One of the most abundant tree species in the United States, the Ponderosa Pine (Pinus Ponderosa) covers 35% of the country’s area (Ehleringer). In the Grand Canyon, these pines can be found on the North and South Rims of the park at elevations between 7,000 and 8,000 ft., below the Boreal Forest and above the and Pinyon-Juniper Woodland.
Historical vs. Today
Like many other national parks, a unique feature of the Grand Canyon is the preserved ecosystems which disallows commercial destruction of forests, allowing to Canyon's Ponderosa Forests to look much the way they did when the Grand Canyon was granted national park status in 1919 .
Ponderosas are easily identified by their thick, orange-red bark and straight trunks. The bark of the Pines is also said to project a sweet vanilla aroma and it isn't uncommon to find visitors with their noses to the trunks of trees (Arizona Republic).
The Ponderosas of the Grand Canyon can reach heights up to 110 ft. and diameters of 5 ft., but can grow taller in the moisture-rich mountains. In fact, John Muir recorded a 220 ft. Ponderosa with an 8ft. diameter trunk in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (GC Natural History)!
Aside from their beauty, Ponderosas have served humans in many ways. Native Americans used the seeds for food production and the pitch for the waterproofing of canoes (NPS). Currently, Ponderosa lumber is in high demand for furniture, cabinets, and trims for homes. After Fir, Ponderosa Pine is the second most heavily produced lumber (WWPA). Fortunately, this lumber isn’t being logged in the Grand Canyon! Ponderosas are plentiful outside the Grand Canyon, with other forests in Utah’s Bryce Canyon and Black Hills National Forest that spans South Dakota and Wyoming.
Conservation
Additionally, Ponderosa forests draw tourists to the Grand Canyon and contribute to $500 million in tourist revenue that the Canyon collects each year (NPS).
Despite the high demand for Ponderosa lumber, the species is well-conserved. Ponderosa’s are not typically clear cut; rather, the older, mature trees are selectively harvested, leaving the younger trees to reseed the soil and repopulate the forests(WWPA). The sustainable logging practices coupled with the current abundance of Ponderosa Pines allow us to remain optimistic about the future of the species.
The Future
Selective cutting of the Ponderosa Pines in Oregon. Image Source: Wikipedia
Despite the prosperous future of Ponderosa forests, water depletion due to economic development in the Grand Canyon is a salient issue for environmentalists. The Escalade Project, for example, plans to develop the easternmost portion of the Grand Canyon into a resort with a tramway to shuttle tourists to the floor of the Canyon. The drilling required for the $120 million development could disrupt the regional aquifer that supplies most of the water to the Grand Canyon and threaten all of its biomes (Grand Canyon Trust). The map below shows the planned development of the Escalade Project at the confluence of the Colorado Rivers near the Eastern edge of the Canyon. The 420-acre plan includes a hotel, RV park, motels, fast-food restaurants. The resort will include a Navajo "cultural center" as well (Batlle).
Planned development at the confluence of the Colorado Rivers, including a tramway to the floor of the Grand Canyon.
Image Source: Tucson Sentinel
Mining is another lucrative practice that potentially threatens the historical integrity of the Grand Canyon. The Park has seen a dramatic increase in mining claims in the past decade, where $1 billion of precious metals are removed from protected areas and their adjacent regions each year. The below chart summarizes the 2000% increase in mining claims near the Grand Canyon in the last 35 years. The future of the Grand Canyon and similar parks are left in jeopardy as outdated mining laws "[put]prospecting ahead of other activities on most of America’s public lands," according to a report by the Pew Environment Group (Casimiro).
On the other hand, the commercial boost could potentially ameliorate the high unemployment and poverty that plagues the Navajo economy in the surrounding rural communities. Those concerned about the future of the Grand Canyon must weigh the economic benefit of developing the region with the cultural benefit of maintaining the Park’s historical integrity.
Did You Know?
In 1952, the U.S. Department of Defense cut down 145 Ponderosa Pines and shipped them to a nuclear weapon testing facility in Nevada to test the effect of atomic bombs on forests. The DoD's experiment confirmed that atomic blasts can, in fact, destroy forests.
Video footage of the experiment shows the initial (overhead) blast setting fire to the the trees, while the subsequent shock wave destroyed them and created more fires (Finkbeiner).
Macrofossil
assemblages provide a record of desert scrub vegetation for most of the last 13,380 years BP from a hyper arid
portion of the lower Colorado River Valley. The
desert scrub in the Grand Canyon is considered a Pleistocene desert, which
corresponds with the very end of the last glacial period.Geologic formations such as gneiss and schist
found at the bottom of the Canyon date back 1,800 million years (Cole).
The desert scrub community exists just above the
river corridor where there is a wide variety of cacti and warm desert scrub
species. Approximately 30 species of birds breed in the
desert uplands. There are no endemic
birds (National Park Services).
Numerous insects and arachnids
live in the Grand Canyon desert scrub where some of the common insects found
above 2,000 feet in elevation are orange paper wasps, honey bees, tarantula
hawks, stink bugs, beetles, black ants, and monarch and swallowtail
butterflies. The mammalian fauna in the
woodland scrub community consists of 50 species, mostly rodents and bats (National Park Services).
Human Impact
Human
impact is good. The
desert scrub area of the Grand Canyon is an area rarely traveled by
humans.The park is for human enjoyment,
but in ways that will not impair the Canyon’s natural resources. Most
of native plant communities are largely intact, but invasive plants are present
due to past livestock grazing, which were introduced by humans (Anderson).
However,
in 2009, NPS rangers and volunteers began a program to remove invasive species
within the area in order to restore its native ecosystem. Organisms considered “pests”, such as beetles
that kills trees, presents another dilemma because they are components of the
environment. The table below depicts the increase in invasive, non-native plants over time (National Park Services).
Humans
benefit from park enjoyment of the Grand Canyon’s ecosystems and
sceneries.The
key is for the National Park Service to provide for public enjoyment as well as
the preservation of the natural ecological processes of the ecosystems.
Enjoying yoga at the Grand Canyon
Image Source: Photo Shelter
The
desert scrublands are not explicitly a protected area, as humans rarely travel
through this area. However,
certain plateaus of the Grand Canyon are protected areas due to uranium
mining.
The Future
The
issue of protection and profit is an ongoing conflict.Because the landscape of the Grand Canyon
slopes down to the south, the vast and uninterrupted expanse of scenery is
rare. Proposed
developments such as the 374-acre Stilo project would break up the view (Ingley).Such visual clutter would create a jarring
gash in the scenery. It
is essential that the building is aimed to blend in with the scenery if this
project is to be pursued.
The
most likely thing to happen to the desert scrubland is an increase of invasive
plant species if NPS does not follow through with maintenance. In
addition, increases in temperature will cause the plant and animal species to adapt
to severe, changing weather conditions. National
Park Services should keep it their mission to balance priorities of nature
conservation within the ecosystem as well as keeping the Grand Canyon a
touristic human visitation center.The
1995 General Management Plan continued to emphasize ways to allow still more
people to enter the park (NPS). Ecological
restoration projects are still hindered by debates over cost, purpose, and
priority.
