WSP04503

• File Number: 8142.600.20
• Description: Trinidad Project - Environmental Studies
• State: CO
• Basin: Arkansas
• Water Division: 2
• Date: 3/1/1974
• Author: Corps of Engineers
• Title: Draft Environmental Statement - Trinidad Lake Project - Purgatoire River - Colorado
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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a. Terrestrial flora. The floral community represented

in and adjacent to the project area can be divided into two generally
distinct associations: that of the valley floor - flood plain and

terrain - and that of the surrounding hills. On the valley floor,

deciduous riparian vegetation consisting of small, isolated groves

of cottonwood, willow and Siberian elm follow the sinuous stream.

Wild plum, chokecherry, rose, raspberry, elderberry, and locust also

make up the riverine flora. Outside cultivated land, grasses (blue

grama, Indian rice grass, brome, three-awn, foxtail, sand dropseed,

wheatgrass, little bluestem, needle and thread, wild rye, cord grass,

meadow fescue and cheat grass), forbs (kochia, sunflower, goose foot ,

cocklebur, plantain, snakeweed, Russian thistle, dock, dove weed,

bindweed, locoweed and gourd), and woody shrubs (four-wing saltbush)

soapweed yucca, prickly pear and cholla cacti, sage, skunkbush, and

rabbit bush) cover the flood plain and adjacent terraces. Because

much of the project area was previously occupied by small towns and

utilized as pasture and cropland and by the mining industry, much

of the deyeloping vegetation is in a seral stage and could not be

considered aa climax. Thia complex abruptly terminates at the base
of the hills where the coniferous pinon woodland becomes dominant.

The pinon-juniper woodland occupies a wide belt between grassland

and the heavier coniferous forests of higher altitudes and has a

sufficiently distinctive biota to be considered a biome. Floral

species in this association include a moderate to dense overs tory

of pinon pine and oDeseeded and Rocky Mountain juniper. The pinon

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