When the habitat classifications were compared to the aerial photographs from which they were generated, it became apparent that the yellow and gray categories represented disturbed habitats. These areas typically included roads and other paved surfaces, buildings, and cleared land.The other three categories generally represented different types of forested habitat.

I correlated the amount of disturbed habitat (classified as yellow or gray) within each watershed with the total number of salamanders captured in that stream. I found a very strong correlation between these two values across the eight streams that I sampled (R2 = .78), suggesting that the amount habitat disturbance within watersheds has a strong effect on the abundance of salamanders in that stream. Further research will be necessary to unravel the intricacies of the relationship between habitat disturbance and salamander abundance.

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