Vernal or seasonal pools are small, temporary bodies of water that can serve as critical habitat for frogs, salamanders, reptiles, invertebrates, and other species. The first step in developing effective conservation strategies for vernal pools and associated wildlife species is to know where on the landscape these small wetlands exist. Although several several states and organizations in the Northeast region have initiated coordinated vernal pool mapping projects, this information has never been assembled in one place.
Currently, the Vernal Pool Data Cooperative (VPDC) consists of over 60,000 vernal pool locations submitted by cooperators representing ten states and two Canadian provinces from Virginia to Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula. The VPDC is available on the Conservation Planning Atlas (http://nalcc.databasin.org/) as two separate datasets (Level 1 and Level 2) depending on the restriction category assigned by the original data owner.
Level 1 data are unrestricted and available for download on the Conservation Planning Atlas. These include over 50,000 records from field-verified and potential vernal pool locations submitted by cooperators from Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Quebec, and Vermont.
Level 2 data are restricted and only available for viewing on the Conservation Planning Atlas. These include over 3,000 field-verified and potential vernal pool locations submitted by cooperators from Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
