Page 25 - Black Range Naturalist, Vol. 2, No. 2

Important Plant Areas of New
Mexico
New Mexico State Forestry Division
“A website you might find interesting with respect to rare plants and wildfires in New Mexico is our interactive map of
Important Plant Areas of New Mexico. You can zoom in on that map and add a fire history layer (in addition to other layers) to get a better understanding of how our Important Plant Areas (hotspots for rare plants) have been impacted by large wildfires over the past 20 years or so.”
- Daniela Roth
Light green, on the map of important plant areas (detail of the Black Range area shown below), indicates an area with a biodiversity rank of “Very High”. Dark green indicates the highest biodiversity rank of “Outstanding”, light yellow ranks “High”, and bright yellow indicates a ranking of “Moderate”.
It is an interactive map with a great deal of interactive capability, and thus, a lot of information. The detail of the Hillsboro Hills Important Plant Area, below, shows the ecoregions in the area, in this case, the Chihuahuan Desert to the east and the Arizona/New Mexico Mountains Ecoregion to the west. Township and Range map designations can also be overlaid as a filter on this map.
There is also a filter which indicates wildfire history. A detail of the Black Range is shown below, indicaing large fires by calendar year, 2000 to 2016.
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