BACKGROUND - A Century of Decline in North American Prairie Ecosystems
Grasslands once dominated the geographic core of
Declines have been greatest in the tall-grass prairie, with losses exceeding those reported for any other major ecological community in
As a result of this habitat loss, which has been associated with factors including agricultural development, overgrazing of livestock, oil and gas exploration, and expansion of exotic species, many populations of prairie obligates have declined or are now absent from large portions of their historical range.
One such species is the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), which has experienced an estimated 98% decline in numbers since European settlement. Many species closely associated with the prairie dog are either listed or are being reviewed for listing as Endangered or Threatened, such as the black-footed ferret (Mustella nigripes), swift fox (Vulpes velox), and mountain plover (Charadrius montanus).
Another group that has been severely affected are endemic grassland bird species, which have shown more widespread and steeper declines than any other group of North American bird species. Ecological provinces historically (pre-European) containing tall, mixed and short-grass prairies.
PURPOSE - The Need for and Use of GIS Data on Prairie Ecosystems
PrairieMap was conceived in response to growing concern among scientists and land managers over the decline and loss of prairie habitats and many of their associated wildlife populations. Developed in collaboration between ecologists, wildlife biologists, land managers, and geographic information professionals, PrairieMap is at core a public-access catalogue of geospatial datasets in support of greater, spatially-sensitive understanding of short-grass, mixed-grass, and tall-grass prairie ecosystems in the western United States and Canada.
For conservation scientists, these data can help support spatially-explicit studies of prairie ecosystems and grassland-obligate wildlife and plant species, including:
- Documentation and monitoring of climatic and other and physiographic conditions
- Studies into fire and other disturbance regimes and history
- Hydrologic and watershed modeling
- Habitat distribution modeling
- Landcover and landuse change analyses
- Modeling of underlying broad- and fine-scale factors driving declines in habitat (e.g., quality, area, connectivity) and associated wildlife populations
PrairieMap also answers a particularly salient need among federal and state land and wildlife agencies who require well-documented and readily available spatial data to inform applied efforts in the protection, management, and restoration of prairie habitats and species, including:
- Development of proactive management strategies to prevent prairie grassland wildlife species from being listed as Threatened and Endangered, as well as adaptive management responses for endemic species that are listed
- Identification of conservation-priority habitat core areas and dispersal corridors using probabilities of use, and/or landcover pattern analyses
- Decision-making processes on habitat restoration initiatives
- Guidance regarding ecological implications of land use planning alternatives
NOTES on the DATA
Physical location – The central repository for PrairieMap data is located and maintained on a secure network server at the Big Sky Institute at
Data sources – Data in the archive are derived from a range of sources, including remotely sensed imagery, digitized hardcopy maps, and site-specific information generated through use of the Global Positioning System.
Data formats – GIS data on this site are currently available as zipped ArcInfo export files, grids, shapefiles, and DEMs. The BSI Informatics workgroup is integrating many of these data into geodatabases and plan to make them also available in the future as feature and raster datasets.
Metadata – Whenever possible, data are compliant with Federal Geographic Data Committee standards. As such, most of the data layers will have associated metadata records available describing attributes and detailing the data’s creation date, source, spatial extent, preparation, accuracy (whenever available), and other information. Appropriate links were established to other proprietary data sources not in the public domain or to very large datasets (such as compiled by the ICEBEMP project) that are impractical or unnecessary to duplicate from this site.
PARTNERS:
PrairieMap and SageMap, a sister project for sagebrush and shrubsteppe ecosystems, were originally developed by the Snake River Field Station (SRFS) of the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center through data collection and QA/QC in collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and various state agencies.
While the SRFS continues to maintain SageMap, the Informatics workgroup at the Big Sky Institute has adopted the hosting and maintainance of PrairieMap and affected its redesign as of early 2007. Partners involved in the original data collection for both PrairieMap and SageMap include the following:
CREDITS:
Photos – The four photos on this page are courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All other images except as noted are credited to the USFWS from the National Image Library, a collection of public domain still photographs.
Funding acknowledgments – Financial support for the original development of PrairieMap provided by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Ancillary support was provided by the