A vernal pool is an area which is only wet in the Spring. It provides an ideal habitat and breeding ground for amphibians that is free from predators that were found in open water.  

A vernal pool is a contained basin depression lacking a permanent above ground outlet. In the Northeast, it fills with water with the rising water table of fall and winter or with the meltwater and runoff of winter and spring snow and rain. Many vernal pools in the Northeast are covered with ice in the winter months. They contain water for a few months in the spring and early summer. By late summer, a vernal pool is generally (but not always) dry. 

 Sometimes called woodland pools, these wetlands provide a unique habitat that supports a diverse collection of organisms. Most of these organisms rely solely on this habitat for their life cycles.

 A vernal pool, because of its periodic drying, does not support breeding populations of fish. Many organisms have evolved to use a temporary wetland which will dry but where they are not eaten by fish. These organisms are the “obligate” vernal pool species, so called because they must use a vernal pool for various parts of their life cycle. If the obligate species are using a body of water, then that water is a vernal pool. Some easily recognizable obligate species are the fairy shrimp, the mole salamanders and the Gray tree frog. 

The mole salamanders are also upland organisms. They spend most of their lives in burrows on the forest floor. Annually, on certain rainy nights, they migrate to ancestral vernal pools to mate and lay their eggs. They soon return to the upland. The eggs develop in the pool and, by the time the pool dries, the young emerge to begin their life as a terrestrial animal. Evidence that mole salamanders breed in an area make that water body a vernal pool. Breeding evidence would be a breeding adults, egg masses or larvae.