Abstract
In the Southwestern United States, increasing demand for firewood has quickly promoted pinyon-juniper woodlands to commercial status. Slow recovery rates for pinyon and juniper and inadequate mensuration data present significant obstacles to predictive management efforts. Many National Forest districts have witnessed continued fuel use for at least the past 100 years. To explore the need for long-term analysis at the district level, we have developed FORMAN I, a computer simulation written in FORTRAN IV that models prolonged fuel harvesting and its impact on pinyon-juniper woodlands. The technique is well-suited for historical analyses and we comply with an initial application that involves the suggested impact of prehistoric peoples on a marginal woodland in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. To accentuate the significance of the simulation, we have deliberately overestimated woodland parameters while maintaining conservative annual rates for firewood procurement. A low-density woodland (less than 14.8 cords/ha) is completely depleted within 200 years when subjected to tenth-through-twelfth century estimates of human demography for the canyon. Interesting conclusions are drawn from the lack of pinyon-juniper recovery at Chaco over the past millennium. Traditional assumptions, such as the pristine state of Southwestern vegetation prior to historic settlement and subsequent invasion of marginal grasslands by pinyon and juniper, are questioned.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Literature cited
Barbour, M. J., J. Burk, and W. Pitts. 1980. Terrestrial plant ecology. Benjamin-Cummings, Menlo Park, CA.
Beaglehole, E. 1937. Notes on Hopi economic life.Yale University Publications in Anthropology 15.
Betancourt, J. L., and T. R. Van Devender. 1981. Holocene vegetation in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.Science 214:656–658.
Blackburn, W. H., and P. T. Tueller. 1970. Pinyon and juniper invasion in black sagebrush communities in east-central Nevada.Ecology 51:841–848.
Botkin, D. 1976. The role of species interactions in the response of a forest ecosystem to environmental perturbation. Pages 147–171in Systems analysis and simulation in ecology (B. Patten, ed.). Academic Press, New York, NY.
Botkin, D. 1977. Life and death in a forest: The computer as an aid to understanding. Pages 213–233in Ecosystem modeling in theory and practice: An introduction with case histories (C. Hall and J. Day, eds.). John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY.
Botkin, D., J. Janak, and J. Wallis. 1972. Some ecological consequences of a computer model of forest growth.Journal of Ecology 60:849–872.
Carey, H. R. 1980. Playing with fire: Fuelwood prospects in the Southwest.Sun Paper, Bulletin of New Mexico Solar Energy Association 5(8):23–29.
Deevey, E. S., Jr. 1947. Life tables for natural populations of animals.Quarterly Review of Biology 22:238–314.
Donaldson, T. 1893. Moqui pueblo indians of Arizona and pueblo indians of New Mexico. Extra Census Bulletin, U.S. Census Office.
Drager, D. L. 1976. Anasazi population estimates with the aid of data derived from photogrammetric maps. Pages 157–171in Remote sensing experiments in cultural resource studies: Non-destructive methods of archeological exploration, survey and analysis (T. R. Lyons, ed.).Reports of Chaco Center 1, National Park Service, Albuquerque, NM.
Drury, W., and I. Nisbet. 1973. Succession.Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 54(3):331–368.
Dwyer, D., and R. Pieper. 1967. Fire effects on blue grama pinyon rangeland in New Mexico.Journal of Range Management 20:359–362.
Fowells, H. A. 1965. Silvics of forest trees of the United States.USDA Forest Service Agricultural Handbook 271.
Gray, J. R., J. Fowler, and M. Bray. 1982. Free-use fuelwood in New Mexico: Inventory exhaustion and energy equations.Journal of Forestry 80(1):23–26.
Harper, J. L. 1977.Population biology of plants. Academic Press, New York, NY.
Harper, J. L., and J. White. 1974. The dynamics of plants.Annual Review of Ecological Systems 5:419–463.
Hayes, A. C., D. Brugge, and W. J. Judge. 1981. Archeological surveys of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.Chaco Canyon Studies, Publication in Archeology 18A, National Park Service, Washington, DC.
Henry, J. D., and J. M. A. Swan. 1974. Reconstructing forest history from live and dead plant material: An approach to the study of forest succession in southwestern New Hampshire.Ecology 55:772–783.
Horn, H. 1975. Markovian processes of forest. Pages 196–211in Ecology and evolution of communities (M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond, eds.). Belknap, MA.
Howell, J., Jr. 1940. Pinyon and juniper: A preliminary study of volume, growth, and yield. USDA Soil Conservation Service, Region 8,Regional Bulletin No. 71,Forest Series No. 12, Albuquerque, NM.
Howell, J., Jr. 1941. Pinyon and juniper woodlands of the Southwest.Journal of Forestry 39:542–545.
Hutchinson, G. E. 1978. An introduction to population ecology. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Kessell, S. R. 1979. Gradient modeling: Resource and fire management. Springer-Verlag, New York, NY.
Kessell, S. R. 1981. The challenge of modeling post-disturbance plant succession.Environ. Manage. 5(1):5–13.
Kroeber, A. L. 1917. Zuni kin and clan.Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Natural History 18(2).
Lamphere, L. 1977. To run after them. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.
Lanner, R. M. 1977. The eradication of pinyon-juniper woodland: Has the program a legitimate purpose.Western Wildlands Spring Issue: 13–17.
Lightfoot, K. 1979. Food redistribution among pueblo groups.The Kiva 44(4):319–339.
Margalef, R. 1968.Perspectives in ecological theory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Meeuwig, R. O., and J. D. Budy. 1981. Point and line-intersect sampling in pinyon-juniper woodlands. USDA For. Ser. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-104. Internet. For. and Range Exp. Stn., Ogden, UT.
Naroll, R. 1962. Floor area and settlement population.American Antiquity 27(4):587–589.
Odum, E. P. 1969. The strategy of ecosystem development.Science 164:262–270.
Parsons, E. C. 1929. The social organization of the Tewa of New Mexico.American Anthropology Association, Memoir 36.
Samuels, M. L. 1981. POPREG: A simulation of population regulation in human societies. M. A. thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Samuels, M. L. 1982. POPREG I: A simulation of population regulation among the Maring of New Guinea.Human Ecology. In press.
Shugart, H. H., and D. C. West. 1981. Long-term dynamics of forest ecosystems.American Scientist 69:647–652.
Stubbs, S. 1950.Bird's eye of the pueblos. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK.
Steward, J. 1937. Ecological aspects of southwestern society.Anthropos 32:87–104.
Titiev, M. 1944. Old Oraibi.Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology 22(1).
Westoby, M. 1981. The place of the self-thinning rule in population dynamics.American Naturalist 118(4):581–587.
White, J. 1979. The plant as a metapopulation.Annual Review of Ecological Systems. 10:109–145.
White, J., and J. L. Harper. 1970. Correlated changes in plant size and number in plant populations.Journal of Ecology 58:467–485.
Whittaker, R. H. 1975. Communities and ecosystems, 2nd ed. The MacMillan Co., New York, NY.
Wood, D. 1980. Socio-economic context of fuelwood use in small rural communities. AID Evaluation Special Studies no. 1, Microfiche 9916-3.1. 293 pp.
Woodbury, A. M. 1947. Distribution of pigmy conifers in Utah and northeastern Arizona.Ecology 28:112–126.
Yoda, K., T. Kira, H. Ogawa, and K. Hozumi. 1963. Self-thinning in overcrowded pure stands under cultivated and natural conditions.Journal of Biology, Osaka Cy University 14:107–129.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Samuels, M.L., Betancourt, J.L. Modeling the long-term effects of fuelwood harvests on Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands. Environmental Management 6, 505–515 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01868379
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01868379