DENVER – High in the mountains west of Fort Collins, teams of scientists and engineers are pretending to be beavers.
They may not be swimming or chewing trees, but researchers with the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado State University are building fake beaver dams in burn scars to study how wetlands created by the dams impact ecosystem restoration and water quality after wildfires.
The research led by Tim Fegel is some of the first of its kind, he said. Scientists have studied how meadow and wetland restoration affects wildlife habitat, but there’s been little exploration of how wetlands created by beaver dams could change water quality post-wildfire, said Fegel, a biogeochemistry lab manager with the Forest Service who is leading the project…