Rivers of Black

The two major fires of 2011 in the Santa Fe region have been extinguished. This past week I saw some of the after effects of the Las Conchas fire, the largest in New Mexico history, in the Jemez mountains.

Most of the damage to the forests was what one would expect from a large and very hot fire. What were previously lovely Ponderosa pine trees are now observed as resembling giant black toothpicks, some with and some without black branches, against the blackened mountain terrain. Other trees including Douglas fir and Southwestern white pine were also destroyed. 

In some areas, where the fire was particularly hot, the forest floor looks as if someone had swept away every bit of pine liter leaving a smooth black surface. As a consequence, the forest floor no longer absorbs water efficiently. New organic material will need to accumulate along with a succession of plants requiring many years of growth, death and decay, before the forest floor can again absorb a normal rainfall.

Note: In the picture above, the ground is smooth where the forest debris was consumed by the fire. A few dead pine needles and broken branches are beginning to accumulate anew.

Although our monsoon season has been short on rain this year, we have had some good rainfall in the past week.  On the way back from measuring Douglas firs in a wild turkey roost area we stopped at the Las Conchas trail head on NM route 4. This site is close to where the Las Conchas fire began.  The Las Conchas trail follows a little stream several miles into the forest.

That little stream, running down from the mountains from the direction of the fire, was like no other I have ever seen. It looked from a distance to be nearly as black as soot or perhaps resembling a river of black bean soup flowing downhill.

Note that the churning water in the stream at the Las Conchas trail head was very dark.

This black river was the result of the runoff from a burned forest no longer able to absorb a normal rainfall.  Instead, the rain carried tons of soot and soil from the once living forest floor down the mountain side to little streams that merged with bigger streams and eventually flowed into the Rio Grande. The cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe suspended use of the Rio Grande water for drinking as it contained too many particulates to filter.

The scene above was repeated in many streams draining the thousands of burned hectares in the Jemez mountains.


I came upon this quote about rivers.

“Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.” – Mark Twain

Let's hope the little stream at Las Conchas recovers soon and returns that beauty.