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Surface Fire To Crown Fire: Fire History In The Taos Valley Watersheds, New Mexico, Usa, Lane B. Johnson, Ellis Q. Margolis

Aspen Bibliography

Tree-ring fire scars, tree ages, historical photographs, and historical surveys indicate that, for centuries, fire played different ecological roles across gradients of elevation, forest, and fire regimes in the Taos Valley Watersheds. Historical fire regimes collapsed across the three watersheds by 1899, leaving all sites without fire for at least 119 years. Historical photographs and quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) ages indicate that a high-severity fire historically burned at multiple high-elevation subalpine plots 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 on the south aspects …