HR: 09:30h
AN: NB21A-05 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Northern Seasonal Woodland Ponds: Distribution, Biota, and Ecological Linkages with the Surrounding Forest
AU: * Batzer, D
EM: dbatzer@uga.edu
AF: University of Georgia, Dept. of Entomology, Athens, GA 30602
AU: Palik, B
EM: bpalik@fs.fed.us
AF: USDA Forest Service, North Central Experiment Station, Grand Rapids, MN 55744
AB: Seasonal woodland ponds are important landscape features across much of eastern and central North America. Learning more about the ecology of these habitats is a pressing need in the US because federal protections are being reduced. Further, the fates of these habitats are not being monitored because most are too small for inclusion in the National Wetland Inventory. In our northern Minnesota study area, the distribution of seasonal woodland ponds is strongly influenced by glacial landform, with most ponds being associated with ground or end moraines. The habitats support an abundance of plants, invertebrates, and amphibians; these organisms are well adapted for the variable environments existing in ponds and they posses a durability that makes them resistant to most natural variation in conditions. Because of the small size of seasonal woodland ponds, input of plant litter and migration of invertebrates from the surrounding forest into ponds is an important ecological link. However, because ponds support an autochthonous growth of wetland trees, the relationship between ponds and the forest differs from that between streams and forests. Like eastern streams, logging of forests around ponds is a concern, but impacts of peripheral logging on theses wetlands appear less dramatic than for streams.
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly