Reddit mentions of A Review of Marking and Individual Recognition Techniques for Amphibians and Reptiles

Scholarly articles might be a bit much without an intro to scientific papers. Lectures might be helpful, like introduction to the biodiversity of the region, chapters on Virginia habitat types and ecology. There's a good north Carolina herp book that may have some of that information already in the front pages.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Reptiles_of_North_Carolina.html?id=kGP0AwAAQBAJ


Marking techniques:
https://www.amazon.com/Individual-Recognition-Techniques-Amphibians-Reptiles/dp/0916984680

Chapter 2 is a pretty basic introduction to phylogeography: http://download.bioon.com.cn/view/upload/201308/07110702_8444.pdf


And this is an advanced scholarly paper concerning a reptile in the state. You can always have them skim methods and just read the introduction, skim results and read the discussion. http://www.cnah.org/pdf/88558.pdf

This is also a good, simply written introduction to an important method https://scienceasaverb.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/introduction-to-ecological-niche-modeling-environmental-niche-modeling-species-distribution-modeling-part-two-what-is-niche-modeling/