Studying life at nearly a mile high

So we're out here today as part of the Dean's discovery grant, where we're looking to see how beech bark disease, which is an invasive pest and pathogen, how that disease has impacted an endangered salamander within southwestern Virginia. together with invasive pathogens, natural disasters, the forest that these salamanders call home in and have changed dramatically. And what we're going to be able to do now is quantify what's going on with the forest. Look at the salamanders that are present now and see how both of those factors have changed, and try to determine if they've impacted the salamanders. The first thing that we do when we get to our sites is collect salamanders. So we search under cover objects like rocks and logs and search through the leaf litter and then collect those animals, take the data and measurements that we need and then we release them back. So, as we're in the mountains the elevation and the contours change a lot. But we try to keep things very consistent. So using all the tapes to denote where our sampling frames are helps a lot. So we use the contour and kind of go parallel with the mountain to make that consistent. I started working here in 2008 studying the salamanders on White Top Mountain. In the last 15 years, we've seen some pretty dramatic changes to the forest of Southern Appalachia. the forest ran now is really was dominated by eastern hemlock. And they're gone. Hurricane Helene has been such a different type of abiotic disturbance that we're not used to here in southwestern Virginia. So it's really not known how it's going to impact the Weller’s salamander and wildlife in general. So my favorite part of this work is really actually combining several of Carrie’s departments and expertise together. So I think this is a really unique time that we can combine forest pathology, forest health overall with the Fish and Wildlife department. So we're not only just looking at one aspect of the forest, we're looking at the total ecosystem level impacts. Her expertise in beech bark disease in forestry, our work with salamanders come together. Our students are working together. I think it's an ideal collaboration.