The Biodiversity of the Southeastern United States

  Photo Credit: Brian Gratwicke, Flickr Classification and Taxonomy Refresher: Eastern Hellbender  Domain : Eukaryota Kingdom : Animalia Phylum : Chordata Class : Amphibia Subclass: Lissamphibia Superorder: Caudata  ** Order : Urodela Family : Cryptobranchidae  Genus : Cryptobranchus Species : Cryptobranchus alleganiensis subspecies: C. alleganiensis alleganiensis ** This seems to be debated , but often Caudata and Urodela are used interchangeably. In this case, I've used Caudata to describe both the extinct and extant salamander populations.  Eukaryota : Any cell or organism with a clearly defined nucleus within a nuclear membrane and other organelles contained within a cell membrane. Eukaryotic organisms have a larger cell size than prokaryotes ( Eukaryote | Definition, Structure, & Facts , 2024). Animalia : Organisms in the kingdom Animalia are multicellular and have eukaryotic cells and lack rigid cell walls. They are all heterotrophs (consume othe...

Dendrology is the study of tree and woody plant taxonomy and relationships. I've prepared some slides that introduce you to some of the most iconic tree species you'll find in the southeast. These trees don't all occur throughout the southeast, so there are range maps and distinguishing features to help with identification. Enjoy!  

Why AI? With AI becoming increasingly integrated into our lives, I've embraced it as a tool to enhance my work, studies, and for fun! Primarily, I use these tools to confirm my plant ID, but sometimes I also rely on tools for bird calls, herping, and identifying a particularly perplexing insect. Generally, I consider myself an intermediate-to-expert at flora and fauna in the southeast region, but the further I get from North Carolina, the less accurate I become. I'll be the first to admit uncertainty, and in those cases I often have an app or a resource I rely upon to point me in the right direction. It's much easier to pull out my phone and try to identify something - rather than keying out plant species like I have had to do on many occasions for work that relied upon the correct wetland plant ID. Often times you get the correct answer, or you get close enough to use your results as a starting point for further research. I've experimented with various tools, but I alw...

My personal review: A tool for Professionals and Land Owners/Land Managers Web Soil Survey is an incredibly helpful and powerful tool for customized soil investigations. Whether you're a landowner planning a garden or building a shed, or a professional environmental scientist needing detailed soils data for reports, this tool offers a wealth of features tailored to your selected location. Starting is straightforward: You select your "Area of Interest" by either uploading a shapefile or navigating to your area and draw a bounding box for investigation. For this exercise, I chose to investigate my own property.  I used my property as my "Area of Interest"  Once you've chosen your location you can start exploring all the features and really "digging" into the soils information. The tool allows you to explore the physical properties of soil in great detail, providing valuable information about flooding frequency, landforms, drainage classes, depth to w...

To understand the biodiversity in the Southeast, and to gain insight into the threats to biodiversity there, one needs an understanding of climate changes and current conditions. These are a few resources I found to be helpful: Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC) Image from SERCC, accessed 6.27.24 The Southeast Regional Climate Center has a ton of climate resources, and is a user-friendly and informative site established by UNC Chapel Hill. This site has a broad collection of climate data focused specifically on the Southeast.  Their " Climate Perspectives Too l" is interactive and allows the user to look at different variables across the region on specific dates, both observed and predicted.  This is really a one-stop shop for the Southeast climate data. It also includes links to other data sources, and most of its maps are provided by NOAA or are made from data extracted from NOAA. It was interesting to look at the precipitation maps and compare them from 2002...