Smoke from Jemez Mountains Controlled Burn Impacts Albuquerque

The fire was caused by lightening in the foothills of the Jemez Mountains more than two weeks ago. Instead of suppressing the fire, managers have used the smoldering blaze to burn out undergrowth and unhealthy Ponderosa thickets. While the forest is moist enough to preclude any danger of catastrophic fire, that moisture may also increase the amount of smoke.

Last night smoke from the fire drained down the Jemez River valley and into the Albuquerque metro area. By this morning the smog was visible as a distinct haze in the valley. Clear skies and dry air probably helped establish an inversion that contained the smoke within the valley. The smoke quickly dissipated once daytime convection began.

ABQ Journal Photo

The Albuquerque branch of the National Weather Service noted that the "smoke event" this morning was "dense" and "impactful".  Some politicians have used the smoke to argue against this type of forest restoration.

 The NWS does not expect smoke to be as bad today as it was yesterday. But on a recent update to Inciweb, fire managers note that "hand and aerial ignitions will be used again today to direct the wildfire over an area similar in size to yesterday’s activity. Large columns of smoke from this ignition will be visible..."

Current air quality information can be found at http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/aqb/PinoFireInformation.htm.

A Range Overlap of the Pinyon Pines in central AZ

In which mountain range could one find three different U.S. Pinon Pine species (P. cembroides, P. edulis, and P. monophylla)?

Trick question!

Surprisingly, not a major mountain range, but the low hills surround Aravaipa Canyon.  This area may be an important biogeographical linkage between the sky island mountain ranges to the south, dominated by Mexican Pinyon (Pinus cembroides) and the larger mountains to the north, dominated by Pinus edulis.  Pinus monophylla is more of a Colorado plateau and California mountain species, but with weird disjunct populations as far South and East as the Florida mountains near Deming, NM!  

Specimen collection data from SEINet.

Climbing Mt. Elinor, WA

From Climbing Mount Elinor, WA

From Climbing Mount Elinor, WA

From Climbing Mount Elinor, WA

From Climbing Mount Elinor, WA

Gallinas Peak, or, on the Topographic Asymetry of Mountains

Topographic Signature of life, or ice:


Which is steeper: North Face (ice shaped) vs, South Face (life shaped)?



"Without life, there would still be asymmetric mountains. Rainfall patterns affect the height, width and symmetry of mountains.


Landscapes are shaped by the uplift, deformation and breakdown of bedrock and the erosion, transport and deposition of sediment. Life is important in all of these processes. Over short timescales, the impact of life is quite apparent: rock weathering, soil formation and erosion, slope stability and river dynamics are directly influenced by biotic processes that mediate chemical reactions, dilate soil, disrupt the ground surface and add strength with a weave of roots. Over geologic time, biotic effects are less obvious but equally important: biota affect climate, and climatic conditions dictate the mechanisms and rates of erosion that control topographic evolution. Apart from the obvious influence of humans, does the resulting landscape bear an unmistakable stamp of life? The influence of life on topography is a topic that has remained largely unexplored. Erosion laws that explicitly include biotic effects are needed to explore how intrinsically small-scale biotic processes can influence the form of entire landscapes, and to determine whether these processes create a distinctive topography."


"Precipitation is a fundamental driver of erosional processes and exerts a strong control on ecosystem distributions, suggesting that these precipitation patterns may be important in understanding mountain geomorphology."
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/geomorph/vignettes/25201.html


Notes: Ponderosa and alligator juniper and pinon, but where are the shrubs, the Ceanothus, the mountain mahogany, the apache plume, the Ribes, not to mention all the riparian sumac, grape, hibiscus, false indigo, etc?

the north facing slopes are steeper and rockier, the south facing have a rock-flour consistency, less vegetated, less lichen on rocks...indicating more erosion, less life

Climbing Ladron Peak

(via the West Face)
Sheer-sided Ladron Peak dominates the horizon in this part of NM, its precipitiously steep range beckoning over wide basins. From Magdalena, we took road 354 to Riley and forded the Rio Salado. 354 continues through a perplexing terrain of dissected drainages and landcover that includes patches of Pinon and Juniper, Cholla, and Creosote. We followed roads from the west through the Ladrones Wilderness Study Area until we couldn't drive any further, followed the old road-come-trail up through pinon. Reed found a Pinus edulis x cembroides (Pinon/Mexican Pinon) hybrid, but although we looked we couldn't find any more that had both 2 and 3 needle bundles. We passed an old stone cabin with a large packrat nest inside; outside it was wreathed in a forest of cholla, perhaps spread/cultivated by the rats. The trail continued up the wash and a Habitat Stamp project had excavated springs and connected tubing to pump the water to a number of tanks.

Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) grows as a dwarf shrub groundcover on the summit, along with beehive cactus (Echinocereus coccineus?). It looks like the annual wildflowers up here must be amazing.

Ice and snow in the north-facing shadows. Large rainforest-esque lichens.

Mt. Taylor, snowcovered, in the distance.
Habitat Stamp water tank. Rushes grow in the overflow.
A fire had burned up from the West nearly all the way to the summit, although only in patches. Because the slopes are so steep the vegetation was never continuous and it seems the fire must have spread stochastically via burning embers wafted in the conflagration's convection flume.

Many old (200-400 year old) Ponderosa Pine, Gambel Oak, and Alligator Juniper were killed. Many burned trees still had leaves or needles, indicating the fire was probably only two years old (1-2 years' new growth sprouted from the base of burned oaks).
The erosion was considerable in places, although Bear Grass (nolina) survived with scars, and new growth of Ragweed Sagebrush (Artemisia franseroides) blankets the ground where soil erosion was not as severe.
400+ year old alligator juniper spared by the fire.

Rain in the Sonoran Desert

Backpacking on Mount Ellinor

(Quotes from Jesse Wolf Hardin, Gila, NM)

Even now, enshrouded in a crust of asphalt and concrete, the Earth is wild, willed, directed and empowered by its own inner nature rather than some conglomeration of outward ideas. Gaia is faithful to its natural processes .. those rhythmic patterns of impermanence and change, mounting waves of their own fertile heat, then birth and death of Gaia's varied parts, the flex and pause of Earth's heart muscle pumping new life through arteries in time.

And as integral extensions of Gaia, we too are originally wild: deeply willed, and willful. For safety, certainty n d comfort we may try to deny our wildness, sacrificing our will as we seek shelter in the certain and the tame. Yet in spite of all the artifice and constraint of our times we remain instinctual, visionary beings. We are mirror made of dancing flesh, interterrestrial sensors, activated nerve endings extending from the gaian ganglion into the evershifting universe.

The human spirit dies when it is tamed, and the human species cannot long survive the deliberate unraveling of contextual Nature. Rational mind, government and science cannot alone cure the environmental crisis, which is first and foremost a crisis of value and character. By recognizing perception as the instrumental element in our kind's estrangement and resulting destruction behavior, we have the option of participating in the inevitable cure. The return to balance spoken of by most "primitive" cultures requires a deliberate shifting of the total weight of human perception in the direction of relationship, wildness, and love.

Without a doubt, we ignore the attentions of the animal world at our own peril. One by one the shrinking ponds cease to ring out with the glad croaking songs of frogs. One by one they are hushed by the weight of our presence and by what we, as lovers of this Earth have yet failed to do. The moonless nights may soon be as still as stone. In the face of such a final silence, we should be "all ears": attentive, concerned, and vigorously responsive.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego
and when we escape like rats
turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in
and passion will make our bodies
taut with power
we shall tamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will
curl up like burnt paper
D.H. Lawrence

The domesticated animals, like the wild, are a set of messages. Living in a world which, at the level of the senses, is heavily man modified, congested, and polluted, the spavined horse, land scalping goat, and pea brained sheep are important signals. The pathos of the over fat pig, white rat stripped of nuance, and dog breeds with their congenital debilitation signals to us an aspect of the human condition.
Paul Shepard

Santa Fe: Land of the Prius and Suburu

How long after sunset does the Green Flash occur?

Have you seen the shimmering ghost clouds that effervesce in the black sky an hour or more after sunset?

Some say they are a hundred, a thousand miles up.

The sky definitely shades in every color of the rainbow, red sunsets fade to green and then to blue and black.

Stars cover more than their 180 degree share of the heavens.

The Jemez and the Ortiz and the Sandia and the Sangre de Cristo.

The mountains here create their own weather; each ranch has its own weather.

Quiet city of polite dogs and narrow walled streets; enclosed or exclosed? You can't tell if you're inside or outside the brown adobe walls.
The billboards all advertise watches and jewelry, while cows chew cholla for miles around.
In Santa Fe.

Tea-Time on the Mountain-Top

You are CORDIALLY INVITED to a TEA PARTY on the SUMMIT of Mt. Wrightson, (Santa Rita Mountains, Sky Islands) this SATURDAY and SUNDAY from noon till 4 in OBSERVANCE of the planet MERCURY's greatest visibility on the 29th. Refreshments will be served. Dress will be smart-casual and please be on time. An after-party camp will observe Mercury's peregrinations.
Cheers,
CONOR

--

Postscript:
The glare up here is Tremendous, serving tea and talking about imaginary things. I can see smoky haze rolling off the open pit mines. Mines and telescopes, the only things visible of the earth from up here by moonlight. The crickets lie still on the asphalt as autumn starts. I am fatterning up for the Winter;mosquitoes cannot bite me and river rocks are Shiatsu on my back. I'm spending the weekends tracking Jaguars (either melanous or spotted) in the Borderlands. This is where Coronado sought the seven cities of gold. There is only one place in the world with more mammal diversity: the Costa Rican rainforest.

50 and 100 miles from home

This is an old AAA map of Arizona, with modifications. Since my van can be towed 100 miles for free, it seemed prudent to determine the extent of my get-home-free zone. This is where I feel comfortable; anything beyond that starts to stretch my luck and my umbilical. This zone, my home, includes most of Arizona's sky island mountain ranges.

Southern Arizona Mountain Ranges

The names roll off the tongue like clattering rocks on a sun-blistered trail: Tumacacori, Atascosa, Baboquivari, Tortolita. But there are endless pine-forests to match the slag-heaps: Galiuro, Pinaleno, Catalina, Chiricahua, Huachuca. The rock-ribs show through in all of them, whether haloed by the waxy pine-needle or the nectared cactus-needle .

The Peloncillo mountains are north of the Chiricahua and I-10 on the Arizona/NM border. Heading west the Pinaleno then the Galiuro then the Catalinas and then the Tucson valley and the Tucson mountains. The Tortolitas are the ironwood-fringed hills due north of Tucson between the I-10 and the 77. Heading east from Tucson past the Rincons on the left and the Santa Ritas on the right, then the Dragoons, Huachucas, and back again to the Chiricahua. If, instead of I-10, you take the 19 south the Santa Ritas will be on your left and the Tumacacori then the Atascosa then the Pajarito on your right. If you leave Tucson heading west on the 86 the Tucson mountains are to the right and then you pass the Baboquivari mountains and Kitt Peak on the left before Organ Pipe.

Organizations that do conservation work in the basin and range area of southern Arizona, where the islands are all in the sky.

http://www.tumacacoriwild.org/
http://www.skyislandalliance.org/indexSIA.htm
http://www.rinconinstitute.org/
http://nmwild.org/
http://www.ugwa.org/

Search southern Arizona highpoints:
http://www.peakbagger.com/range.aspx?rid=13531