College Park, MD 20740-2496
Modest levels of atmospheric nitrogen deposition have had a large effect on high elevation ecosystems of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Responses in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems brought about a collaborative effort between Rocky Mountain National Park (a Clean Air Act Class 1 area), EPA, and the State of Colorado to implement a nitrogen emission reduction plan, with targeted goals by 2012. Monitoring in the long-term research watershed Loch Vale indicates ecosystem biophysical parameters are continuing to change in unexpected ways, and a combination of ecosystem modeling with a version of the CENTURY model (DayCent-Chem), climate analysis, and statistical structural equation modeling suggests climate patterns are influencing forest and tundra biogeochemical cycling, which in turn affects stream water chemical composition.
Dr. Jill S. Baron is an ecosystem ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and a Senior Research Ecologist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. Her interests include applying ecosystem concepts to management of human-dominated regions, and understanding the biogeochemical and ecological effects of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition to mountain ecosystems. Baron has edited two books: Rocky Mountain Futures: an ecological perspective (Island Press 2002), which addresses the past present, and possible future human influences on ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains, and Biogeochemistry of a Subalpine Ecosystem (Springer-Verlag 1992) which summarized the first 10 years of long-term research to the Loch Vale Watershed in Rocky Mountain National Park. Dr. Baron received her Ph.D. from Colorado State University in 1991, and has undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin. She has received a number of achievement awards from the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and USDA Forest Service, including the Department of Interior Meritorious Service Award in 2002. She has been a member of the Governing Board of the Ecological Society of America, serves on several Science Advisory Boards, has given testimony to Congress on western acid rain, and is Editor in Chief of Issues in Ecology, and associate editor for Ecological Applications. Recently Baron has served as Lead Author of the CCSP SAP4.4 chapter on climate change adaptations for national parks, and was a member of the Department of Interior Climate Change Task Force and the USGS Science Strategy Team.
