Savvy Salamanders

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Where can you find them? What do the ones around here look like? Are there many kinds you might find? How do they “make their living?” What is really cool about them? Take a look at Maryland’s salamanders (and some other exotic ones) with expert Mark Southerland who has had a life-long love of these little creatures…and learn what you can do to make it easier for them to survive!

Mark Southerland, Ph.D., PMP, CSE, is a Vice President at the environmental consulting firm, AKRF. He received his doctorate in ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed a postdoc at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. He was the lead author of the EPA national program guidance on biological criteria and has been the lead consultant on the Maryland Biological Stream Survey for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) since 1993. He has also supported the EPA Healthy Watersheds Program; the impaired waters, stressor identification, and TMDL programs for the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE); and stream restoration, watershed management, and stormwater compliance programs in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and South Carolina. Mark is the current chair of the Howard County Environmental Sustainability Board and previous chair of the Maryland Water Monitoring Council Board. He is also a current member of the Science Council of the Maryland Academy of Sciences at the Maryland Science Center, Advisory Committee of Patapsco Heritage Greenway, and Howard County Conservancy Board. He has had a lifelong relationship with salamanders from his first rock turning in the streams of his historic family homestead in the North Carolina mountains to his development of the first stream salamander index of biotic integrity.