Amphibian Monitoring in the National Capital Region: a Focus on Lentic and Lotic Habitats

Publisher Marketing: The National Capital Region Network has identified amphibians as a priority taxonomic group for its Inventory and Monitoring program. The goals of this program are to document at least 90% of the amphibian species in its parks, and to determine whether the integrity and status of amphibian populations are changing over time. As of 2004, all of the parks had completed amphibian inventories (Shawn Carter, National Park Service, personal communication), and planning for monitoring efforts were initiated. The objectives of the monitoring program are to develop an efficient long-term sampling design, in cooperation with park service biologists and managers, to: (1) describe the current distribution of amphibians (i.e., estimate initial occupancy probabilities for targeted species) and explore factors that may influence occupancy probabilities or distributional patterns, (2) determine if amphibian distributions are changing annually, and if so, explore whether occupancy changes are relate to habitat quality, paying special attention to factors associated with increased urbanization in the region, and (3) provide information to aid in the generating and testing of hypotheses that differentiate among possible causes of long-term changes in the proportion of area occupied among species, habitats, and park areas.