As reported in the Arizona Daily Star, desert Bighorn sheep were reintroduced to the Catalina Mountains yesterday after a nearly 15 year absence. The Catalina Bighorn Advisory Committee has been working on the project for a number of years and has conducted public outreach to explain and defend the program. This is one of dozens of projects conducted across the state and the southwest.  Habitat structures are built by the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society Volunteers:

   While some have questioned whether the project will be a success, there are many who think it is worth a try.

Living with Fire in Northern New Mexico: Fire, Forests, and Communities

Dr. Bob Parmenter presented data from some of our post-Las Conchas fire recovery monitoring.  Craig Allen gave two talks about culture and climate change over the last ~1,000 years.

Slides and videos from the presentations have not been posted yet.

New Yorker article fails to fact-check

A recent article in the New Yorker magazine features a profile of a the Climate Company, which offers individualized weather prediction services to farmers.  Unfortunately, the article makes a number of unfounded or vague assertions, and in some places is so boosterish of the new company that it veers into puff piece journalism.

A balanced review of the company's claims would better serve readers, and a more in-depth review of the science might help explain why.

For example, the article by Michael Specter, claims that

"If you are trying to decide whether to take an umbrella to work, the National Weather Service provides the kind of information you need. But the data, often taken from readings at local airports, are nearly useless for anyone who needs to gauge constantly changing conditions in the soil and the atmosphere."

But the NWS does offer zip-code specific weather readings and predictions.   While it would be great to have even better location-specific data, such a monitoring system is yet to be implemented.

"One of the company’s principal sources is Nexrad, or Next Generation Radar, a network of a hundred and fifty-nine Doppler radar stations operated by the National Weather Service. Using data from the system, the Climate Corporation creates moisture and precipitation maps so precise that in some cases a farmer can determine whether the field on one side of a road is wetter than the field on the other side. "

All private companies use NWS radar and satellite information, and are limited by the resolution of this data.  The highest resolution data available is 4 km grid boxes.  

According to local meteorologists, it is not possible to distinguish accumulating precipitation at smaller scales without installing individual weather stations on either side of the road.

"Soil type and quality can vary widely within a county, and even within a single farm field."

This quote is used to imply that the Climate Company has such intra-field soil data, but Climate.com cannot account for every possible difference in soil texture.  It uses NRCS soil survey data compiled in the 1960's and 1970's for every county in the U.S.  

On their webpage, Climate.com requests farmers fill in their specific soil type.  There is no high-tech substitute for good old-fashioned soil testing.  

The article also features such gee-whiz promotional quotes as "the algorithm divides the country into nearly half a million plots, then generates ten thousand daily weather scenarios for each of them... It matched that information with reports from two million locations that the National Weather Service scans regularly with Doppler radar."

Again, I spoke to several practicing meteorologists who were not sure how these absurdly large and contradictory numbers were computed.  Their best guess was that Climate.com is counting the same location more than once, for each radar beam, or that they are counting different layers in the atmosphere as different "locations."  

Alternately, these discrepancies may be misquotes on the part of the author that were not picked up by New Yorker fact checkers.   

Cremation is a major source of black carbon

Original Press Release.  News article.  Burning is central to human life, and many human after-lifes.  Unfortunately, smoldering fires release soot and toxic compounds which degrade air quality, accelerate snow melt, and warm the climate.

Four of my Favorite Characteristic New Mexico Shrubs

Chilopsis linearis, Desert Willow.  In landscaping, this large-flowered shrub will flower for almost half the year.  It is a dependable riparian tree that can survive in washes that are too hot and dry for cottonwood.

Forestiera pubescens.  New Mexico Privet.  Native shrub in the Olive family can form thickets at the base of canyon walls and along upper benches above rivers.  Birds prize the berries almost as much as the non-native Russian Olive.

Lycium pallidum.  Pale Wolfberry.  Lyciums are widespread in the Southwestern deserts, and Lycium pallidum is the most widespread.  Goji berries are Lycium barbarum (nonnative), and Lycium pallidum has been cultivated for its fruit for 1,000s of years.  The trumpet-shaped flowers attract Sphyngid Hawkmoths and Hummingbirds.  

Robinia neomexicana.  New Mexico Robinia, Fabaceae.  Despite its rapacious thorns, this plant made my list for its tenacity and abundance across a range of habitats.  From riparian area in the South to Ponderosa hillsides in the North, Robinia provides abundant pink blossoms and herbaceous cover. 

What does a natural forest fire look like in the Southwest?

What is "natural"?  Ecologists use the range of natural variability to define proper functioning condition (PFC) or minimally disturbed condition (MDC), etc (in the jargon of ecologists -- basically, what was it like before we mucked it up?)  The question is surprisingly hard to answer.

Tom Swetnam has been quoted drawing a distinction between burn severity (high-intensity burns are natural) and extent (but high-severity burns across large landscapes are not natural).  These statements are part of an ongoing debate that, like many debates in ecology, may be dependent on local factors.  

In Arizona, Dr. Wally Covington became famous for championing open park-like Ponderosa forests.  Indeed, many landscapes are dominated by frequent low-intensity grass fires that clear out underbrush and young trees.  But at longer time scales it seems equally clear that these same forests can catastrophically burn.  This has been pointed out by Dr. Baker's work in Arizona, and by Dr. Grant Meyer in Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico.  More evidence is not hard to find.  For example, a study of the geomorphology of the Rio Cebolla river in the Jemez Mountains noted extensive sediments with large burned logs indicative of high severity fire in what must have been extensive headwater areas. 

Dendrochronologists  often focus on the last 1,000 years, whereas geomorphologists have a much larger picture, often spanning not just this interglacial, but also the last several ice ages.  (CF Great Basin Riparian Ecosystems by Miller and Chambers et al)

Fires are transformative, but both more and less impactful than commonly thought.  They accelerate and are accelerated by climate change.  Most large fires are not as bad as news reports indicate -- they are bananzas for wildlife and fire-dependent trees and shrubs like aspen and oak.

Most "megafires" aren't really managed with a full suppression strategy, but a containment strategy -- still not 'let-burn' but pretty close.  Unfortunately, suppression and containment efforts can be as damaging as fire.  

Whether or not fires are natural, the inevitable question is raised as to whether humans can restore the environment better or faster than natural succession would?  This is a loaded question, because of the salvage logging controversy.  One logger expressed confusion about why thinning before a fire is justified, but salvage logging after isn't.  But either may be ineffective in preventing the next conflagration.  If ERC is high enough and there is enough ventilation, anything will burn, even the Olympic Peninsula rainforest! (Cf Dr. Gavin's ESA talk)

History and Philosophy of Science

The current AGW debate (new 2013 IPCC report versus skeptical community embodied in NIPCC and wattsupwiththat.com) mirrors the dynamic described in Leviathan and the Vacuum pump: two groups of men, both claiming to create knowledge and decide what is true for the rest of society.  One is composed of men of authority and credentials, the other composed of coffee-shop debaters and home-experimentalists.  In the 1600's,  the powerful men created knowledge to bolster the monarchy, while they feared the upstart debaters as crypto-revolutionaries.  Today, powerful scientists create knowledge to create societal demand for their power and knowledge, while they fear the "deniers".

(I first read Leviathan and the Vacuum Pump (about Hobbes' and Boyle's argument) in a History of Science course with Dr. Andre Wakefield at the Clarement Colleges.)

Staying Realistic About Prescribed Burns

"In my 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service, I've worked on a number of prescribed burns.  In recent years they have become a popular thing to do.  In the flurry of burning stuff, the question we need to ask is not, "how many acres should be burned? But rather, "did the burn have the desired effect?" If the fire was to remove fuels and burn dead logs, did it replace that heavy fuel with waist-high weeds, brush and grasses -- more dangerous flash fuels?

Fire can be an excellent tool, but I think there are other tools that better manage certain public lands.  There are some places that are too valuable to risk a blackened landscape."
-Bob Damson response in The Nature Conservancy's September/October 2013 magazine.

Albuquerque Journal Article on Thompson Ridge Fire

Link to Albuquerque Journal Article

Under-reported Stable Fire, Jemez Mountains New Mexico

We have been getting some smoke the past couple weeks from an under-reported fire, about 5 miles West of Jemez Springs.  The Stable Fire was started by a lightening storm on Stable Mesa.  From radio traffic, it sounds like the Forest Service is using the fire as an opportunity to introduce low-intensity controlled burns (= forest restoration) to a few hundred acres of forest around the fire.  More info.