High flow and riparian vegetation along the San Miguel River, Colorado

Riparian ecosystems are characterized by abundance of water and frequent flow related disturbance. River regulation typically decreases peak flows, reducing the amount of disturbance and altering the vegetation. The San Miguel River is one of the last relatively unregulated rivers remaining in the Colorado River Watershed. One goal of major landowners along the San Miguel including the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy is to maintain their lands in a natural condition. Conservation of an entire river corridor requires an integrated understanding of the variability in ecosystems and external influences along the river. Therefore, the Bureau of Land Management and others have fostered a series of studies designed to catalogue that variability, and to characterize the processes that maintain the river as a whole. In addition to providing information useful to managers, these studies present a rare opportunity to investigate how a Colorado river operates in the absence of regulation.