From this morning’s newspaper, a piece about the Bosque Environmental Monitoring Program (sub/ad req). I’ve been hearing great things about BEMP for ages, and finally did what I should have done years ago, which is call up Dan Shaw, one of the program’s directors, and ask if I could come hang out and do a story.

I’m so glad I did:

This little patch of bosque on the river’s west side, just south of the Montaño bridge, must be the most intensely studied bit of ecosystem in Albuquerque.

Located behind Bosque School, it is home turf for the Bosque Environmental Monitoring Program.

The 13-year-old research and education program started with a group of Bosque students looking at the after-effects of a 1995 fire near Tingley Beach. But while the riverside woods behind Bosque School are still its base of operations, the program today involves some 5,000 students and teachers each year studying 25 sites along a 140-mile stretch of the Rio Grande.