Stories from the Field: Salamander Surveys in Southeast Ohio

Photo By: Andrew Connolly

Written By: Andrew Connolly
Summer. Sun. Southeast Ohio. Surveys. Salamanders. In June of 2021, I found myself hiking the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains with a team of volunteers at my side searching for salamanders in Wayne National Forest. Wearing long pants, sleeves, hats, and backpacks, with hiking boots and maps to navigate, we set out early in the morning to survey salamanders. 

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With warm temperatures and high humidity, we came prepared with bottles of water for the daily 4–6-hour hike ahead of us, water we carried up and down the hills and valleys we scaled. Our goal was to survey to determine if salamanders were present at 30 sites in an area of interest through repeat linear surveys. We drove using maps to sites with no satellite and cell service, our locations shared with peers before departing, and parked our cars, marking with pins on maps where we parked. We unloaded our gear, meter sticks, clipboards, soil moisture meters, handheld weather stations, 50-meter tape measures and more. We also donned an additional layer, hardhats, and safety vests, which added to the oppressive heat we felt, but necessary as we walked through an area full of snags. Then came the fun part.
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We hiked to each site, over hills and down steep riverbanks to each site, where we laid out our gear and using precise coordinates, marked the boundaries of each survey site in the 50 meter transect. We then overturned and replaced each log and rock and branch, ruffled through leaf litter, to find and identify salamanders. I crafted an identification guide for my teams to use, which helped us to identify each species we encountered, with many sites yielding no results. It took two teams two days to complete all 30 surveys. We then repeated these 2 more times. Some days were hot with a heat index of over 100 degrees. On other days it started to rain sideways. Some days we had to push through thorns and poison ivy. On other days we slid down muddy riverbanks or used trees to help pull us up the sides of steep hills. Every day was a new adventure. Every day brought a new challenge. Every day we were one step closer to completing our goal: surveying the salamanders.