New Mexico Highlights

• Fire and Drought: The severity of recent wildfires increased public awareness and concern about fuel build-up in western U.S. forests and human hazards in fire-prone communities. Scientists with the USGS Fort Collins Science Center (Colorado) have undertaken significant efforts to better understand fire and help land managers. In the Jemez Mountains, scientists are investigating historic patterns of fire occurrence, drought, and vegetation change to help land managers understand natural fire regimes and restore forests to less hazardous and more sustainable ecological conditions. In Los Alamos, USGS scientists are engaging wildfire-affected communities in fire education, recovery, and rehabilitation. Through the Volunteer Task Force, a multi-agency-sponsored community coalition based in Los Alamos, they are using their experience and expertise to help other fire-affected communities in the West do the same.

• Forecasting Invasions: Scientists from NASA, Colorado State University Natural Resource Ecology Lab, and the USGS Fort Collins Science Center have combined expertise to develop the Invasive Species Forecasting System (ISFS), a new Web-based tool to combat invasive plant species across the U.S. The ISFS links data on occurrence, field information on species abundance and spread, and NASA satellite data to analyze past and present distributions of non-native plants and predict their future distribution and abundance, based on ecological factors. Land and resource managers can use the ISFS to generate color-coded mapsthat will help them limit the spread of existing invaders and prevent new invasions. The model has successfully been tested in New Mexico using the invasive plant tamarisk (saltcedar), found in riparian areas throughout the West.

• Tamarisk, or saltcedar, is an exotic plant species that has invaded riparian areas throughout the West. Multi-agency efforts toward controlling and removing tamarisk are ongoing and more are proposed. USGS scientists from the Fort Collins Science Center and Central Regional Office (Denver) are working on several levels to assist federal and state land and water management agencies in New Mexico by providing sound science for effective decision-making. Tamarisk projects include leading cooperation among many involved agencies, tribes, and private groups; developing predictive models to estimate vegetation changes and their effects on water supply in response to different flow regimes; and researching tamarisk ecology and the effectiveness of different management, control, and removal processes.

• Get your biology here: Scientists at the USGS Fort Collins Science Center are developing the Southwest Information Node (SWIN) of the National Biological Information Infrastructure to provide access to hundreds of biological databases and a suite of information tools tailored to address the complex environmental issues of the Southwest. SWIN will let users browse, model, map, simulate, forecast, interpret, and visualize biological and environmental conditions and processes. Current tools include a searchable database of scientific research and collection activities on federal lands in New Mexico and Arizona; an interactive GIS map viewer; a GIS-based decision support system addressing critical habitat for threatened and endangered species; and, in partnership with the Laboratory for Environmental Spatial Analysis at New Mexico State University, an index of water, drought, and fire-related datasets from state and federal agencies.

• Tracking Bird Migration with Radar: Through a cooperative agreement, scientists from the Fort Collins Science Center and the University of Southern Mississippi are initiating a collaborative study using Doppler weather radar to understand bird migration patterns in the borderlands of the arid Southwest (Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California). The project will look at migrant densities during flight, migrant-habitat associations, migrant flight elevation and direction of travel, and the effects of topographic obstruction (e.g., mountains) on radar capabilities. This information will be valuable to resource managers and others for habitat protection and management, as well as for addressing issues related to the siting and permitting of communication towers and wind power turbines that pose hazards to birds in flight.

• Pollinator Bat Conservation: Three species of nectar- and pollen-feeding bats are critical to the health and maintenance of ecosystems in the borderland area. The lesser long-nosed bat and greater long-nosed bat are endangered, and the Mexican long-tongued bat is a candidate for listing. All three species are jeopardized by vandalism and destruction of roosting sites, killing by humans, and loss of habitat and food resources. Researchers from the USGS Fort Collins Science Center's Arid Lands Field Station, located on the University of New Mexico campus, are studying the distribution, abundance, and roosting behavior of the bats, status of potential food plants, and interactions of bats and plants in New Mexico to inform Bureau of Land Management conservation activities affecting the bats and their associated desert ecosystems.