Natural Resources at Yucca House National Monument

Looking at a mesa and farm fields through cattails of Aztec Springs.
Riparian vegetation around Aztec Spring in Yucca House National Monument.

NPS

Yucca House National Monument encompasses 35 acres (14 ha) in southwestern Colorado. It was established in 1919 to preserve a large, unexcavated Ancestral Puebloan archeological site.

A desert-shrub community is the dominant habitat in the monument, with pockets of riparian habitat associated with three perennial springs. Two amphibian, 75 bird, 25 mammal, and 10 reptile species have been reported at Yucca House.

Monitored Here



Species Lists

Select a Park:

Select a Species Category (optional):

List Differences

Search results will be displayed here.


Visit NPSpecies for more comprehensive information and advanced search capability. Have a suggestion or comment on this list? Let us know.

Life Zones

Yucca House NM has a very narrow elevation range (5,797-5,922 ft / 1,767–1,805 m), primarily eastern and southern exposures, and experiences an average annual precipitation of 13 inches (330 mm). Semi-Desert Grassland/Shrub Steppe is the only life zone contained within Yucca House NM.

Graphic of a mountain divided into illustrated vegetation zones by elevation and exposure, with the narrow elevation and limited exposure that corresponds to Yucca House National Monument highlighted

Climate Summary Chart

Charts are an effective way to summarize and graphically represent climate variables. The following chart is based on the diagrams developed for vegetation studies by Walter and Lieth in 1967. Visit our climate page for more information.

Graph with lines charting average temperature and precipitation at Cortez, Colorado, near Yucca House National Monument, from 1911 to 2012 by the time of year.


Reports & Publications

Inventories are point-in-time surveys that help us learn about the resources in our parks. Information obtained through the Southern Colorado Plateau Network’s inventories of park resources helped to establish a base level of data, which has served as a starting point for our natural resource monitoring.

Source: Data Store Saved Search 3515 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

Protocols describe how we monitor. They include a descriptive narrative of what we monitor and why, our field methods, how we analyze and manage our data, and more. All of our protocols are peer reviewed.

Source: Data Store Saved Search 3280 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

Find additional documents on our Reports & Publications pages.

Links

Park Flora (SEINet)

Loading results...

    Last updated: November 6, 2018