Habitat

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) covers parts of five states and three Canadian provinces. The region contains millions of wetlands that annually produce 50-80% of the continent’s duck population. Previous modeling efforts indicated that climate change would result in a shift of waterfowl habitat from the central PPR to the southeast PPR where the majority of wetlands have been drained. However...

The Prairie Pothole Region supports some of the most productive wetlands in the world for waterfowl. Up to 90% of seasonal and temporary wetlands have been lost in areas of the PPR due to the conversion of grasslands to croplands and the drainage of wetlands. Department of the Interior Waterfowl Production Areas (WPA) and National Wildlife Refuges (NWR) in North Dakota, South Dakota, and eastern...

NPWRC is developing, applying, and refining an integrated, process-based, systems model for prairie-pothole wetlands to facilitate forecasts of how climate and land-use change will affect wetland processes and biota. The Pothole Hydrology Linked System Simulator model (PHyLiSS) simulates changes in hydrology, water chemistry, plant communities, invertebrates, and other biota as a result of altered...

Emergent sandbar maps of the Missouri River produced by Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center continue to be used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor and manage critical breeding habitat for the endangered Interior population of least terns and the threatened Northern Great Plains population of piping plovers. These maps have been created and...

Over the past 50 years, wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region of the northern Great Plains have experienced a wide range of climatic conditions (severe drought to extreme wet), expansion of invasive species such as hybrid cattail, and disturbances (e.g., grazing, burning, flooding, drainage). In this study, we revisited wetlands that Stewart and Kantrud (1971) studied 50 years ago to evaluate...

Mountain ecosystems are expected to change with continued reductions in annual snowpack that have been observed worldwide over the past half-century. Recent snow droughts in North America have been attributed to unusually warm temperatures that cause winter precipitation to fall as rain, rather than snow. Many species of alpine wildlife depend on snowpack for insulation from extreme cold and for...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers and land managers are co-producing a network of restoration field trial sites on DOI and surrounding lands in the southwestern U.S. The network systematically tests restoration treatments across a broad range of landscape, soil, and climate conditions. Each site in the network is used to test suitable seed mixes and treatments that promote plant...