Aspen Status Report and Recommendation for the Book Cliffs

Regionally quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) forests are experiencing numerous impediments to resilience. In the West, recent drought, fire suppression, insects, diseases, climate trends, inappropriate management, and ungulate herbivory are impacting these high biodiversity forests. We conducted a landscape assessment of aspen communities in the Book Cliffs region, Vernal Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management, for the purposes of determining landscape-level status of aspen and making recommendations for future management of these forests. The study area consists of 268 distinct aspen polygons totaling approximately 70 ha (174 acres) of aspen forest surrounded by much larger tracts of pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, grassland, and riparian types. This relatively small coverage amplifies the importance of moist aspen forests as oases of biodiversity in much larger landscapes of arid systems