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  Home Page » News » Earth » Gathering Moss

Gathering moss

Scientists focus studies on rare sphagnum species of San Juans

by Dale Rodebaugh
Herald Staff Writer SILVERTON - Academics and others spent Tuesday and Wednesday here and in Ouray learning how to identify sphagnum mosses - remnant populations left in the San Juan Mountains after the glaciers retreated about 15,000 years ago.

Sphagnum moss, better known to gardeners as peat moss - a soil additive that increases soil capacity to retain water and nutrients - grows in fens. Fens are delicate wetlands that may sustain rare plant and animal life or serve as geologic time capsules.

"In certain locations, sphagnum mosses stayed behind (the glacial retreat)," said David Cooper, a professor and wetlands ecologist from Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Finding species gives clues as to what happened during climatic conditions in the past.

Cooper was among workshop leaders who spent Monday scouting fens in the region for sphagnum moss locations to be visited by workshop attendees. Also on the scouting team was Richard Andrus, a sphagnologist from Binghamton University in New York. The workshop was hosted by Mountain Studies Institute and co-sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service and the Colorado Native Plant Society.

The search party was delighted with the discovery of sphagnum riparium at Chattanooga, an abandoned mining community north of Silverton. It's only the third time the species has been discovered in the Rocky Mountains and the first time in Colorado, they said.

Even rarer is the sphagnum balticum discovered in a Chattanooga fen several years ago by Andrus, Cooper and Chris Arp. In 2003, the trio published a paper about the species, which has been found nowhere else in the continental United States.

Fens are delicate environments built over millennia as organic matter is compacted to form spongy accumulations several feet deep. In contrast to a marsh, the continued existence of fens depends on upslope subterranean water. Minerals in the soil determine the acidity or alkalinity of the water, which in turn dictates the type of mosses that grow. Chattanooga is called an iron fen because of the mineral-rich caldera that drains the area.

"Iron fens have acidic water that produces remarkable vegetation," Andrus said. "We have to protect and restore them."

If the untrained eye doesn't recognize a fen, it certainly won't recognize the moss that grows on the surface. Determining the species of sphagnum moss is even more difficult.

"It's not easy to identify species," said Andrus, who's been looking at mosses for 40 years. "There are a lot of variations in sphagnum moss, which can make them hard to tell apart."

Even the same species can look different depending on where it's found, Andrus said.

Colorado has 13 species of sphagnum moss, including the riparium discovered Monday at the Chattanooga fen, Andrus said. Asked about the reaction of sphagnologists when a discovery such as the riparium is made, Andrus said with the resignation of an old-timer: "It's pretty cool."

The Rocky Mountains are home to 22 species of sphagnum moss and North America has 90 to 100 species, Andrus said. Colorado is the southernmost location in the world for the obtusum, balticum and riparium species of sphagnum moss.

Global warming is focusing increasing attention on sphagnum moss. Scientists in Canada and the United States are investigating how its ability to store carbon might be part of an energy solution, Andrus said.

daler@durangoherald.com