About This Project

Though grasslands are increasingly scarce in the Midwest, there are pockets remaining on private lands grazed by cattle. Restoration thus requires balancing the needs of birds with the needs of landowners. To address this, we propose to research habitat quality for grassland birds in a working landscape. Using field data, we study grassland bird abundance, prey abundance, and nest site selection in response to invasive management and human decisions driving landscape changes.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Less than 0.1% of tallgrass prairie remains in the Midwest. Following this habitat loss, grassland birds have experienced steeper, more widespread declines than any other avian guild in North America. The Grand River Grasslands (GRG) project seeks to mitigate this crisis. The GRG is a 70,000-hectare region on the Iowa-Missouri border. In contrast to other areas of the Midwest, grasslands are still dominant in the region, consisting of private land (~80%) and nature reserves (~20%). Because of this, the GRG has been identified as the best opportunity to restore a functional tallgrass prairie in the Midwest. We joined this GRG project for our graduate work, and have begun contributing to long-term datasets quantifying the response of birds to invasive management, fire, and grazing.

What is the significance of this project?

Grasslands hold both social and ecological value, so managing grasslands is a natural resource challenge that cuts across multiple groups of stakeholders. Management needs collaboration across disciplines and across the public-private land divide. Studying grassland birds in this context will help determine the possibilities for maintaining high quality habitat in a region where habitat is scarce and shrinking. The Grand River Grasslands restoration project seeks to halt the trend towards extinction for the tallgrass ecosystem by exploring how management can benefit grassland birds in a productive context. Our research, part of the larger GRG initiative, uses a social-ecological system framework to explore the potential of productive grasslands to serve as high-quality habitat.

What are the goals of the project?

Our goal is to evaluate the potential of our restoration efforts to benefit grassland birds. To achieve this aim, have several objectives. First, we will explore how grassland birds and their arthropod prey respond to invasive management. This objective is in the context of a landscape-scale experiment that evaluates the impact of herbicide, fire, and grazing on birds and insects. Second, we will explore the restoration potential of private land using a survey, determining how attitudes affect willingness to improve bird habitat. Third, we will quantify grassland bird nest placement through space and how it relates to fragmentation. Finally, we will evaluate the focal species concept, investigating whether saving habitat for the economically valuable quail benefits songbirds.