Widespread Degradation of a Vernal Pool Network in the Southeastern United States: Challenges to Current and Future Management

Vernal pools are small, ephemeral wetlands that act as distinct aquatic “islands” of biodiversity embedded in the Cumberland Plateau landscape of the southeastern United States. Specifically, many amphibian species in the region are dependent on the maintenance of these pools within the surrounding terrestrial habitat in order to complete their complex life cycles. Because vernal pools are small in size (generally less than 0.5 ha), they are often overlooked in land management decisions, which means that wetland loss is coupled with forest loss in this region. Using high resolution, leaf-off imagery, we mapped the locations and surrounding forest cover of 2399 vernal pools on the Cumberland Plateau across a 719,540 ha, three-state study area (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) and assessed habitat loss and conservation status. Most of pools (93%) were located on unprotected lands and only 37% of these pools had a native forest cover >75% within a 300 m buffer. Forest cover around pools steadily declined between 1981 and 2010. In the absence of effective federal or state policies to protect the terrestrial and aquatic habitats associated with pools on private land, these wetlands will continue to become more disconnected.