Prioritizing decision-making for agriculture and conservation in North America’s prairies under climate change and land-use change

Wetland habitats are critically important to many animal and plant species, and they are in trouble. The North American prairies, for example, comprise some of the most productive wetland habitats in the world, but many areas of the prairies have lost up to 90% of their wetlands and more than 90% of their native grasslands due to farming practices and more recently, climate change. This project will build a decision-support framework to prescribe the conservation actions needed to sustain wetland biodiversity in the face of climate and land-use changes. This framework will be a first of its kind to directly guide decisions by generating solutions to deal with effects of habitat loss, wetland drainage, and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The end result will be a plan for managers, producers and policy makers to support adaptive farm management and address wetland biodiversity loss in the North American prairies.

Faculty Supervisor:

Robert Clark

Student:

Chrystal Sharon Mantyka-Pringle

Partner:

Ducks Unlimited Canada

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

University of Saskatchewan