More on NM Rare Plant Communities #nmpcomm

The New Mexico Rare Plant Technical Council just lost their chairperson, Daniela Roth, to other profession opportunities. She was a tireless advocate for NM's natural environment and especially its rare plants. Although Daniela worked for the NM State Forestry Division, she is recommending that her replacement(s) be in the NM Natural Heritage Program. That leads me to this edition of my on-going monthly essays on NM rare plant communities with a stroll through the Natural Heritage online maps (https://nhnm.unm.edu/).

Our first map today is of the US Forest Service Research Natural Areas in AZ and NM. These are selected areas that are conserved for long-term research. An accompanying spreadsheet (https://nhnm.unm.edu/sites/default/files/nonsensitive/USFS%20RNA%20Overview.xlsx) gives details on each of the 52 RNA's and gives one a good idea of the amount of fieldwork and thought that goes into choosing these areas as part of a southwestern environmental monitoring network.

The website goes on the say, “...work is ongoing to expand it to include other protected natural areas such as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), refuges, and preserves. We invite you to explore information about network sites through the ArcGIS Viewer, consider doing work on them for research and protection, and to suggest sites that should be added to the network.”

Sounds like an invitation for some serious citizen science.

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The remainder of today's maps are generated with the NM Environmental Review Tool (https://nmert.org/content/map) with its many layers of information. Layers can be toggled on or off to overlay whatever features you desire. My examples make use of only one or two layers at a time for simplicity.

Our second map is of NM State Forestry's Priority Landscapes. These are areas identified for restoration across all jurisdictions with forest and woodland cover types and maps the top 500 watersheds in the state ranked by wildfire risk and importance for water source protection and biodiversity. There are some odd features here and there, like the odd boundaries in the southern Jemez, but I assume these are more administrative lines than anything else.

Map #3 is the US Fish and Wildlife Service refuges and critical habitat. No surprises here, although many people don't realize how big the Sevilleta Refuge is. It runs from the Sierra Ladrones almost over to Abo.

Map #4 is a slice of the crucial habitat layer (somehow different from "critical habitat"). When looking at this data for the entire state, the map is a difficult to understand set of blue blotches. Zooming in gets you to the meat of the matter. The sample I included here runs from an area surrounding Voght Draw in the west to the southern Jemez Mountains in the east. The map legend shows six shades of blue running from pale to dark, least to most crucial habitat. Lots of small pockets of deeper blue out by White Mesa, Cuchilla Blanca Hill, southwest of San Luis in the Rio Puerco, and Tapia Canon further south. I'd say those are great places to go plant hunting. While some are very remote, others are right off the pavement.

The last map I want to share today explains much about why native plant conservation is difficult in NM. This one shows land ownership and NM is a crazy quilt of federal and state administrations interspersed with private lands. With so many administrative units and so many definitions of what is crucial or critcal habitat, what is a threatened, endangered, or rare plant, it's no wonder that delimiting important areas is a Sisyphean task.