An Assessment of Distribution Patterns of Terrestrial Salamanders in the Central Appalachians Using Two Landscape Models‪.‬

INTRODUCTION Conservation of salamanders in managed forests has been an important concern in recent years (Harpole and Haas, 1999; Hanlin et a., 2000; Ross et al., 2000; see also deMaynadier and Hunter, 1995 and references therein). In some regions, silvicultural practices have been shown to reduce relative abundance and species richness of salamanders at the site-level (Chazal and Niewiarowski, 1998; Herbeck and Larsen, 1999; Grialou et al., 2000) at least until selected structural characteristics (e.g., canopy closure, litter depth) approximate pretreatment conditions. Other investigators have evaluated the influence of various physical and abiotic factors including distance to streams (Ford et al., 2002; Grover and Wilbur, 2002; Keyser et al., 2004), presence of emergent rock (Rodewald and Yahner, 1999; Ford et al., 2002; Dillard et al., 2008), leaf litter depth (Harper and Guynn, 1999) and prescribed fire (McLeod and Gates, 1998; Keyser et al., 2004; Greenberg and Waldrop, 2008) on salamander abundance and communities at relatively small scales (e.g., sub-stand to stand-level).