Study Site Description

Beaver Pond,CT 2016

The White Memorial Conservation Center was originally conceived by Alain C. White and his sister May W. White. The Center compromises of over 40 miles of trails along with 4,000 acres of total property including forest, fields, and wetlands. These wetlands would be most important to the snail research that was performed for this project. In terms of wetlands the White Memorial Conservation Center property has 6 miles of the Bantam River running through it in addition to 10 ponds and various other swamps and water bodies. The largest of these water bodies is Bantam Lake, the largest natural lake in Connecticut at 947 acres. Of these 947 acres of water the White Memorial Conservation Center owns 60% of the shoreline. These water bodies, each containing unique characteristics and make ups, were sampled for both specimens and water quality. Below there will be a map showing the different points where sampling and collections occurred on the property.

                   White Memorial properties fall into the Housatonic Watershed Basin and are part of the tributaries of the Shepaug River. The US forest system has classified the northwest of Connecticut as Appalachian Oak Forest Section of the Eastern Broadleaf (Oceanic) Province (Bailey 1995). This implies the region is part of a temperate climate with yearlong precipitation feeding into the watersheds. Additionally the region has been defined as The Lower New England Northern Piedmont Eco region (Barbour 2003). These regions help to define the land type area as well as different levels of drainage that are occurring there with Connecticut being broken into multiple drainage sections. Moreover northwest Connecticut has been categorized as the Hudson Highlands (Meltzer & Barrett 2006).
                    The habitats which were surveyed at White Memorial fell into the categories of Locustrine, Rivervine, or Polustrine. The first of these, Locustrine, referred to lakes. Rivervine to rivers. Polustrine to carrying types of wetlands. Within each of these descriptions habitats were further broken down according to the types of substrates that made up their bottoms and the shorelines they possessed.

Sources:
http://www.whitememorialcc.org/
http://ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2686&q=507904&deepNav_GID=1620