Sci-Comm: Holt Research Forest Salamander Stations Timber Inventory

Are there any connections between the salamander populations in our forest and the trees? Are there certain forest conditions that are more suitable for salamanders? Do sites with more downed trees have a higher abundance of these amphibians? We sought to answer these questions by collecting data for the Salamander Stations Timber Inventory project, where we aimed to relate tree-level habitat information to salamander population data.

Interpretive sign highlighting research at HRF, including Red-Backed Salamanders.

At the center of each salamander station, a 200m2 circle plot with a radius of 7.98m was established. Once over the summer, a team of two would record the following data for each of the plots: (1) all timber inventory trees (>9.5cm DBH) species, DBH class, and condition; (2) all regeneration trees (>1cm and <9.5cm DBH) species; (3) all logs with >10cm DBH were tallied by species and decomposition class, length and average diameter; (4) stumps were measured for basal diameter; (5) vegetation coverage estimates were made; (6) and light was measured using a ceptometer (an instrument that uses light sensors to measure photosynthetically active radiation, a fancy way to estimate the amount of light reaching the forest floor). This procedure is very similar to how a timber inventory would be conducted, but the specific data points collected are tailored to what information the research team has decided would provide the most relevant information to inform correlations to salamander populations. 

A Red-backed salamander resting on a shingle at HRF.

There are eleven datasets related to the salamander stations timber inventory that are publicly available for download as CSV files at the HRF data archive on the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC) website (https://www.uvm.edu/femc/data/archive/project/saltiminv). Please refer to the table below for more information about each dataset and visit the Holt Research Forest data archive to learn more about our publicly available datasets and their metadata!

Table 1. Salamander Stations Timber Inventory datasets in the HRF data archive.

Filename	Description
Quadrat-Search Ground Cover	A 1994 inventory of ground cover components in the 1983-95 per-quadrat 1m2 salamander search plots.
Quadrat-Search Logs	An inventory of logs around per-quadrat 1m2 salamander survey stations.
Quadrat-Search Shrubs	An inventory of woody vegetation less than 10cm DBH around per-quadrat 1m2 salamander survey stations.
Quadrat-Search Stumps	An inventory of tree stumps around per-quadrat 1m2 salamander survey stations
Quadrat-Search Trees	An inventory of trees greater than 10cm DBH around per-quadrat 1m2 salamander survey stations.
Shingle Station Ground Cover	A 1994 inventory of ground cover components around artificial cover object salamander survey stations.
Shingle Station  Logs	An inventory of logs around artificial cover object salamander survey stations.
Shingle Station Shrubs	An inventory of woody vegetation less than 10cm DBH around artificial cover object salamander survey stations.
Shingle Station Strata Coverage	An inventory of vegetation coverage at four strata over artificial cover object salamander survey stations.
Shingle Station Stumps	An inventory of tree stumps around artificial cover object salamander survey stations.
Shingle Station Trees	An inventory of trees greater than 10cm DBH around artificial cover object salamander survey stations.