Land Management Practices

Lidar has proven itself as a valuable tool for providing high-resolution digital elevation models and for quantifying forest stand metrics utilized by the forest industry. Studies are only beginning to emerge relating lidar data directly to wildlife species occurrences and abundances. NPWRC has been assessing capabilities of lidar data in various ecosystems to include the mixed forests in Maine...

Resource managers are tasked with managing complex systems with inherent uncertainty around how those systems might change with time and respond to management actions in a changing climate. Scenario planning—often implemented as a qualitative, participatory exercise for exploring multiple possible futures—is a valuable tool for addressing uncertainty. At the same time, quantitative information on...

Federal resource managers in the Williston Basin need to understand how the recent expansion of oil and gas development is affecting a range of natural resources. The Bakken Federal Executive Group (BFEG), a group of representatives from over a dozen federal and tribal agencies, called for a report that synthesizes existing information about the potential impacts from energy development. The BFEG...

During summer 2017, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC) initiated a collaborative research study focused on understanding if water-level management of wetlands at refuges can influence mercury bioaccumulation in wetland-dependent migratory birds. Birds are susceptible to the effects of mercury and can serve as indicators of contamination in ecosystems. We examined mercury...

Rising commodity crop prices, increased federal subsidies for biofuels, such as corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel, and reduction in U.S. Farm Bill conservation programs have facilitated rapid land-use changes in the Northern Great Plains (NGP). Although renewable biofuels are touted as a mechanism for increasing energy security and potentially reducing greenhouse gas emissions, little is...

Badlands National Park contains the largest contiguous bison range in the core of the species’ historic range on the northern Great Plains. The park nevertheless is too small to accommodate natural movements of free-ranging bison. As a result, continual grazing by resident bison has supplanted intense-but-ephemeral grazing by nomadic bison. The herd also is currently too small to prevent gradual...

Federal cropland retirement programs are increasingly being used to provide resources for pollinators (e.g., nectar, pollen, host plants). Pollinator-friendly plant species (e.g., alfalfa, sweetclover) were readily included in seed mixes in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands since its inception in the 1985 Farm Bill. Through time, some native plant species (e.g., milkweeds) also...

Societal dependence on insects for pollination of agricultural crops has risen amidst concerns over global pollinator declines. Habitat loss and lack of forage have been implicated in the decline of managed and native pollinators in the U.S. Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center is conducting a regional research project to understand how land use affects honey bee colony health, and the...

Midcontinent sandhill cranes occupy a large geographic area of central and western North America and northeastern Asia during breeding, winter, and migration. They are a species representing a unique convergence of multiple user groups with an interest in the continued health of this population. Tens of thousands of people view cranes during spring staging at the Platte River Valley in Nebraska...

With support from the U.S. Prairie Pothole Joint Venture (PPJV), the U.S. Forest Service, and The Nature Conservancy, Northern Prairie is synthesizing literature on the effects of management practices on grassland bird species. The need for these syntheses was identified by the PPJV, a part of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, in support of its objective to stabilize or increase...

Agriculture is the dominant land use on privately owned lands in the northern Great Plains of the United States. Management decisions on agricultural lands are influenced by a variety of policies and programs established by the federal government in periodic Farm Bills. In 1985, Congress passed the Food Security Act. Title XII of the Act established the Conservation Reserve Program or CRP, a...

Population growth in upland-nesting ducks is highly influenced by spatial and temporal variation in nest survival, and mammalian predators are the major cause of nest failure. Beginning in spring 2018, a graduate student from South Dakota State University and co-advised by a NPWRC scientist will study predator communities and their movements in landscapes with varying grassland patch composition...