fieldherping.eu

Since (a admittedly very wet) June 2016, each month (except November) has been below the monthly rainfall average around here.

Here's a little graph I made to illustrate this. At the right, fire salamander catches.



Are you seeing similar things? If yes, how is it affecting water levels and amphibian reproduction?

Here in London it has also been unusually dry this year (for UK standards), especially in April there was barely any rain. Ponds are drying up fast and if it carries on like this the ones that are not fed by a permanent flow of water might dry out completely.

I don't have any numbers but water levels have been extremely low all year and in many places where I usually see temporary puddles there haven't been any.

I was out on the Copenhagen harbour last week at a spot that had a very healthy population of green toads a few years back. They are now threatened by real estate development and basically have one water hole left in which to breed. This was all but dried up and the amount of tadpoles in the water was disparagingly low.

In my Bombina variegata spot, which consists of several ponds made in rock formations, the water level was extremely low 1 month ago. Despite this, I could observe many tadpoles but these were concentrated over an area two times smaller compared to last year, and all the adults were also found in this limited pond. Thanks to the rainfall of May, I would say that the water level is back to normal and yesterday I observed that many adult Bombina have migrated into another pond which was dried until recently. I was really happy to observe this:



I will definitely keep an eye on this population this summer, and eventually relocate the tadpoles into the main pound if they are trapped into isolated puddles.

Thanks for the replies!

Same in my monitoring area. I have 7 ponds. 3 are dry, 1 is almost dry, and 3 are drying up fast. Very different than last year. One is the bird lake, but I saw many Epidalea calamita being eaten by birds.