Frog Census
Basis for Frog Census
A Frog Census is based on frog species having a distinctive call that allows for individual species identification. In the past, volunteers have visited locations where frogs are likely to congregate in early evening to record their calls on cassette tapes. The cassettes are then returned, along with their datasheets where the frog species present have been identified by an expert. Even when no frogs are recorded at a site, this is still useful information.
Using the assumption that healthy waterways support a diverse and abundant range of frogs, changes in the presence and abundance of frogs are useful indicators of ecosystem health. Frogs need a healthy environment in which to complete their life cycle from egg to tadpole to adult frog.
Human Impacts on Aquatic Environments
Many aquatic areas have been affected by human impacts including;
• Excessive clearance of vegetation
• Alteration of waterflow to mitigate flood activities
• Stormwater and drainage schemes
• Disruption of the riparian zone, or the area between land and free flowing water
• Invasion by exotic species
• Inappropriate flood plain and catchment development
The Next Phase - Frog Atlas
The Frog Census has provided a valuable role in involving the public in environmental monitoring and this public participation can lead to increased awareness of the local environment and a greater sense of responsibility towards environmental health.
Community involvement also means a large number of samples can be collected over a broad area in a short space of time, something that can be difficult for a single agency to achieve. Although many calls can be collected through community involvement, the analysis being done by a single person limits the data that can be collected from this approach and also can also result in delays between submission of calls and return of results.
To combat some of the restrictions of current Frog Census programs and to make use of advances in technology since the programs inception, the Frog Atlas was developed.
The Frog Atlas aims to make the data submission web based and provide a means for training more people on call identification allowing more data to be collected and to provide an avenue for decreasing the delay in obtaining results. The Frog Atlas also provides real time responses to pubic enquiries into species distributions and the species found with a region.
With mating activity and the success of breeding changing markedly with variation in temperature and rainfall, it is important to visit sites repeatedly. The Frog Atlas aims to provide opportunity for monitoring to occur more frequently so as to better understand how frog distributions change.
So come and join us, and help us discover more about the frogs around us.