Study offers a dire prediction for waterfowl population

[Viking12]

The wetlands that produce most of North America's ducks and other waterfowl could be lost to global warming in a few decades, says a new study.

Tom Meersman, Star Tribune, Nov 27, 2005

North America's premier duck breeding grounds will be much drier and in many places will disappear, according to a study on how climate change could affect the Upper Midwest in the next 50 to 100 years.

Carter Johnson, a professor of ecology at South Dakota State University and co-author of the research, said that the number of ducks could plummet by 50 percent or more as early as 2050 if global warming dries up the wetlands where they nest.

The area, known as the prairie pothole region, contains an estimated 5 million small ponds spread across more than 300,000 square miles of the Dakotas, western Minnesota and Iowa, northeastern Montana and three Canadian provinces. It is notorious for episodic wet and dry spells, but is large enough for waterfowl to adapt and migrate past localized areas of drought to find other ponds in the region with enough water and cover.

That would end if climate change increases average temperatures across the entire prairie pothole region, Johnson said.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5749623.html