News
250 Years of American Democracy, 50 Years of Dedicated Forest Planning
Alan Barton, NMFWRI Director 2026 marks a milestone in the history of the United States, as we celebrate 250 years as an independent nation. The July 4 holiday marks the date on which the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, penned primarily by Thomas Jefferson to assert sovereignty over the American territory and […]
Testing a Low-Cost Method for Monitoring Erosion Control Structures
Along New Mexico streams and rivers, professionals use a variety of low-tech structures to reduce erosion, restore stream banks, and help spread streamflow across the natural floodplain. What if there was a low-cost, novel way to monitor the effectiveness of the structures over time? Those are questions Dr. Nate Tomczyk with the New Mexico Forest […]
SWERI ReShape Earns Fed GIS Award
The Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG), a mapping application developed by the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institute’s ReSHAPE Program, has received the Interactive Ingenuity award at the 2026 Esri Federal GIS Conference Virtual Map Gallery—a recognition of innovation in interactive geospatial tools. The Interactive Ingenuity award, presented as part of Esri’s annual Federal GIS Conference, […]
Bark Beetle Management Resources
Fire and drought can make New Mexico forests vulnerable to a variety of bark beetles. Find out more about the beetles and how to manage them in these downloadable resources. Click on the button below and scroll down the page to the technical guides.
Fire history in the Four Corners
Wildfires in the Four Corners have grown larger in the last couple of decades. NMFWRI’s Dana Heusinkveld created this timeline of wildfires in the region encompassing New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah.
To see fires that are currently burning in New Mexico along with historic fire info in the NM Fire Viewer, click the button below.
Restoration
The New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute provides technical assistance and practical knowledge in forest and woodland restoration to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire and restore healthy and sustainable forested ecosystems and restoration-based economies.
GIS/Mapping
NMFWRI represents the state’s only dedicated capability for supporting the spatial data analysis needs of external stakeholders in the natural resources sector, as well as the GIS/GPS capacity for Highlands University and for most of northern New Mexico.
Monitoring
Restoration based monitoring of New Mexico's forest and riparian ecosystems is integral to NMFWRI's mission.
Collaboration
The New Mexico Forest & Watershed Restoration Institute supports natural-resource-based collaboration by assisting communities to form collaborative organizations and build the capacity to work together to solve problems and restore natural habitats.