Ashley VanderHam, graduate student, will defend her master's degree thesis, "Informing Flood Plain Wetland Restoration with Amphibian Monitoring" at 9 a.m., July 14 in 901 Hardin Hall.
VanderHam's abstract:
Wetlands are among the most important and complex ecosystems in the world. They contribute to nutrient cycling, the hydrologic cycle and provide critical habitat for many plants, fish and wildlife. Channelization of Missouri River resulted in the loss of many floodplain wetlands. Recognition of the importance of wetlands has led to legislation that has increased wetland restoration. Despite ongoing restoration efforts, there are few ecologically-based performance guidelines, and managers need methods to quantify and assess the success of restored riverine wetland systems.
In 2008, a multi-institutional project funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was initiated in four states: Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska. The main goal of the project is to assess the success of previously restored wetlands and to create wetland restoration guidelines for future use. To determine restoration success, herpetofauna monitoring was established on previously restored wetlands. Frog call surveys and tadpole dip net surveys were conducted and analyzed using occupancy techniques to help determine restoration success. Amphibians were chosen for monitoring because they are globally declining, they integrate terrestrial and aquatic environments, and because they are good indicators of wetland restoration success. This seminar reports the results of herpetofauna monitoring from three Missouri River bends in Nebraska, a subset of the overall project.
I report on a comparison of frog call surveys and tadpole dip net occupancy results, a novel co-occurrence analysis for frog call surveys and a functional connectivity analysis based on anuran dispersal distances, and describe how this contributes to the goal of defining successful wetland restorations.