Last updated: May 1, 2024
Article
Rocky Mountain National Park is taking action to resist, accept, and direct change
Resist
Eric Brown / Northern Water
Climate change interacts with other stressors and may exacerbate existing resource management issues and the urgency of solving them. At RMNP, some riparian ecosystems are in decline due to multiple stressors, including heavy browsing by elk and moose. Once abundant, beaver no longer inhabit most of these areas. Hydrology has shifted in affected areas to deeper water tables that are less supportive of the tall willow ecosystems that once were habitat for abundant beaver. As moisture declines due to climate change, this will aggravate these issues. At the same time, restored willow-beaver riparian ecosystems will be more able to naturally resist effects of climate change by retaining more moisture that is critical to withstand droughts, support biodiversity, reduce flammability, and repel invasive exotic plants. Functioning willow-beaver riparian ecosystems also retain more sediment and nutrients, which is of high interest to communities and water managers downstream. In this case, we believe that resisting change will result in a more sustainable ecosystem in the face of climate change. The timeline for conducting these actions will be limited, however; as the ecosystem dries out and effects of wildfires become more frequent, there will be less opportunity to be successful. The existing Elk and Vegetation Management Plan addresses some of these issues, but more support and management action would be needed to reach goals at a meaningful scale.
The Kawuneeche Valley, which is the watershed that drains into the Colorado River on the western side of RMNP, is a stark example of a once lush willow-beaver riparian wetland that has transitioned to a grassland with incised, eroding streams and an abundance of invasive, exotic vegetation. Some people may call this an “ecosystem collapse”; certainly, it is a biome shift. In 2020, the Kawuneeche Valley Ecosystem Restoration Collaborative (KVERC) was established to address the ongoing environmental changes in the Valley, including in the Park, adjacent US Forest Service lands, and downstream on private lands. KVERC partners and funders include the Park and eight other agencies, local governments, organizations, and institutions. Preliminary results from a study conducted for KVERC by Colorado State University confirmed and further quantified the changes that have occurred. From 1953-2019, the area of beaver ponds declined by 94% across the valley. From 1999-2019, the area of tall stature willows declined by 77% valley-wide and by 96% just within RMNP. KVERC is considering a variety of stream and wetland restoration projects within the valley to restore it to a healthy beaver-willow riparian wetland.
Learn more at the Kawuneeche Valley Ecosystem Restoration Collaborative website.
Accept
Koren Nydick / National Park Service
Wildfire is a natural process, but climate change is pushing forests into a new type of fire regime. Subalpine forests in the Rocky Mountains, including RMNP, now burn more frequently. The post-fire vegetation will experience warmer conditions than those of the forest hundreds of years ago. The areas burned in the 2020 Cameron Peak and East Troublesome Fires and future fires may not recover to the same type of forests we experienced before. The spatial scale of these effects will be immense, much of it inside wilderness areas. Park managers will likely need to accept most of the change regarding the post-fire ecosystems that develop and carefully prioritize if and where management actions are taken to resist or direct change.
For example, the Park’s Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Plans for the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome Fires outline just a few proposals to resist changes from the fires, including monitoring and treatment of exotic plant spread in high priority areas, re-planting some of the limber pine stands burned in the fire, and re-planting wetland vegetation (willow, alder, and birch) that was burned within fenced ungulate exclosures. These activities will cover very little of the burned area, leaving the remainder of the forests and wetlands to follow unmanaged trajectories. While accepting these changes, RMNP also is collaborating with several research teams to understand and document post-fire tree regeneration, amphibian and fish populations, and water quality.
Direct
Koren Nydick / National Park Service
Currently the park reduces the risk of wildfires in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) and developed areas in lodgepole pine forests through mechanical thinning and then burning the resulting piles of logs and branches in the winter when there is snow on the ground. The natural fire regime for lodgepole pine forests is stand-replacing fire. Thinning these forests reduces fuel density and increases firefighter ability to manage fires, but it is not an ecological surrogate for wildfire. Conducting broadcast prescribed burning in these areas is too risky. One alternative is to direct a change in fuel regime from lodgepole pine to aspen stands dotted with forest gaps/open meadows. Aspen stands are biodiversity hotspots, are aesthetically pleasing and contribute to ecotourism, and may be less flammable than lodgepole pine forests. Aspens are vulnerable to browsing by elk and moose, however, and the park faces a challenge in protecting new aspen growth from these hungry animals. As part of the Park’s Elk and Vegetation Management Plan various fenced ungulate exclosures were installed in selected areas about 10-12 years ago to restore willow and aspen vegetation. Fuel treatments present another method to promote aspen regeneration and growth.
In 2020, the Park initiated a Rapid Aspen Regeneration Assessment (RARA) in collaboration with a Colorado State University research team. In three days, park staff and researchers orchestrated an all-hands on deck campaign to survey aspen plots that are not within protected exclosures. In 2022, additional plots will be surveyed in a two-day campaign. The goal of RARA is to understand the extent of aspen regeneration and variables that explain spatial differences. This information will help to direct the park’s efforts to promote aspen regeneration via fuel treatments.
In 2021, the Park implemented the Allenspark-Sandbeach Lake Fuel Treatment, which included specifications to not only thin lodgepole pine forests, but also create forest gaps and areas specifically targeted to promote expansion of aspen. As an experiment, one area targeted for aspen expansion was designed to be protected from ungulate browsers by a rock cliff on one side and a slash pile “fence” around the rest of the area. The park’s Fire Effects crew installed RARA-style plots within and outside of this experimentally protected area to determine if the mechanical removal of conifers would indeed stimulate regeneration and expansion of aspen and if the slashpile/cliff “fence” would serve to protect aspen from browse.