, whether it's excavated or whether it's a natural cavity, whether they have bedding in the den, just a different stuff like that. We usually draw a picture of the den. While Sessley notes the denigator, Don prepares tranquilizers for the mother and the yearling female cub. Don tranquilizes the adult female and after the yearling is also tranquilized, both are out of the den. They have a technique now where they can do genetics work on hair.

We take a hair sample for each bear. We have to lubricate their eyes because the drug inhibits their tearing, taking her respiration re. We try to monitor the whole time that we're handling them. We'll never seem to get it all. Now Sessley puts in the identifying ear tag. And Don fits this yearling for her first radio collar. On another trip, Sessley crawls out of a den after the mother has been tranquilized with

one of two newborn cubs. Six months later, we track this female with her two cubs. She sees us, she sends the cubs up a large fir tree for safety. But when the mother realizes that we are not a threat and we step back from the camera, she calls the cubs down. And they all go on their way.

Well, Danny, I think that takes care of it for today. Enough. Sloshing around in the snow. I want to thank Daniel Trujillo and Brandon Friday, our two student presenters for helping us out today. I'd also like to thank Reggie Fletcher from the USDA Forest Service, Southwestern Region, for talking to us about stand replacement fires, and Sessley Castello of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute, and Don Jones at the New Mexico Game and Fish Department for showing us their black bear research

and helping with our studies in spruce fur and mixed conifer, mesic forests. Remember what a mesic forest is? What is it? A lot of moisture. A lot of moisture. Good. I'd like to thank you for joining us on this study of mesic forests in the west. I'm Tim Adelot, and this has been Way Out West, the electronic bridge. Today's program has been brought to you by... The Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Pre-College Science Initiatives, which support scientific institutions

in promoting young people's interest in science. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, providing natural history education to the citizens of New Mexico since 1985. The University of New Mexico Distance Education Center, and the USDA Forest Service Southwestern Region. Additional funding has been provided by the Northern New Mexico Network for rural education, New Mexico Mesa, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Region. Program outfitters are Recreational Equipment Incorporated, purveyors of Quality Outdoor Gear and Clothing since 1938. Thank you for joining us on this program.

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