New Volunteers Get Their Feet Wet in First Round of 2023 Volunteer Wetland Monitoring

We monitored at Robertson Millpond Preserve on Friday and managed to avoid tripping on the many cypress knees that populate our monitoring locations. Robertson Millpond Preserve is unique in that it is home to the only bald cypress habitat in Wake County, NC. We didn’t find many salamanders at this site, but we did find a Green Treefrog and Pickerel Frog. 

On Saturday, we monitored at Mason Farm Biological Reserve in Chapel Hill, NC. Our first monitoring location was wetter than we’ve ever seen it! In some places the standing water was over a foot deep and some of us had to switch to waders to avoid overtopping our boots! Because of all the water, we were able to find lots of larval salamanders who would sneak up to the surface and make themselves visible in the otherwise dark or cloudy water. We don’t usually take a water quality sample at this site and don’t have a permanent staff gauge because it is often completely dry. 

This site illustrates how widely wetland hydrology can fluctuate over the course of the year. Luckily, our water level data loggers will help us keep track of the hydrology even when we can’t go out and see for ourselves. These loggers, along with our keen observations of wetland hydrology indicators, such as, drift deposits and crayfish burrows can help us to determine whether our sites are really “wet” enough to be “wetlands.” Sometimes, when we visit a wetland during the dry season, it can be hard to know how wet it is at other times of the year. These indicators and loggers help us to have a clearer picture of wetland hydrology over time.