Studying life at nearly a mile high

Students in the College of Natural Resources and Environment climbed through rain-soaked forests on Virginia's highest peaks this spring, searching beneath logs, rocks, and leaf litter for a salamander few people ever see.

Sitting atop Virginia's highest mountain peak and neighboring high-elevation forests, a team of undergraduate and graduate students is helping researchers understand how a changing forest affects one of the region's most vulnerable species: the Weller's salamander.

The work is part of a collaborative project led by Carrie Fearer, assistant professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, and Kevin Hamed, associate collegiate professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, that brings together experts in forest health, wildlife conservation, soils, and ecosystem science.

Researchers are examining how beech bark disease, an invasive pest and pathogen complex, and the impacts of Hurricane Helene are altering Southern Appalachian forests and the species that depend on them.

For students, the research means spending long days in the field measuring trees, collecting soil samples, documenting forest conditions, and searching for salamanders along survey routes that have been studied for decades.

“What's cool about it is that we are replicating Dr. Hamed's methods from his Ph.D. so that we can compare them,” said Morgan Crum ’25, now a master’s degree student working on the project. “We can look at those salamanders as well as look at the forest composition and see how both of those things are changing and responding.”

The fieldwork combines techniques from wildlife biology, forestry, and soil science. Students search for salamanders beneath natural cover objects, document vegetation and canopy conditions, measure trees, and collect soil samples that will help researchers understand how changes above ground may be influencing conditions below the forest floor.

The Weller's salamander is a high-elevation species found only in a small portion of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Because the salamander depends on cool, moist forests at high elevations, researchers believe it may be particularly sensitive to environmental changes occurring across the region.

Those changes have become increasingly visible on Whitetop Mountain.

Hamed first began studying salamanders on the mountain in 2008. Long-term research records from the site stretch back even further, providing a rare opportunity to compare current conditions with decades of historical data.

“In the last 15 years, we've seen some pretty dramatic changes to the forests of the Southern Appalachians,” Hamed said. “The forest that these salamanders call home has changed dramatically.”

Researchers said several factors driving those changes. Beech bark disease, caused by an invasive scale insect and fungal pathogen, has killed or weakened American beech trees throughout the region. Earlier infestations of hemlock woolly adelgid transformed forests once dominated by eastern hemlock.

But more recently, Hurricane Helene caused widespread damage across portions of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, creating another layer of disturbance.

Rather than studying these events separately, the team is examining how multiple disturbances interact across the ecosystem.

Fearer said the project aims to understand how changes in forest composition affect salamander habitat, soil conditions, and other ecological processes. Researchers are also investigating whether the combined impacts of disease and severe weather are reducing the amount of suitable habitat available to the species.

The interdisciplinary nature of the project is one of its defining features.

“This is a really unique time that we can combine forest pathology and forest health overall with wildlife,” Fearer said. “We're not only just looking at one aspect of the forest. We're looking at the total ecosystem-level impacts.”

The project includes collaborators from the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, the Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Blue Ridge Discovery Center. Undergraduate students work alongside faculty members, graduate students, and partner organizations throughout the field season, gaining experience with research methods while contributing to long-term ecological monitoring.

By comparing new data with decades of previous surveys, researchers hope to have a better understanding of how vulnerable mountain ecosystems respond to disturbance and how species that depend on these ecosystems, such as the Weller's salamander, respond to these changes.