Jemez Mountains

In the United States and many other parts of the world, fires are behaving differently now than they have throughout history, largely as a result of human actions. An estimated 80% of U.S. forests and rangelands have altered fire dynamics. The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico is working with federal partners to restore ponderosa pine forests and fire dynamics in the Jemez Mountains.

Learn about The Nature Conservancy and our work in the Jemez in a Q&A featured on Nature.org.

Assessment of Forest Health

The Nature Conservancy and its partners participated in a national level Fire Learning Network with the goal of developing the scientific and ecological foundations for fire management planning in a multi-partner landscape. Several regional "Fire Learning Networks" were established across the United States. The Southwest FLN (SWFLN) was organized by the New Mexico Chapter of The Nature Conservancy with the goal of supporting and accelerating collaborative, community-based, landscape scale fire management through the use of regional workshops. A series of three regional workshops were held in 2005 and 2006, each with a different theme of interest to SWFLN participants.

Forest Restoration

The Jemez Collaborative Forest Restoration Project was initiated through a grant from the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program (CFRP), a program established through The Community Forest Restoration Act of 2000. It is a small ecological restoration demonstration experiment situated on Santa Fe National Forest Land in Northern New Mexico. The Jemez CFRP project area is split between one restoration area on the Valles Caldera National Preserve and two restoration areas on the Santa Fe National Forest. The Jemez CFRP project's intent is to demonstrate and assess two different forest restoration options.

The general goals for the CFRP forest restoration treatments were to

  • reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in ponderosa pine forests within the project area
  • initiate restoration of the structure and processes of the area's fire-adapted ecosystems to their historical range of variation
  • build local capacity to carry out ecological restoration treatments
  • develop science-based restoration and fuels reduction prescriptions and monitoring protocols for implementation at the project site and elsewhere within the Jemez Mountains

    • Downloads

    Jemez Mountains Climate Change Adaptation Workshop: Final Report (April 2009)

    Report on the Southwest Climate Change Initiative’s Jemez Mountains Climate Change Adaptation Workshop of April 2009 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 41 pp., including executive summary and appendices.

    Download file (<1 MB) Jemez Mountains Climate Adaptation Workshop: Presentations (April 2009)

    Presentations by speakers at the Jemez Mountains Climate Adaptation Workshop of April 2009, including Todd Ringler (Los Alamos National Lab), Bob Parmenter (Valles Caldera National Preserve), Molly Cross (Wildlife Conservation Society) and Carolyn Enquist (The Nature Conservancy)

    Jemez Biophysical Settings (October 2003)

    GIS dataset depicting the biophysical settings for the Jemez Mountains.

    Download file (1.4 MB) Jemez Fire Regime Condition Class (October 2003)

    Fire regime condition class data for the Jemez Mountains developed as a part of the Fire Learning Network.

    Download file (3.3 MB)

    Southwest Fire Learning Network

    Southwest Fire Learning Network (2005 - 2006)

    The Southwest Fire Learning Network workshops gave participants the opportunity to learn about new and evolving science and management tools that can help us identify reference conditions, fire regimes, and restoration potential for grassland, shrubland, woodland, and forested systems within the region.

    Download Jemez Mountains Climate Change Adaptation Workshop: Final Report (April 2009)

    Report on the Southwest Climate Change Initiative’s Jemez Mountains Climate Change Adaptation Workshop of April 2009 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 41 pp., including executive summary and appendices.

    Download file (<1 MB) Gunnison Basin Climate Adaptation Workshop: Participant Notebook (December 2009)

    Agenda, climate change scenarios, speaker biographies, climate change adaptation framework description, background information, participant list and other materials distributed in the participant notebook for the Gunnison Basin Climate Adaptation Workshop of December 2010.

    Download