Pandemic-Era Field Research in Alpine and Riparian Landscapes
Captures the 2020 field season at RMBL through the dual lens of COVID-19 safety protocols and ongoing ecological work in alpine patterned ground and riparian plant communities across the Gunnison Basin.
Knowledge Graph (320 nodes, 1679 connections)
Research Primer
Background
Energy production, atmospheric quality, and environmental policy intersect in ways that profoundly shape the Gunnison Basin and western Colorado. From historic coal mining near Crested Butte to contemporary debates over renewable energy, transmission line siting, and federal land leasing, decisions made in policy arenas determine what landscapes look like, what residents breathe, and how communities thrive economically. Concepts spanning energy development, renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions, coal power plants, energy facility siting, federal energy policy, Section 368 Energy Corridors, and commercial leasing moratoria all converge in this region, where public lands managed by federal agencies sit adjacent to small mountain communities and high-elevation research sites.
Atmospheric concerns are equally central. Air quality monitoring, biomass burning, brown cloud formation, volatile organic compounds, dioxin emissions, fly ash, and Clean Air Act standards shape how regulators evaluate energy infrastructure and waste management. Increasingly, plastic pollution has emerged as an atmospheric and ecological issue, with microplastics deposited even in remote protected areas (Brahney et al., 2020). Connected concerns include energy storage, evaporative cooling, snow heat storage, moisture transport, energy budgets, carbon oxidation, and carbon negative strategies. Policy levers such as tax credits, user fees, electric power rates, power purchase agreements, Community Energy grants, Energy Savings Performance Contracts, and the Solar and Conservation Bank shape outcomes, while community planning concepts like sustainable building, Green Design, boom-bust cycles, rural electrification, recycling, vehicle miles traveled, lobbying disclosure, and the right to a healthful environment frame the social context. Methodological approaches such as long-term measurements, rare species monitoring, R2CROSS methodology for instream flows, kinetic fractionation in hydrology, and bioeconomic modeling tie policy to measurable environmental outcomes.
Historical context
Colorado's energy policy history is rooted in mid-twentieth-century debates over rural electrification, homesteading legacies, and the boom-bust cycles of extractive industries. The Warren-Alquist Act framework and federal energy policy established siting authorities and review processes that still govern oil shale, coal, and renewable projects across the Western Slope. Documents from the 1982 Energy Forum on oil shale Energy Forum 1982 Oil Shale Perspectives capture the discouragement of developers when commodity prices collapsed, illustrating the boom-bust dynamic that has long shaped Aspen, Grand Junction, and Gunnison-area communities. Contemporary news coverage of the same era documented industry frustrations with federal policy uncertainty Energy Developers Express Discouragement.
Broader environmental policy frameworks emerged alongside these energy decisions. Early documents such as Canada and the Human Environment Canada and the Human Environmentand The Art of Managing the Environment The Art of Managing the Environmentestablished templates for regional environmental management, urban sprawl review, atmospheric monitoring, and water quality objectives that influenced U.S. agencies including the USEPA. Population and resource concerns articulated by Ehrlich and Holdren in Eight Thousand Million People by the Year 2010? Eight Thousand Million People by the Year 2010? foreshadowed today's debates over carrying capacity, emissions, and waste.
Management actions and stakeholder roles
Key stakeholders in the Gunnison Basin energy and atmospheric policy space include the USEPA, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the U.S. Department of Energy, the IPCC for climate science framing, and technology vendors such as AlterNRG and Westinghouse Plasma Corporation. Transmission planning documents (Transmission Systems 2008) illustrate how regional utilities, public service commissions, and state energy boards coordinate electric transmission line siting and integrate renewable energy systems while pursuing greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
Waste-to-energy and emissions management represent another major policy arena. Comparative assessments of solid waste conversion technologies A Comparative Assessment of Commercial Technologies, evaluations of alternative solid waste processing Evaluation of Alternative Solid Waste Processing Technologies, and feasibility analyses of plasma arc gasification in Honolulu Feasibility and Economic Analysis for Plasma Arc Gasifica...and Anchorage Development of a Waste-to-Energy Project for the Municipa...explore mass burn, refuse-derived fuel, pyrolysis, and plasma gasification Plasma Arc Recycling Plasma Arc Recycling: An intro, Westinghouse Plasma Gasification Technology, PLASMA GASIFICATION, Plasma Technology for Treatment of Waste. Environmental assessments of two-stage plasma gasification Environmental Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste by Two-... Environmental Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste by Two-... examine emissions including TCDD and dioxins under Maximum Achievable Control Technology Standards. Distributed generation through biomass and municipal solid waste gasification Economics of Distributed Power Generation also figures into rural Colorado energy planning, alongside ongoing debates about whether to incinerate plastics for energy recovery Should plastics be a source of energy?.
Current challenges and future directions
The most pressing issues today center on decarbonization, plastic and microplastic pollution, transmission buildout for renewables, and managing legacy coal infrastructure. Microplastic deposition documented across western U.S. protected areas (Brahney et al., 2020) signals that even remote sites like RMBL accumulate plastic particles via long-range atmospheric transport, with deposition rates averaging 132 plastics per square meter per day and more than 1,000 metric tons falling on western protected lands annually. This finding reframes plastic policy as an air quality and protected lands issue, not solely a solid waste problem.
Looking forward, the Gunnison Basin will navigate solar thermal generation, parabolic trough and compact linear Fresnel reflector deployments, power tower projects, fuel cells, Stirling engines, combined cycle systems, Heat Recovery Boilers, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and Clean Coal Technology proposals. Soft energy paths and net present value calculations increasingly favor distributed renewables, while debates over commercial leasing moratoria, Section 368 Energy Corridors, and energy facility siting on federal lands continue. Waste management innovations such as vitrification, steam explosion pretreatment, ethanol fermentation, and biotransformation will shape how communities handle solid waste streams.
Connections to research
Research at RMBL connects directly to these policy questions through long-term atmospheric and ecological measurements. National Atmospheric Deposition Program monitoring informs Clean Air Act compliance and tracks pollutants relevant to high-elevation ecosystems. The microplastic deposition findings of Brahney et al. (Brahney et al., 2020) rely on the same protected-area sampling networks that RMBL researchers use to track snowpack chemistry, moisture transport, kinetic fractionation in precipitation, and rare species responses to environmental change. Studies of volatile organic compounds, detritus processing, and disturbance-driven conversion link atmospheric chemistry to community ecology, while bioeconomic modeling and rare species monitoring inform policy on energy facility siting in sensitive landscapes such as Cebolla Creek and the broader Gunnison sage-grouse range.
References
A Comparative Assessment of Commercial Technologies for Conversion of Solid Waste to Energy. →
Brahney et al., 2020. Plastic rain in protected areas of the United States. →
Canada and the Human Environment. →
Development of a Waste-to-Energy Project for the Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska. →
Economics of Distributed Power Generation via Gasification of Biomass and Municipal Solid Waste. →
Eight Thousand Million People by the Year 2010? →
Energy Developers Express Discouragement. →
Energy Forum 1982 Oil Shale Perspectives. →
Environmental Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste by Two-Stage Plasma Gasification. →
Environmental Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste by Two-Stage Plasma Gasification. →
Evaluation of Alternative Solid Waste Processing Technologies. →
Feasibility and Economic Analysis for Plasma Arc Gasification in Honolulu. →
Plasma Arc Recycling: An intro. →
Plasma Arc Recycling: An intro. →
PLASMA GASIFICATION. →
PLASMA GASIFICATION. →
Plasma Technology for Treatment of Waste. →
Should plastics be a source of energy? →
Summary of Qualifications Westinghouse Plasma Gasification Technology. →
The Art of Managing the Environment. →
Transmission Systems 2008. →
Concept (4) →
periglacial patterned ground
Geometric ground formations created by freeze-thaw processes in alpine environments
post-fire recovery period
Period required for sagebrush to recover to pre-fire conditions after burning
COVID-19 field research protocols
Safety procedures including isolation, testing, and capacity restrictions to enable field research during pandemic
AASHTO design criteria
Protocol (2) →
FLIR thermal imaging of alpine patterned ground
Forward Looking Infrared thermal photography combined with machine learning data sculpture techniques to visualize temperature patterns in periglacial...
camera trapping
Motion-activated camera deployment to detect and monitor presence of snow leopards and other wildlife in remote mountain environments.