Abstract
Salamanders and riparian forests are intimately interconnected. Salamanders are integral to ecosystem functions, contributing to vertebrate biomass and complex food webs in riparian forests. In turn, these forests are critical ecosystems that perform many environmental services, facilitate high biodiversity and species richness, and provide habitat to salamander populations. Due to the global decline of amphibians, it is important to understand, as thoroughly and holistically as possible, the roles of environmental parameters and the impact of human activities on salamander abundance and diversity in riparian forests. To determine the population responses of salamanders to a variety of environmental factors and anthropogenic activities, we conducted a review of published literature that compared salamander abundance and diversity, and then summarized and synthesized the data into general patterns. We identify stream quality, leaf litter and woody debris, riparian buffer width, and soil characteristics as major environmental factors influencing salamander populations in riparian forests, describe and explain salamander responses to those factors, and discuss the effects of anthropogenic activities such as timber harvest, prescribed fires, urbanization, road construction, and habitat fragmentation. This review can assist land and natural resource managers in anticipating the consequences of human activities and preparing strategic conservation plans.
Highlights
Riparian forests are critical ecosystems that are found adjacent to water bodies such as streams and function as the transition zone between terrestrial and aquatic areas
The focus of the latter portion of this paper is on how anthropogenic activities affect salamander populations, but first we reviewed the influences of local habitat and microhabitat features to explain exactly how and why human activities are altering ecosystem functions
Most studies that examine the effects of clear-cuts on amphibians document higher abundance on control forest plots than on harvest plots, a trend that holds true for riparian forests [98,120]
Summary
Riparian forests are critical ecosystems that are found adjacent to water bodies such as streams and function as the transition zone between terrestrial and aquatic areas. The landscape composition (e.g., presence of forests vs impervious surfaces) of upland regions can enhance or degrade water quality by influencing the amount of nutrient and sediment runoff [5,14,15] Factors such as stream size, local geomorphology, and hydrologic regime can determine the width of a riparian zone and the richness of its associated plant community, which in turn influences the presence of other riparian and stream biota [12,16]. Salamanders can be used as cost-effective indicator species by providing readily quantifiable metrics of ecosystem health, function, and integrity in forest environments [33,36,37] Due to their highly permeable skin and dependency on multiple habitat types throughout their life cycles, salamanders are physiologically linked to microclimatic and environmental processes. American riparian forests; (2) describe and explain salamander responses to those factors; and (3) examine the effects of major anthropogenic activities, including timber harvest, prescribed fires, urbanization, road construction, and habitat fragmentation
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