| Chris Hazen Bio Chris Hazen is the Assistant Manager of Environmental Affairs for the Telluride Ski and Golf Companies in Telluride, Colorado. As a local restoration ecologist with an interest in GIS and spatial data, Chris has worked locally with the Telluride Institute, local government, and the Telluride Ski Area on a mix of issues and projects over the past 15 years. Education MS, Geosciences, Oregon State
University (date)
Web References 1. 2002 Workshop 2. Telluride Daily Planet:
The newspaper choice for the people of Telluride "We've been involved with this since July and communicated the plan - this did not happen in a vacuum," said Chris Hazen, director of environmental affairs for Telluride Ski & Golf Co. 3. Telluride Daily Planet:
The newspaper choice for the people of Telluride Only small populations of fens exist and thrive in the San Juan Mountains and the Rocky Mountain region, the overarching reason the ancient marshlands should continue to be studied, Goodtimes and Chris Hazen, manager of environmental affairs for Telski, agreed. "The percentage of landscapes that are wetlands in a state like Colorado is pretty small, and when you're looking at fens, it's even smaller," Hazen said. "When a creek dries out, the willows live," Hazen said. "When a fen dries out, they lose accumulation of biomass that develops into peat - they depend on summer rains." In Prospect Basin, five separate fens range from almost an acre to two and a half acres in size, with each fen about three meters thick in peat. To date, studies on the Prospect
Basin fens have been conducted by Hazen, wetland specialist Dr. David
Cooper, and Stephanie Owens of Colorado State University - studies that
they would like see continued. "Basically we're comparing results on fens with skier traffic to areas that are un-skied - without more than a year's data, though, it's hard to make real conclusions," Hazen said. "So far there've been no significant differences in terms of function of wetland health as a result of management practices." Hazen and Cooper have been studying water quality and quantity on the fens, which, during expansion construction, were surrounded by temporary and permanent silt fences to prevent erosion. "It's always going to occur but we want to make sure we're not accelerating the process, we want to make sure we're not affecting ground water, we want to make sure grooming and skiing traffic is not hurting the fens," said Hazen. The basin's fens are old, dating as old as 10,000 years, scientists believe. "They exist in a natural very old, very stable ecosystem," Hazen said.
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