The Colorado front range: a century of ecological change

This book focuses on change in structure and composition of vegetation, specifically forest cover. Thomas T. Veblen and Diane C. Lorenz hope that Colorado Front will be used by residents of the area who want to be better informed on resource-management issues. The book includes a description of the Front Range area and an analysis of its forest ecology. The main portion of the text is devoted to sixty-nine sets of matched plates of landscape photographs, the first dating from 1880 to 1915 and the second from the 1980s. Each matched set is accompanied by a brief commentary describing the site and the changes in vegetation that occurred. A short discussion of conclusions completes the text. The photographic core of the book provides all geographers with insights into the evolution of the present-day landscape of the Front Range. Changing forest landscapes has been a dominating process in the evolution of the American landscape, as Michael Williams has documented in his recent Americans and Their Forests (1989). Veblen and Lorenz offer a case study in how the process was accomplished in the Colorado Front Range. The repeat photography focuses on effects from three kinds of human settlement: mining camps, railroad construction and utilization, and nationalpark development. The destruction of forests during the nineteenth century, by pioneers who viewed them as a wilderness to conquer, was awesome. Not only were trees harvested as lumber for building, ties for railroad tracks, and fuel, but also cover was burned to expose veins of precious metals. Photographs include samples from all five elevational zones, so variations in altitude, temperature, and moisture may be considered together with the effect of human settlement. Recent forest destruction by the pine-bark beetle and by the spruce budworm is accounted for. The dramatic influence of the national park and forest services in improving the quality of the forest is apparent from viewing the photographs. However, Veblen and Lorenz do note that many of the depicted landscapes were in the early stages of redevelopment when the original photographs were taken. They conclude that many of the forests have regenerated with a climax vegetation similar to that in existence before nineteenth-century settlement, although the cover is often now thicker than it was then. The exception is the replacement of foothill grasslands by ponderosa pines. Veblen and Lorenz offer three explanations: a more mesic climate, overgrazing, and decreased frequency of fire, all of which appear to have tipped the ecological balance in favor of the ponderosa pine. Geographers interested in more than the plant changes along the Front Range might wish for more detail than this volume offers. Nevertheless, the 500