Craig Allen

Big Fast Shifts in the Ecology of New Mexico Have Begun Due to Climate Change
 

I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin near Green Bay, the oldest of 6 kids. I have been lucky to have been part of a great family thru the years, I always felt close to my parents and have known all of my grandparents well into adulthood (one Grandma is still living on her farm at age 92). When I was 12 my Grandpa Allen bought a swampy, badly abused woodlot from a local farmer, and ever since my family has spent much time there, planting trees and thinning the forest, re-introducing wildflowers, picking blackberries and gardening for food, making firewood, and especially making maple syrup every spring in a perfectly small-scale family effort. Getting out in the woods often with my Grandpa was wonderful � he didn�t have a lot of formal education and was a quiet soft-spoken man, but he knew so much about that place, and I learned a lot from him about the life of a forest, and about appreciating the natural world, the pleasures of simply being outdoors. Being involved in, and observing, the ecological recovery and healing of this land over the past almost 40 years has had a big influence on me. My Dad now cares for this land, and making maple syrup each March is the highlight of every spring for him, the key marker of the turning of the seasons. I'm sad to be missing it this year!
 
So, I've always loved trees and being outdoors, but had no idea about careers growing up, becoming a scientist certainly was not part of my vision then. After high school I went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison and ending up majoring in geography as it gave me the freedom to study many things. At that time my aunt in Tucson convinced my Allen grandparents to retire in Bisbee, on the Arizona/Mexico border, and I started to visit the Southwest often. In 1979 I took my junior-year spring semester off from university to spend time in AZ with them, and on the return trip I stopped in Espanñola to volunteer at a school for 2 weeks that turned into 3 months, falling in love with a teacher there and the landscapes of northern New Mexico. Ever since I have basically been here, except when taking classes at universities, studying the ecology of these fascinating and beautiful landscapes
 
I finished my B.S. in 1980 (and married Sharon), a M.S. in biogeography in 1984 also from Univ. of Wisconsin (thesis topic: "Montane grasslands in the landscape of the Jemez Mts., New Mexico"), and then went on to the Univ. of California at Berkeley to study forest ecology. Along the way I spent 3 months studying tropical ecology in Costa Rica (entirely in the field all over that lovely country, best schooling I ever did), and was going to do my Ph.D. research in extremely remote roadless mountain forests in southern Mexico (Oaxaca). But a major earthquake there and mostly becoming pregnant with our daughter Kiyana caused me to change plans, and so I came back here in 1986 to study changes in the ecology of the Jemez Mountains, supported by the National Park Service at Bandelier National Monument. When I graduated that turned into a job as an ecologist at Bandelier, and later the researchers were shifted to other agencies, so I have ended up working for the U.S. Geological Survey but my office and base of operations are still at Bandelier. Meanwhile we adopted twin sons, Ben and Nik, when they came into our lives at 3 weeks old they were only 4 pounds each, but now they're seniors at Los Alamos High and if you watch basketball you'll see them playing. For 22 years now, parenting and all of its pleasures and challenges has actually been the highest priority, and most satisfying, aspect of my life.
 
So, the Jemez Mts. have become my home, and I've been formally studying the ecology of northern New Mexico for over 25 years now (!!), it's amazing how fast the time flies, in part because it's been very busy and often a lot of fun. Although there have been some very hard times along the way too, professionally and personally, e.g., the Cerro Grande Fire that burned Los Alamos in 2000 was started as a prescribed burn by Bandelier in part from the advice of a certain ecologist there, and despite years of effort eventually my marriage failed � although Sharon and I remain solid co-parents and good friends. The past 10 years I've been increasingly focused on the effects of climate change, and comparing what's happening here to other parts of the Earth, working with many colleagues around the world (e.g., the past 3 years intensely with people in Spain). Overall, life as an ecological scientist has been very good. I just turned 50 this year so I suppose I'm not truly young anymore, but I'm still energized (most of the time at least!) by the pleasures of learning new things every day and having chances to make a difference in this world�