Amphibian Restoration - High Mountain Lakes [ds103]

Current literature has shown that mountain yellow-legged frog populations can rebound quickly after trout removal. Frog population counts at CDFW sites support this finding. The restoration data, along with the related high mountain lakes amphibian, fish and fisheries project data sets represent biological surveys conducted at a series of lakes in the Sierra Nevada ranging from Plumas County in the north to Tulare County in the south.

During High Mountain Lake (HML) surveys, Sierra Nevada lentic waters were surveyed for fish, frogs, habitats, stream barriers to fish movement and presence of fairy shrimp. Lakes with fish were surveyed using monofilament gill nets. Amphibians were detected and documented based on direct observation.

Contact Sarah Mussulman (916) 358-2838 for additional survey protocol detail and a description of methods. As part of the development of the biological data sets, researchers created a detailed coverage of lakes for (ostensibly) all known lentic water bodies in California above 5000’ elevation. Lake features were digitized from USGS 1:24000 quadrangles and assigned a unique identifying number.

High Mountain Lakes (HML) surveys were performed in the Sierra Nevada starting in 2001 and use these unique ID numbers to reference waterbodies. WHAT EACH RECORD REPRESENTS: Each record represents a lake where CDFW has begun removing fish to benefit a population of mountain yellow-legged frogs. The majority of lakes in this dataset are currently fishless; a handful are active fish removal sites.