The Statewide Natural Resources Assessment (Assessment) documents the current conditions and trends in New Mexico’s natural resources. The Assessment was developed using the best available data and information characterizing the resources and assets valued by New Mexicans, and the and major threats to resources, mapped at a scale appropriate for large landscape planning.
All lands within the state are included in the assessment, providing information to support science driven land management for all land managers. While the Forest Action Plan is focused on forest and woodland management activities, the Statewide Assessment documents conditions in all land cover types and ecoregions.
Draft data layers mapping resources and assets, and threats to them were presented in a webinar January 29th, 2020. A recording of that webinar is available here.
The best available data was used to characterize the resources and threats in the state. Subject matter experts were convened to provide expertise on the data that is available that meets the needs of the Assessment. For data to be included in the assessment, the data must be statewide, cover all lands, be grounded in science, and must be already in existence or be relatively easy to derive from existing data.
Technical Panels
Expert panels were convened for eight thematic grouping of valued resources and assets. The eight themes included in the 2020 Natural Resources Assessment are: Biodiversity, Recreation and Cultural Use, Water Quality and Supply, Urban Forests and Communities, Wildland and Communities, Timber and Grazing, Indigenous and Traditional Communities, and Soil Health and Carbon Storage.
Threats from Hazards
The risk to each valued resource and asset will be evaluated for six hazards: Wildfire, Post-wildfire Hazards, Disease Insects & Invasive Plants, Development & Fragmentation, Climate Change, and Erosion & Sedimentation. Susceptibility of each valued resource and asset will be characterized for each hazard using an approach already regularly used for wildfire risk assessment (Scott, Thompson, & Calkin 2013).