The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies serves the mountain science community and regional resource managers by hosting & conducting interdisciplinary research and conducting integrative 24/7/365 monitoring that captures weather, snowpack, radiation, soils, plant community and hydrologic signals of regional climate trends.
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Senator Beck Baseline StudyIn order to facilitate interdisciplinary snow system research, CSAS contracted with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program to perform a 'Baseline Study' of the plant communities in the SBBSA to be repeated every 5 years. The original study was conducted during the summer of 2004 and was repeated in 2009. The complete 5-year repeat 2009 report (pdf) and original 2004 Species List (xls) are available for download.
Colorado Natural Heritage Program botanist Peggy Lyon (right) and National Park Service botanist Julie Crawford cataloged plant species inside a 0.1 m2 Daubenmire frame on transect #11, located near the SBSP.
Altogether, twenty-three 100' transects were performed, at three general elevations - twelve in the alpine tundra, six at/near the krumholz line, and the remaining five in the subalpine. This map (USGS "Ironton, Colo" quadrangle) indicates the location of the southern (or eastern) end-point of each of the twenty-three 100' transects.
Survey monuments were placed at each end-point of each transect to facilitate repeat studies. Coordinates were also obtained by GPS for each southern (or eastern) end point. More photos and details can be found on our July 2009 news update page.
