Projektin One Tam Peak Health Päiväkirja

Hello! The California Giant Salamander is a true icon of Mt. Tam. While we have some knowledge of their distribution, scientists and land managers at One Tam need more information to understand and protect them. This species was identified as a knowledge gap in our 2016 effort to understand the health of the mountain, called Peak Health. To help fill this gap, we are using crowd-sourced observations from iNaturalist.

By tagging you in this post, the One Tam Community Science Team would like to invite to join our Peak Health project on iNaturalist and share the obscured coordinates for your California Giant Salamander observation(s) in Marin County. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/one-tam-peak-health

If you already joined, please make sure that you selected "yes" to one of the responses to "Trust with coordinates?"

You can learn more about this effort and see instructions on how to join the project and share your obscured coordinates:
https://www.onetam.org/our-work/california-giant-salamander-inventory

You can learn more about obscured coordinates and taxon geoprivacy here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#geoprivacy

Thank you!
Dr. Lisette Arellano (@ten_salamanders)
Senior Program Manager at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
If you have questions or comments you can email us at communityscience@onetam.org

One Tam is a partnership of the National Park Service, California State Parks, Marin County Parks, Marin Water, and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Hello! A lot has happened since the last update to this project.

* We now have a webpage where you can learn more about One Tam, Peak Health, and the California Giant Salamander Inventory and see more instructions about contributing to the iNaturalist project: https://www.onetam.org/our-work/california-giant-salamander-inventory

* Thank you for sharing your observations with this project!!!! Dr. Lisette Arellano (aka @ten_salamanders) finished a report on the status of California Giant Salamanders for the latest update One Tam's Peak Health whitepaper. She was able to use many of the observations you shared to garner support for further investment in this species. Publication forthcoming some time in 2023.

* Please welcome our salamander interns Angel Meza-Cerna from City College of San Francisco and Bria Boose from San Francisco State University. We are grateful to the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy's Nina Robert's Academic Internship Program. Angel and Bria will be working on annotating and retrieving obscured California Giant Salamander observations from iNat. Our goal is to make a map of California Giant Salamander occurrences and to add data on age structure and salamander health. We will be working on a data/education project to share out later this summer.

Thanks again for your support! Go Giant Salamander!

Hello! There's been some recent updates to iNat projects and I've modernized this from a traditional project to a collection project.

As of February, 2021 it’s possible for collection project admins to turn on Trust for their project via the project’s edit page. This gives members of the project the option to allow the project’s admins access to the true coordinates of observations in the project that have a taxon geoprivacy setting of obscured and private.

Once again, I would like to kindly ask that you join and trust One Tam staff with your true coordinates through this project.

Thanks,
Lisette aka @ten_salamanders
Project Admin

FAQ:

Who is viewing the true coordinates?
One Tam staff associated with the collaborative Peak Health work.

Staff include:
Darren Fong, National Park Service Aquatic Ecologist
Dr. Bill Merkle, National Park Service Wildlife Ecologist
Eric Ettlinger, Marin Water Aquatic Ecologist
Dr. Lisette Arellano, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Community Science Program Manager

Once the data is exported it is stored in a secure database that requires institutional approval.

What is the data being used for?
Comparisons of historical distributions with contemporary data.
Development of ecosystem health metrics
Development of long-term monitoring with opportunities for community scientists.

The One Tam Peak Health team is actively working on several taxa and habitat types. Here are the taxa included in this project:

Amphibians

• California Giant Salamander
• Red-legged Frog
• Yellow-legged Frog

Reptiles

• Western Pond Turtle

Birds

• Western Spotted Owl

Terrestrial Gastropods

• Black Westernslug
• Point Reyes Shoulderband Snail
• Marin Hesperian
• Redwood Hesperian

About the project

In 2016, the land managers on Mt. Tam and scientists came together to try to answer a question: How healthy is Mt. Tam? Together, the group looked at data from different plant communities and animal taxa and arrived at the conclusion that Mt. Tam is in fair health. You can see a summary of the report here: https://www.onetam.org/media/pdfs/Health-Indicator.pdf and learn more about the whole effort here: https://www.onetam.org/peak-health

It turned out we had lots of data for certain organisms and habitat types, but not so much for others. We really use support from the iNaturalist community to fill those knowledge gaps.

California Giant Salamanders are special

California Giant Salamanders (Dicamptodon ensatus) were identified as one of those knowledge gaps. One Tam partners and scientists are coming together to discuss the health of this species in this region as we prepare to reassess the health of Mt. Tamalpais. Amphibians globally are facing threats from habitat destruction and degradation, invasive species, emerging pathogens, and climate change and several species in this region are already being monitored and stewarded. California Giant Salamanders are endemic to California and Mt. Tamalpais and Marin County are an important part of their range (approximately north of Monterey County to south of Mendocino County) One of the first steps in helping One Tam partners understand California Giant Salamanders is better data on their presence in the landscape.

Here's how you can help

• Share your California Giant Salamanders observation coordinates with this iNaturalist project
• Annotate your existing observation with "alive or dead" and life stage, if you feel confident
• Keep making responsible iNat observations (take care not to trample habitat, photograph in situ)
• Sign up to receive updates from this project in your iNat dashboard
• Sign up for the One Tam newsletter at www.onetam.org to get updates about our work, including learning and volunteer opportunities for all ages.
• You can also complete this interest form for occasional updates about community science opportunities with One Tam https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=uMTVOkx2f0mm85kyxZaBMC1-9qkcjpxMiPGlvhP5_j1UNlBBUTRCMU1WQ1UxSjFNNklaVTgyUlBWMi4u