Identifying Cumulative Impacts from Wildfire and Wildfire Mitigations at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The impacts of wildfire on cultural and natural resources have been discussed and analyzed for many years. Impacts include loss of irreplaceable artifacts, features, habitats, and landscapes due to increased wildfire regimes, as well as climate change. While these analyses provide land managers and resource specialists with information that is important for protecting resources from fire, much of the existing literature does not systematically address the impacts of wildfire mitigations in the same manner. In accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), cumulative impacts analyses are a requirement of federal agencies to take into consideration the potential impacts of a proposed project that has potential impacts similar to other actions in an identified surrounding area. Using the area of the Pajarito Plateau where Los Alamos National Laboratory resides, this poster identifies potential areas of improvement for cumulative impact analyses of both wildfire impacts and impacts from wildfire mitigation strategies on cultural and natural resources. Potential information for this preliminary analysis will come from the Santa Fe National Forest, the National Park Service at Bandelier National Monument, and Los Alamos National Laboratory operated for the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23109