Evaluating Amphibian Occurrence Models And The Importance Of Small Isolated Wetlands In The Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area

Download or read book Evaluating Amphibian Occurrence Models and the Importance of Small, Isolated Wetlands in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area written by James T. Julian and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Isolated wetlands lack permanent stream connections to adjacent bodies of water, and are ecologically important because they can be the most abundant type of wetland in a region, and can harbor unique biological communities. Despite this, isolated wetlands are rarely protected by federal and state legislation, and federal agencies do not assess their abundance when reporting national trends in wetland losses. In this dissertation, I present the results from a field study that illustrates how the presence of small and isolated wetlands is important in maintaining populations of pond-breeding amphibians across the Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area located in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I found that stream connections at wetlands strongly influenced the occurrence patterns of five out of nine amphibian species studied, and species that bred earlier in the year were the most likely to occur at small and isolated wetlands. I used occurrence patterns at surveyed wetlands to predict the presence of amphibian species across the entire study area, and estimated that two-thirds of all species would lose at least half of their breeding sites if either isolated wetlands or small wetlands (