Posts tagged mountain
Work begins on a county master plan for mountain trails network
Apr 4th
Public hearings to begin April 18
Boulder County, Colo. – Local, state, and federal land-management agencies, to include the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Colorado Parks & Wildlife, Boulder County, City of Boulder, and City of Longmont are partnering to develop a long‐term, multi‐agency master plan for a network of access points and travel corridors for non‐motorized users in the foothills and mountains of Boulder County.
What: Regional Mountain Trails Master Planning
When: Meetings will be held from mid-April to mid-May, the first meeting will be held on April 18, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Where: Eleven locations throughout the county, the first meeting will be held at the Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl Street, 3rd floor
The goal of the Regional Mountain Trails Master Plan is to connect communities and recreation areas in the mountains and foothills to regional trails in the plains. The plan will emphasize linking existing trails and trail systems.
“We are excited to collaborate with the community and our fellow land managers on this plan for trails that will direct our work as individual organizations toward a common goal for trails over the coming years,” said Justin Atherton-Wood, Resource Planner for Boulder County Parks and Open Space. “This plan will be drafted in a manner that is sensitive to the resources and values unique to this part of the region, and one that contributes to a more sustainable future for Boulder County.”
To help define the many unique opportunities and challenges of this effort, the partners are initiating a period of public outreach this spring to gather comments on the community’s needs, expectations, and concerns with the project. It is anticipated that this initial phase will result in a set of principles and community values that will guide the remainder of this year-long planning process.
For more information about the project and upcoming meeting dates and locations visit the project website:www.RegionalMountainTrails.com. Or contact Garry Sanfaçon, Public Outreach Coordinator, at 720-564-2642 or gsanfacon@bouldercounty.org.
by –BoulderCounty.org–
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CU researchers: Beetle killed trees are better than logging for watersheds
Jan 14th
buffers watersheds from nitrate pollution
A research team involving several scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder has found an unexpected silver lining in the devastating pine beetle outbreaks ravaging the West: Such events do not harm water quality in adjacent streams as scientists had previously believed.
According to CU-Boulder team member Professor William Lewis, the new study shows that smaller trees and other vegetation that survive pine beetle invasions along waterways increase their uptake of nitrate, a common disturbance-related pollutant. While logging or damaging storms can drive stream nitrate concentrations up by 400 percent for multiple years, the team found no significant increase in the nitrate concentrations following extensive pine beetle tree mortality in a number of Colorado study areas.
“We found that the beetles do not disturb watersheds in the same way as logging and severe storms,” said Lewis, interim director of CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “They leave behind smaller trees and other understory vegetation, which compensate for the loss of larger pine trees by taking up additional nitrate from the system. Beetle-kill conditions are a good benchmark for the protection of sub-canopy vegetation to preserve water quality during forest management activities.”
A paper on the subject was published in the Jan. 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies have established harvesting practices that greatly mitigate damage to forests caused by logging, and they deserve credit for that,” said Lewis. “But this study shows just how important the survival of smaller trees and understory vegetation can be to stream water quality.”
In waterways adjacent to healthy pine forests, concentrations of nitrate is generally far lower than in rivers on the plains in the West like the South Platte, said Lewis. Nitrate pollution is caused by agricultural runoff from populated areas and by permitted discharges of treated effluent from water treatment facilities.
“In Colorado, many watersheds have lost 80 to 90 percent of their tree canopy as a result of the beetle epidemic,” said Lewis, also a faculty member in CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department. “We began to wonder whether the loss of the trees was reducing water quality in the streams. We knew that forestry and water managers were expecting big changes in water quality as a result of the pine beetle outbreak, so we decided to pool our university and federal agency resources in order to come up with an answer.”
Study co-author and CU-Boulder Research Associate James McCutchan of CIRES said the new results should help forest managers develop more effective ways to harvest timber while having the smallest effect possible on downstream ecosystems. “This study shows that at least in some areas, it is possible to remove a large part of the tree biomass from a watershed with a very minimal effect on the stream ecosystem,” he said.
Understory vegetation left intact after beetle outbreaks gains an ecological advantage in terms of survival and growth, since small trees no longer have to compete with large trees and have more access to light, water and nutrients, said McCutchan. Research by study co-author and former CU undergraduate Rachel Ertz showed concentrations of nitrate in the needles of small pines that survived beetle infestations were higher than those in healthy trees outside beetle-killed areas, another indication of how understory vegetation compensates for environmental conditions in beetle kill areas.
The researchers used computer modeling to show that in western forests, such a “compensatory response” provides potent water quality protection against the adverse effects of nitrates only if roughly half of the vegetation survives “overstory” mortality from beetle kill events, which is what occurs normally in such areas, said Lewis.
Other study co-authors included Leigh Cooper, Thomas Detmer and Thomas Veblen from CU-Boulder, John Stednick from Colorado State University, Charles Rhoades from the U.S. Forest Service, Jennifer Briggs and David Clow from the U.S. Geological Survey and Gene Likens of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.
The severe pine beetle epidemic in Colorado and Wyoming forests is part of an unprecedented beetle outbreak that ranges from Mexico to Canada. A November 2012 study by CU-Boulder doctoral student Teresa Chapman showed the 2001-02 drought greatly accelerated the development of the mountain pine beetle epidemic.
The researchers measured stream nitrate concentrations at more than 100 sites in western Colorado containing lodgepole pines with a range of beetle-induced tree damage. The study area included measurements from the Fraser Experimental Forest near Granby, Colo., a 23,000-acre study area established by the USFS in 1937.
The new study was funded by the USFS, the USGS, the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service. CIRES is a joint research institute between CU-Boulder and NOAA.
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Boulder County Government Holiday Hours
Dec 21st
Boulder County, Colo. – All county administrative offices will be closed according to the following schedule:
- Monday, Dec. 24 at noon
- Tuesday, Dec. 25 ALL DAY
- Monday, Dec. 31 at noon
- Tuesday, Jan. 1 ALL DAY
County services that will not be available during the holiday closures include County Courts, Motor Vehicle, Property & Records, Public Health & Human Services, and all Administrative functions.
Emergency response and law enforcement functions, along with designated county services such as the jail and on-call road maintenance, will continue to work a regular schedule. The jail, however, does not permit public visitations on holidays, including the full four days listed above.
County open space properties are open to the public from sunrise to sunset daily, including holidays. Visit:www.BoulderCountyOpenSpace.org for a list of properties.
For recycling services and mountain trash transfer station hours, visit: www.BoulderCountyRecycles.net.
Happy Holidays from Boulder County!
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