2025 Special Topic: Fostering Forest Stewardship

This topic covers ecozones, forest ecosystem services, forest-dependent species, and the impacts of insect pests and diseases.

• LO 1.1: Describe an ecozone or ecological land classification.
• LO 1.2: Identify ecosystem services provided by New Mexico forest ecosystems including environmental, economic, social, and cultural values.
• LO 1.3: Identify forest-dependent species in New Mexico.
• LO 1.4: Explain the impacts of typical forest insect pests such as Mountain pine beetle, Spruce beetle, Spruce budworm, Forest tent caterpillar, Emerald ash borer, and Asian longhorn beetle.
• LO 1.5: Describe the impacts of typical forest diseases.

This topic focuses on assessing forest vulnerability, defining adaptive capacity, analyzing ecozone-specific vulnerability, evaluating adaptation strategies like assisted migration and afforestation, and recommending sustainable forest management practices.

• LO 2.1: Outline the components of a forest vulnerability assessment, including its purpose and steps.
• LO 2.2: Define adaptive capacity in relation to vulnerable flora and fauna of forest communities.
• LO 2.3: Explain how various ecozones face differing levels of vulnerability.
• LO 2.4: Analyze the benefits and drawbacks of various adaptation strategies for forests, including assisted species migration, selective breeding, and/or afforestation.
• LO 2.5: Recommend adaptation strategies to support sustainable forest management.

This topic addresses the impacts of increasing drought on global forests, the effects of wildfires on hydrology, wildlife, and soils, changes in New Mexico's wildfire regime, the role of globalization in spreading invasive species, the use of species range map predictions, and predicted changes in ecozones and ecological land classifications.

• LO 3.1: Identify how increasing drought severity and frequency impacts New Mexico forests. 
• LO 3.2: Describe how wildfire impacts the hydrology, wildlife, and soils of forest communities.
• LO 3.3: Describe how the wildfire regime in New Mexico forests has changed over the century.
• LO 3.4: Articulate the relationship between globalization and the spread of invasive species in New Mexico forests.
• LO 3.5: Connect species range map predictions with scientific data.
• LO 3.6: Describe predicted changes in ecozones and ecological land classifications.

This topic explores how governments assess the sustainability of forest harvesting levels, the effects of natural disturbances like wildfires and droughts on harvest quotas, the goals of various legislative initiatives supporting forest health, and how land-based learning and Traditional Knowledge systems contribute to land use and forest management practices.

• LO 4.1: Describe how governments determine if forest harvesting levels will be sustainable in the future.
• LO 4.2: Explain how natural disturbances such as wildfires, windstorms, droughts, and hail storms impact the forest industry's total annual harvest quota.
• LO 4.3: Identify the main goals of various legislation initiatives that support forest health.
• LO 3.3: Describe how land-based learning and Traditional Knowledge systems can contribute to improved land use, forest management, and mitigation strategies.