The landscape of southeast Kansas has been marred by an extensive history of strip mining for coal, spanning the 1870s to 1997. Since 1969, state-sponsored reclamation efforts were initiated and are currently ongoing; however, there is a lack of data to indicate whether reclamation efforts are productive and effective for enhancing biodiversity. Our objective was to determine how vegetation structure influenced mammal community composition and species richness in reclaimed mined land. We utilized data that we collected for Snapshot USA, a nationwide effort led by the Smithsonian, to examine trends in mammal communities associated with various habitats. From August to November 2019, we deployed camera traps in 14 forested mined land locations in Crawford County, KS. We also collected data on each location’s canopy coverage, ground cover, shrub density, and tree abundance and diameter. We manually identified all mammals in each photograph and calculated species richness for each site. Impacts of habitat features on the mammal community were determined by Bray Curtis ordinations and a series of regression models, ranked using Akaike Information Criterion (AIC).
Results/Conclusions
In the 8,380 photographs we collected, we observed 16 species over 526 trap nights. The most common species observed were white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), while rare species included American beaver (Castor canadensis) and striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis). No Kansas species of concern were recorded during our survey. Sites were characterized by a dense oak-hickory canopy, while the shrub and ground cover strata were dominated by exotic species, primarily Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) and wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei). More mammal species were observed at sites with greater leaf and dead wood ground cover, and tree abundance. Even though these results come from our first year of data collection, this study highlights the importance of reclaiming mined land habitat. Thus, we recommend maintaining these sites for their mature forest habitat to keep supporting mammal diversity in southeast Kansas. We hope to continue monitoring these mammal communities to gather long-term data, with the goal of providing management recommendations to the city of Pittsburg.