Mountaintop removal mining alters stream salamander population dynamics

Aim: Population dynamics are often tightly linked to the condition of the landscape. Focusing on a landscape impacted by mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR), we ask the following questions: (1) How does MTR influence vital rates including occupancy, colonization and persistence probabilities, and conditional abundance of stream salamander species and life stages? (2) Do species and life stages respond similar to MTR mining or is there significant variation among species and life stages? Location: Freshwater and terrestrial habitats in Central Appalachia (South‐eastern Kentucky, USA). Methods: We conducted salamander counts for three consecutive years in 23 headwater stream reaches in forested or previously mined landscapes. We used a hierarchical, N‐mixture model with dynamic occupancy to calculate species‐ and life stage‐specific occupancy, colonization and persistence rates, and abundance given occupancy. We examined the coefficients of the hierarchical priors to determine pop...研究目的：种群动态往往与景观状况紧密关联。本研究以受山顶移除采煤法（mountaintop removal coal mining, MTR）干扰的景观为研究对象，提出如下两个问题：（1）山顶移除采煤法如何影响溪流蝾螈各物种及生活史阶段的生命率，包括占用（occupancy）概率、定殖（colonization）概率、存续（persistence）概率与条件丰度？（2）不同物种及生活史阶段对MTR采矿的响应是否趋于一致，抑或各物种和生活史阶段间存在显著差异？ 研究区域：美国肯塔基州东南部的阿巴拉契亚中部淡水与陆地生境。 研究方法：我们在森林覆盖或曾被开采的区域内的23处源头溪流河段，连续三年开展蝾螈数量调查。采用集成动态占用（dynamic occupancy）结构的层级N混合模型（hierarchical N-mixture model），计算各物种及生活史阶段专属的占用、定殖、存续率，以及基于占用状态的种群丰度。我们通过分析层级先验的系数，以探究种群……