Pueblo Ridge Central - USPRC001
Johnson, Lane B.; Margolis, Ellis, Q.

Dating method: crossdated

Sample storage location: University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, 1215 E Lowell St., Tucson, Arizona, 85721

Reference:
Johnson, L.B.; Margolis, E.Q. in review (2018). Surface fire to crown fire: fire history in the Taos Valley Watersheds, New Mexico, USA. Fire. 

Abstract: 
Tree-ring fire scars, tree ages, historical photographs, and historical surveys demonstrate that fire played different ecological roles for centuries across gradients of elevation, forest, and fire regime in the Taos Valley Watersheds. Fire regimes collapsed across these three adjoining watersheds by 1899, leaving all sites without fire for at least 119 years. Historical photographs and quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) ages indicate that high-severity fire historically burned at multiple high-elevation subalpine sites in today's Village of Taos Ski Valley, with large high-severity patches (> 640 ha). Low-severity, frequent (9 - 29 year median interval) surface fires burned in nearby mid-elevation dry conifer forests on south aspects in all watersheds. Fires were associated with drought during the fire year, preceded by wet years, with widespread fires commonly burning synchronously in multiple watersheds during more-severe drought years, including within all three watersheds in 1664, 1715, and 1842. In contrast, recent "large" wildfires have burned within single watersheds and therefore are likely not large in a historical context. Management to promote repeated low-severity fire and associated open forest stand structures is within the historical range of variability in the dry conifer forests of these watersheds, but in the high-elevation, subalpine forests different management approaches are required that balance ecological and socio-economic values while providing for public safety.

NOAA/IMPD web landing page for this fire history site is available at:
https://ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/25773

NOAA/IMPD DIF and JSON metadata records for this fire history site are available at:
https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/dif/xml/noaa-fire-25773.xml and https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/json/noaa-fire-25773.json

FHX filename: usprc001.fhx

IMPD code: USPRC001

Name of site: Pueblo Ridge Central

Site code: PRC

Contributors: Johnson, Lane B.; Margolis, Ellis, Q.

Latitude: 36.3806992 (WGS84)

Longitude: -105.4219971 (WGS84)

Mean elevation: 2622 (meters)

Country: United States

State: New Mexico

Region: northern New Mexico

First year: 1561 AD

Last year: 2006 AD

Species name: Pinus ponderosa [PIPO]

Funding agency names and grant numbers: 
The Nature Conservancy, Carson National Forest, USGS Land Change Science Program, Taos Ski Valley Foundation, the Rio Grande Water Fund, the Village of Taos Ski Valley, and Taos Pueblo.

Comments:
This site was sampled as part of a project to reconstruct the fire history of the Taos Valley Watersheds in northern New Mexico.                                         https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/northamerica/supplemental/usprc001_tree_meta.csv contains individual tree locations and tree species

Fire History Graphs: Fire History Graphs illustrate specific years when fires occurred and how many trees were scarred. They are available in both PDF and PNG formats. The graphs consist of 2 parts, both of which show the X axis (time line) at the bottom with the earliest year of information on the left and the latest on the right. The Fire Index Plot is the topmost plot, and shows two variables: sample depth (the number of recording trees in each year) as a blue line along the left Y axis, compared with the percent trees scarred shown as gray bars along the right Y axis. Below, the Fire Chronology Plot consists of horizontal lines representing injuries by year on individual sampled trees. Symbols are overlain that denote the years containing the dendrochronologically-dated fire scars or injuries. The sample ID of each tree is displayed to the right of each line. The Composite Axis below represents the composite information from all individual series. The symbols used to represent the fire scars or injuries, and the filters used to determine the composite information, are shown in the legend. These graphs were created using the Fire History Analysis and Exploration System (FHAES). See http://www.fhaes.org for more information.