What is in the water

California faced an atypically wet season this year in which the Bay Area was hit with 9 atmospheric rivers resulting in San Francisco facing the second highest amount of rainfall in a single day throughout in the city’s history. With this increased rainfall in the winter, we wondered how this would impact the summer seasons.  This year our team, consisting of field team lead Laura Heller, technicians Teagan Richardson and Felicia Conheady, and summer intern Sydney Watson surveyed 83 sites and completed 158 site visits.  Throughout the summer season water level in the ponds remained consistently higher than usual, only two sites dried up.  Most likely due to the previous long-term effects of drought there was a decreased number of bullfrog sightings.  Whereas, the increased water this season may have been the cause of  Western Toads (Bufo boreas) was being observed much later into the season than usual.

Both the field and necropsy teams are excited to dive into the data to see how these weather patterns affected the amphibian and parasite populations.