Publications
USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center staff publish results of their research in USGS series reports and in peer-reviewed journals. Publication links are below. Information on all USGS publications can be found at the USGS Publications Warehouse.
Filter Total Items: 1903
Floral resource selection by wild bees and honey bees in the Midwest United States: Implications for designing pollinator habitat
Many seed mix recommendations for creating pollinator habitat are in part based on anecdotal evidence or field observations of bees visiting forbs (i.e. use). However, there is limited information on what forbs are preferred by bees, particularly in working landscapes where bee forage may be limited. We examined floral resource selection by wild bees and honey bees on grasslands in the Midwest usi
Authors
Stacy C. Simanonok, Clint R.V. Otto, Deborah A. Buhl
The contribution of land cover change to the decline of honey yields in the Northern Great Plains
Decreased availability of forage, as well as increased pesticide exposure, are important factors in the decline of honey bee health. Here, we isolate land cover transitions and their effect on honey production at 160 commercial apiaries in the Northern Great Plains. We found that land cover changes from 2008 to 2012 caused an annual decline in honey yields of 0.9% in the study area. Transitions fr
Authors
David Smith, Amélie Y. Davis, Claudia Hitaj, Dan Hellerstein, Amanda Preslicka, Emma Kirkpatrick, David M. Mushet, Eric Lonsdorf
Repeated large-scale mechanical treatment of invasive Typha under increasing water levels promotes floating mat formation and wetland methane emissions
Invasive species management typically aims to promote diversity and wildlife habitat, but little is known about how management techniques affect wetland carbon (C) dynamics. Since wetland C uptake is largely influenced by water levels and highly productive plants, the interplay of hydrologic extremes and invasive species is fundamental to understanding and managing these ecosystems. During a perio
Authors
Olivia Fayne Johnson, Abha Panda, Shane C. Lishawa, Beth A. Lawrence
The importance of wilderness to wolf (Canis lupus) survival and cause-specific mortality over 50 years
We assessed the relative importance of wilderness to gray wolf (Canis lupus) population dynamics over 50 years in a population that 1) was long extant (i.e., not reintroduced or recolonized), 2) was not subject to harvest in our study area until recently, and 3) used both wilderness and adjacent, mainly public, non-wilderness. We analyzed the survival of radiocollared wolves (n = 756 collared-wolf
Authors
Shannon Barber-Meyer, Tyler Wheeldon, L. David Mech
Land conversion and pesticide use degrade forage areas for honey bees in America’s beekeeping epicenter
A diverse range of threats have been associated with managed bee declines globally. Recent increases of two known threats, land-use change and pesticide use, have resulted from agricultural expansion and intensification notably in the top honey producing state in the United States (U.S.): North Dakota. This study investigated the dual threat from land conversion and pesticide use surrounding ~14,0
Authors
Dan J. Dixon, Haochi Zheng, Clint R.V. Otto
Plasma metabolite indices are robust to extrinsic variation and useful indicators of foraging habitat quality in Lesser Scaup
Energy acquisition and storage are important for survival and fecundity of birds during resource-limited periods such as spring migration. Plasma-lipid metabolites (i.e. triglyceride [TRIG], β-hydroxybutyrate [BOHB]) have been used to index changes in lipid stores and, thus, have utility for assessing foraging habitat quality during migration. However, such an index may be affected by energetic ma
Authors
Eric J. Smith, Michael J. Anteau, Heath M. Hagy, Christopher N. Jacques
U.S. Geological Survey—Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center 2019–20 research activity report
The mission of Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center is to provide scientific information needed to conserve and manage the Nation’s natural capital for current and future generations, with an emphasis on migratory birds, Department of the Interior trust resources, and ecosystems of the Nation’s interior. This report provides an overview of the studies conducted at Northern Prairie during fisc
Landscape characterization of floral resources for pollinators in the Prairie Pothole Region of the United States
Across agricultural areas of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), floral resources are primarily found on public grasslands, roadsides, and private grasslands used as pasture or enrolled in federal conservation programs. Little research has characterized the availability of flowers across the region or identified the primary stakeholders managing lands supporting pollinators. We explored spatial and
Authors
Autumn H. Smart, Clint R.V. Otto, Alisa L. Gallant, Michael P. Simanonok
Long-term multidecadal data from a prairie-pothole wetland complex reveal controls on aquatic-macroinvertebrate communities
Interactions between climate and hydrogeologic settings contribute to the hydrologic and chemical variability among depressional wetlands, which influences their aquatic communities. These interactions and resulting variability have led to inconsistent results in terms of identifying reliable predictors of aquatic-macroinvertebrate community composition for depressional wetlands. This is especiall
Authors
Kyle McLean, David M. Mushet, Wesley E. Newton, Jon N. Sweetman
Substantial hysteresis in emergent temperature sensitivity of global wetland CH4 emissions
Wetland methane (CH4) emissions (FCH4) are important in global carbon budgets and climate change assessments. Currently, FCH4 projections rely on prescribed static temperature sensitivity that varies among biogeochemical models. Meta-analyses have proposed a consistent FCH4 temperature dependence across spatial scales for use in models; however, site-level studies demonstrate that FCH4 are often c
Authors
Kuang-Yu Chang, William J. Riley, Sara H. Knox, Robert B. Jackson, Gavin McNicol, Benjamin Poulter, Mika Aurela, Dennis Baldocchi, Sheel Bansal, Gil Bohrer, David I. Campbell, Alessandro Cescatti, Housen Chu, Kyle B. Delwiche, Ankur R. Desai, Eugenie S. Euskirchen, Matthias Goeckede, Thomas Friborg, Kyle S. Hemes, Takashi Hirano, Hiroki Iwata, Manuel Helbig, Trevor F. Keenan, Minseok Kang, Ken Krauss, Annalea Lohila, Bhaskar Mitra, Ivan Mammarella, Akira Miyata, Mats B. Nilsson, Walter C. Oechel, Akso Noormets, Matthias Peichl, Michele L. Reba, Janne Rinne, Dario Papale, Benjamin R. K. Runkle, Youngryel Ryu, Torsten Sachs, Karina VR Schäfer, Hans Peter Schmid, Narasinha Shurpali, Oliver Sonnentag, Angela C.I. Tang, Margaret S. Torn, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, Carlo Trotta, Masahito Ueyama, Rodrigo Vargas, Timo Vesala, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Zhen Zhang, Donatella Zona
Balancing the need for seed against invasive species risks in prairie habitat restorations
Adequate diversity and abundance of native seed for large-scale grassland restorations often require commercially produced seed from distant sources. However, as sourcing distance increases, the likelihood of inadvertent introduction of multiple novel, non-native weed species as seed contaminants also increases. We created a model to determine an “optimal maximum distance” that would maximize avai
Authors
Jennifer L Larson, Diane L. Larson, Robert Venette
Identifying dominant environmental predictors of freshwater wetland methane fluxes across diurnal to seasonal time scales
While wetlands are the largest natural source of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere, they represent a large source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget due to the complex biogeochemical controls on CH4 dynamics. Here we present, to our knowledge, the first multi-site synthesis of how predictors of CH4 fluxes (FCH4) in freshwater wetlands vary across wetland types at diel, multiday (synoptic), and
Authors
Sarah Knox, Sheel Bansal, Gavin McNicol, Karina Schafer, Cove Sturtevant, Masahito Ueyama, Alex Valach, Dennis Baldocchi, Kyle B. Delwiche, Ankur R. Desai, Eugenie S. Euskirchen, Jinxun Liu, Annalea Lohila, Avni Malhotra, Lulie Melling, William Riley, Benjamin R. K. Runkle, Jessica Turner, Rodrigo Vargas, Qing Zhu, Tuula Alto, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Mathias Goeckede, Joe Melton, Oliver Sonnentag, Timo Vesala, Eric Ward, Zhen Zhang, Sarah Feron, Zutao Ouyang, Angela C I Tang, Pavel Alekseychik, Mika Aurela, Gil Bohrer, David I. Campbell, Jiquan Chen, Housen Chu, Higo Dalmagro, Jordan P. Goodrich, Pia Gottschalk, Takashi Hirano, Hiroki Iwata, Gerald Jurasinski, Minseok Kang, Franziska Koebsch, Ivan Mammarella, Mats B. Nilsson, Keisuke Ono, Matthias Peichl, Olli Peltola, Youngryel Ryu, Torsten Sachs, Ayaka Sakabe, Jed Sparks, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, George Vourlitis, Guan X Wong, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Benjamin Poulter, Robert B. Jackson