With the human population growing rapidly, one of the most important areas of conservation is the identification of areas that should be protected from development. This method can allow us to examine the current amount of disturbed habitat within watersheds and identify watersheds that should be investigated for conservation. Here I use the correlations from the eight streams that I sampled to predict salamander abundances in three streams that were not sampled. Future salamander sampling would verify the efficacy of this method for predicting salamander abundances.

Three streams located close to the study streams were analyzed using GIS to calculate the amount of disturbed habitat within their watersheds.

I then used the equation of the best fit line from the other streams to predict the relative abundance of salamanders in these streams

Equation of Trendline = y = -191.67x + 83.756

Unknown stream #1 – 43% disturbed = 1 salamander predicted

Unknown stream #2 – 39% disturbed = 8 salamanders predicted

Unknown stream #3 – 31% disturbed = 21 salamanders predicted

Further sampling would be necessary to verify the accuracy of these predictions

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