Does glacial retreat impact benthic chironomid communities? A case study from Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

The aim of this study was to determine which environmental variables are responsible for modern benthic chironomid distributions in a glacial setting. The chironomid communities from nine alpine lakes were assessed, and forty-three individual taxa were extracted and identified. Surface water temperature and nitrate were strongly and negatively correlated (−0.82, p = 0.007), suggesting that glacial meltwater (the driver that explains both surface water temperature (SWT) (°C) and nitrate (NO3 + NO2-N)) is the environmental variable that explains the most variance (15%). On average, lakes receiving glacial meltwater were 2.62 °C colder and contained 66% more NO3 + NO2-N than lakes only receiving meltwater from snow. The presence of taxa from the tribe Diamesinae indicates very cold input from running water, and these taxa may be used as a qualitative indicator species for the existence of glacial meltwater within a lake catchment. Heterotrissocladius, Diamesa spp., and Pseudodiamesa were present in the coldest lakes. Chironomus, Diplocladius, and Protanypus were assemblages found in cold lakes affiliated with the littoral zone or alpine streams. The modern benthic chironomid communities collected from the alpine of subalpine lakes of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, represent a range of climatic and trophic influences and capture the transition from cold oligotrophic lakes to warmer and eutrophic conditions.

Barriers and Opportunities for Cooperative Wetland Management: A Case Study in the Greater Rocky Mountain National Park Ecosystem

The boundaries of most protected areas are not large enough to encompass natural processes such as hydrologic and ecological connections between wetlands and within watersheds. Therefore, management is likely to be improved by working across boundaries with multiple jurisdictions. This research explores barriers and opportunities for cross-boundary cooperation for wetland stewardship in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), Colorado, USA, and surrounding areas, using semi-structured interviews with staff members of government agencies, nonprofits, research organizations, and municipalities. Results show that wetlands outside of RMNP are experiencing similar cross-boundary disturbances to those within the park. Although participants recognize that working cooperatively with neighboring jurisdictions can decrease the effects of boundaries on wetland integrity, they also reported that the most significant cross-boundary challenge is working with others to exchange resources, develop a common goal, and implement projects cooperatively. We provide recommendations on how to address cooperative management challenges while taking advantage of opportunities to facilitate cross-boundary wetland stewardship at the ecosystem-scale.

The Effect of a Vehicle Diversion Traffic Management Strategy on Spatio-Temporal Park Use: A Study in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA

Parks and Protected Areas (PPAs) across the Intermountain West region of the United States have observed an increasing trend in visitation in the past decade. Management of visitors’ vehicles as much as the visitors themselves has created a challenge for managers. Experiencing PPAs by personal vehicle is a popular recreation experience. However, as PPAs accommodate historic levels of visitation, the infrastructure to accommodate these vehicles is strained. In response to periods of especially high use in the summer months, Rocky Mountain National Park (ROMO) actively limits access to the Bear Lake Corridor (BLC), one of the most popular day use areas of the Park. Because of limited parking infrastructure and capacities to provide a safe and quality visitor experience, ROMO redirects (i.e., diverts) vehicles away from the BLC. In July 2017, to examine the effect of this management intervention on visitor spatial behavior, participants intending to enter the BLC were given a Geographic Positioning System (GPS) device to track their movement throughout their visit to the Park. We performed a Distributive Flow analysis with the GPS data to understand the diversion’s effect on traffic patterns of visitor vehicles diverted from the BLC. This study found that 21.2% of diverted visitor vehicles returned to the BLC after being redirected and 9% left the Park entirely, suggesting that there is a lack of substitutability for some visitors within the Park for the experience found along the BLC. During a period of redirection, Moraine Park, Endovalley, and Trail Ridge Road received increased levels of visitation as use was diffused across the Park, which may warrant increased monitoring of changes to the experiential and biophysical conditions in these locations. Diverted visitor vehicles made more stops, drove further distances and for a longer period of time than non-diverted visitor vehicles, but there was no significant difference in the length of time spent at points of interest within the Park. While the diversion was effective in temporarily reducing congestion in the BLC, its effect on visitors’ spatial behavior suggests that overall aggregate impacts to park resources and experiential conditions may be increasing as a result.

Assessment of High Resolution Air Temperature Fields at Rocky Mountain National Park by Combining Scarce Point Measurements with Elevation and Remote Sensing Data

There is necessity of considering air temperature to simulate the hydrology and management within water resources systems. In many cases, a big issue is considering the scarcity of data due to poor accessibility and limited funds. This paper proposes a methodology to obtain high resolution air temperature fields by combining scarce point measurements with elevation data and land surface temperature (LST) data from remote sensing. The available station data (SNOTEL stations) are sparse at Rocky Mountain National Park, necessitating the inclusion of correlated and well-sampled variables to assess the spatial variability of air temperature. Different geostatistical approaches and weighted solutions thereof were employed to obtain air temperature fields. These estimates were compared with two relatively direct solutions, the LST (MODIS) and a lapse rate-based interpolation technique. The methodology was evaluated using data from different seasons. The performance of the techniques was assessed through a cross validation experiment. In both cases, the weighted kriging with external drift solution (considering LST and elevation) showed the best results, with a mean squared error of 3.7 and 3.6 °C2 for the application and validation, respectively.