Drainage Impacts on Surficial Water Retention Capacity of a Prairie Pothole Watershed

Abstract

Wetland restoration has been proposed as a tool to mitigate excess runoff and associated nonpoint source pollution in the Upper Midwestern United States. This study quantified the surficial water retention capacity of existing and drained wetlands for the Greater Blue Earth River Basin (GBERB), an intensively drained agricultural watershed. Using airborne light detection and ranging, the historic depressional storage was determined to be 152 mm. Individual depression analysis suggested that the restoration of most drained areas would have little impact on the storage capacity of the GBERB because the majority (53%) of retention capacity was in large depressions (>40 ha) which comprised only a small proportion ( 40 ha) depressions.