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A Preliminary Investigation Of The Impact Of Forest Management Practices On Microhabitat Abiotic Variables In The Southern Appalachian Mountains, Jasmine Williamson, Allison Bailey, Jacob Lougee, David Patterson, Jessica Patterson

Georgia Journal of Science

Existing research has demonstrated that forest management practices (e.g., clear-cutting, planting) can dramatically impact animal communities. This is particularly the case with amphibian populations due to their sensitivity to microhabitat alterations. However, few studies have investigated the manner by which forest management practices impact the abiotic variables most relevant to healthy amphibian populations. In this study we investigated how spatially localized forest management practices (i.e., at the scale of hundreds of meters) alter the microhabitat variables that have been shown important to amphibian population distributions. We assessed the relationship between forest composition and microhabitat abiotic variables across three localities with …