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Abstract
Interannual variation in lake extent is well documented in the Prairie Pothole Region, but the role of surface-water expansion, including lake expansion, in merging with and subsuming wetlands across the landscape has been minimally considered. We examined how the expansion of surface-water extent, in particular, the expansion of lakes across parts of the Prairie Pothole Region can alter landscape-level hydrologic connectivity among substantial numbers of previously surficially disconnected wetlands. Temporally static wetland, lake, and stream datasets were fused with temporally varying Landsat-derived surface-water extent maps (1990–2011) to quantify changes in surface-water connectivity. Under deluge conditions, lakes were found to create significantly larger complexes of surficially-connected wetlands relative to non-lake surface-water connections (e.g., only wetlands or wetlands and streams). Analysis of three specific lakes showed that lakes can merge with and subsume wetlands located kilometers to tens of kilometers from the National Wetland Inventory defined lake perimeter. As climate across the Prairie Pothole Region is highly variable, understanding historic patterns of surface-water expansion and contraction under drought-to-deluge conditions will be integral to predicting future effects of climate change on wetland function, loss and influence on other aquatic systems, including downstream waters.
Highlights
The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) in central North America is known for its high density of depressional wetlands and lakes, a relic of multiple glacial advances and retreats (Flint 1971)
Change in the areal extent of PPR wetlands and lakes is driven predominately by seasonal and multi-year patterns in precipitation (Zhang et al 2009), whereas spatial variability in the response to climate is attributed to topography (Rover et al 2011), as well as to variability in groundwater interactions (LaBaugh et al 1996)
Lake expansion can be important for understanding how surface water moves across the landscape and how surface-water connections occur between waterbody features
Summary
The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) in central North America is known for its high density of depressional wetlands and lakes, a relic of multiple glacial advances and retreats (Flint 1971). These wetlands and lakes provide habitat for large populations of waterfowl (Sorenson et al 1998). The region is characterized by substantial spatiotemporal variability in air temperature and precipitation (Bryson and Hare 1974), to which wetland and lake water-levels are highly responsive (LaBaugh et al 1998; Winter and Rosenberry 1998; Johnson et al 2004; Liu and Schwartz 2011). Changes in surface-water extent in the PPR have primarily been evaluated at specific sites, variability in surface-water extent has been mapped at a landscape scale (Kahara et al 2009; Niemuth et al 2010; Vanderhoof et al 2015)
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