At the Environmental Forum 4/18 I will have a Vernal Pond Table.
Any suggestions to draw in a crowd??
Thanks,
Brandon
Any suggestions to draw in a crowd??
Thanks,
Brandon
Vernal Pond Table
- Thread starter NJSnakeMan
- Start date
Snake,
I'd be happy to contribute to intermittent pool geomorphology and cultural use. Also, a brief field trip could provide added value. My avatar "spung" photograph was taken next to Stockton's Arts & Sciences Building parking lot.
Spung-Man
I'd be happy to contribute to intermittent pool geomorphology and cultural use. Also, a brief field trip could provide added value. My avatar "spung" photograph was taken next to Stockton's Arts & Sciences Building parking lot.
Spung-Man
They are already protected under freshwater wetland laws, although they admittedly have loopholes taken advantage of by developers. If a T&E species is identified on the site, such as the Pine Barrens Treefrog, there would be another level of protection. There was a vernal pond monitoring program conducted by the state, manned by volunteers. I haven’t heard anything about that in a while and am not sure if it is still active. I believe it was done by the Div. of Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Nongame and Endangered Species
Those regs indicate wetlands less than one acre being exempt. There's the loophole.
That's completely screwed up. I would think there would be something inclusive or to recognize. Kind of a big oversight.
Sounds like the program you mention and any help it would have been just slipped under the radar.
g.
Size Does Matter!
According to an article published in The National Wetlands Newsletter (January-February 2000), the preservation of smaller isolated wetlands may be more important towards maintaining biodiversity than the preservation of larger ones. According to Semlitsch (2000: 5), “The disappearance of small wetlands from an area that relies on source-sink dynamics could result in the loss of ecological connectedness and potentially collapse the metapopulations of wetland dependent species, causing many local extinctions. This is particularly detrimental to wetland dependent amphibians, which are suffering global population declines.” Isolated pools, regardless of size, are important stepping-stones for biologically connecting wetlands. In my experience, many of the interfluve round ponds and oval ponds (deflated ice-age wedge intersections and furrows) are quite small, often isolated, and thus most endangered.
Semlitsch RD. 2000. Size does matter: the value of small isolated wetlands. The National Wetlands Newsletter. 22, Jan-Feb: 5-7.
Semlitsch RD, Bodie JR. 1998. Are small, isolated wetlands expendable? Conservation Biology. 12: 5, 1129-1133
Pinelands round pond and oval pond figures extracted from my thesis (Demitroff, 2007: 64-65).
Those regs indicate wetlands less than one acre being exempt. There's the loophole.
According to an article published in The National Wetlands Newsletter (January-February 2000), the preservation of smaller isolated wetlands may be more important towards maintaining biodiversity than the preservation of larger ones. According to Semlitsch (2000: 5), “The disappearance of small wetlands from an area that relies on source-sink dynamics could result in the loss of ecological connectedness and potentially collapse the metapopulations of wetland dependent species, causing many local extinctions. This is particularly detrimental to wetland dependent amphibians, which are suffering global population declines.” Isolated pools, regardless of size, are important stepping-stones for biologically connecting wetlands. In my experience, many of the interfluve round ponds and oval ponds (deflated ice-age wedge intersections and furrows) are quite small, often isolated, and thus most endangered.
Semlitsch RD. 2000. Size does matter: the value of small isolated wetlands. The National Wetlands Newsletter. 22, Jan-Feb: 5-7.
Semlitsch RD, Bodie JR. 1998. Are small, isolated wetlands expendable? Conservation Biology. 12: 5, 1129-1133
Pinelands round pond and oval pond figures extracted from my thesis (Demitroff, 2007: 64-65).
Attachments
before you can develop on land you have to hire a consultant to come out and monitor for T&E species (we all know the deal with this), which includes several obligate and falcutative vernal pond species (although i question how precise their site surveys are).
More on Vernal Pools
I think what's going on is this:
1) the one-acre loophole existed in the 1989 "NJ Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act;" the law that was passed in 2001 along with the regs subsequently issued by NJDEP were evidently aimed at closing the loophole;
2) the burden of "closing the loophole" appears to be on the NJDEP in that the NJDEP has to map vernal pools in order to protect them. The following comes from a 2002 description by a zoologist for NJDEP's Division of Fish & Wildlife:
3) An online map of vernal pools that have been mapped is available here. I'm not smart enough to make the thing work for me in any useful way. I also can't figure out the age of the information reflected on the map, nor can I figure out what the legal effect of the on-line map is (i.e., if a site is on the map, does that mean it's protected? if a site isn't on the map, does that mean it can be bulldozed with impunity?).
Dave
I think what's going on is this:
1) the one-acre loophole existed in the 1989 "NJ Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act;" the law that was passed in 2001 along with the regs subsequently issued by NJDEP were evidently aimed at closing the loophole;
2) the burden of "closing the loophole" appears to be on the NJDEP in that the NJDEP has to map vernal pools in order to protect them. The following comes from a 2002 description by a zoologist for NJDEP's Division of Fish & Wildlife:
Although the NJ Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act has been in place since 1989, it has done little to protect vernal pools because wetlands smaller than 1 acre (most vernal pools in NJ are less than 0.25 acre) are exempt from the regulatory protection. Vernal pools can be filled, drained, or modified with a general permit. The new vernal pool (or 'vernal habitat,' as it is known in regulatory language) regulations protect vernal pools that are known meet the following certification criteria:
* Occurs in a confined basin depression without a permanently flowing outlet.
* Provides documented habitat for obligate or facultative vernal habitat species (these species are identified in N.J.A.C. 7:7A, Appendix 1).
* Maintains ponded water for at least two continuous months between March and September of a normal rainfall year.
* Free of fish populations throughout the year, or dries up at some time during a normal rainfall year.
* Occurs in a confined basin depression without a permanently flowing outlet.
* Provides documented habitat for obligate or facultative vernal habitat species (these species are identified in N.J.A.C. 7:7A, Appendix 1).
* Maintains ponded water for at least two continuous months between March and September of a normal rainfall year.
* Free of fish populations throughout the year, or dries up at some time during a normal rainfall year.
3) An online map of vernal pools that have been mapped is available here. I'm not smart enough to make the thing work for me in any useful way. I also can't figure out the age of the information reflected on the map, nor can I figure out what the legal effect of the on-line map is (i.e., if a site is on the map, does that mean it's protected? if a site isn't on the map, does that mean it can be bulldozed with impunity?).
Dave
windows into the groundwater
Pine Barrens intermittent pools are unlike vernal pools in other regions. South Jersey spungs are not isolated entities but complex groundwater systems, similar to the Carolina Bays as described by Pyzoha et al. (2008: A conceptual hydrologic model for a forested Carolina bay depressional wetland on the Coastal Plain of South Carolina, USA). These “windows into the groundwater” have been slowly fading from the Pine Barrens landscape, at least in part to over-withdrawal of groundwater. As spungs dry, they can be drained, filled, and built upon with little oversight (e.g., the recent construction of a convenience store in a Pinelands-regulated portion of Buena Borough) – even after being pointed out to regulatory agencies! It is this decrease in hydroperiod that imperils far more pools than actual physical destruction.
Pine Barrens intermittent pools are unlike vernal pools in other regions. South Jersey spungs are not isolated entities but complex groundwater systems, similar to the Carolina Bays as described by Pyzoha et al. (2008: A conceptual hydrologic model for a forested Carolina bay depressional wetland on the Coastal Plain of South Carolina, USA). These “windows into the groundwater” have been slowly fading from the Pine Barrens landscape, at least in part to over-withdrawal of groundwater. As spungs dry, they can be drained, filled, and built upon with little oversight (e.g., the recent construction of a convenience store in a Pinelands-regulated portion of Buena Borough) – even after being pointed out to regulatory agencies! It is this decrease in hydroperiod that imperils far more pools than actual physical destruction.
Yes, make a model pond about 4 feet in diameter. Fill it with ice and cold bottles of Bud.
Sorry Brandon, I couldn't resist. I like spungs very, very much. Ask Guy. We go out of our way to get to them to look at the vegetation whenever we go on a trip. Every one of them is slightly different. I visited about 9 of them in one day out in Greenwood Forest last year. I find them fascinating. There are many, many of them within a 5 mile radius of my home.
I think what you are doing is a great thing.
We have some interesting and productive vernal ponds at Wells Mills. They are not natural however, and were created by Tilden Estlow in the early 1990s when he mined clay there. They are close enough to my building so that from time to time in the Spring I can hear Pine Barrens Tree Frogs from my open office window when working late there. It's nice to have little perks like that while you are catching up with damned government paperwork.
Freerider, I believe you can volunteer to certify vernal pools. Basically the state has a load of vernal pools mapped some of which are certified. In order for one to become certified it has to have two speices in it(either obligate or faculative). If a vernal pool is certified it recieves 50 foot buffers, if it contains a T/E speices it recieves 150 feet. I've certified a few pools over the last year, including a few at the new Virtua Hospital(a nice piece of woods before it got bulldozed). I'll try to post a link whenever I get a minute.