Watershed cultivation and subsequent soil erosion remains the greatest threat to the service provisioning of playa wetlands in the High Plains. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) plants perennial vegetation cover on cultivated lands including playa watersheds, and therefore, the program influences sediment deposition and accumulation in playas. Our ob...

Breeding-bird communities inhabiting northern prairie wetlands have been shown to have higher densities and diversities in wetlands with a well-interspersed 50:50 vegetative cover:water ratio than in those wetlands with a higher or lower proportion of cover. Potential reasons for such a response include increased food or visual isolation and spacing of breeding birds. We manipulated cover:water...

Playas are ephemeral, closed-basin wetlands that are hypothesized as an important source of recharge to the High Plains aquifer in central USA. The ephemeral nature of playas, low regional recharge rates, and a strong reliance on groundwater from the High Plains aquifer has prompted many questions regarding the contribution and quality of recharge from playas to the High Plains aquifer. As a re...

We used remote sensing imagery to characterize the hydrological dynamics of 8404 temporary freshwater wetlands (playas) in Texas (Landsat 5 TM WRS-2 P30/R36) from 2008 to 2011, comparing known wet and dry periods, and related these to land use within 100 m. Hydroperiods were highly variable, and peak water availability occurred in different seasons in different years, varying by as much as two ...

Playa wetlands are important areas of soil organic carbon and nutrient storage in drylands. We conducted this study to assess how catchment biophysical variables control soil organic carbon and nitrogen in playas and how playas function differently than upland ecosystems. We found that playa organic carbon and nitrogen corresponded primarily with catchment vegetation cover and secondarily with ...

Anthropogenic disturbance of landscapes surrounding wetlands is considered a factor in local and global amphibian declines. Few data exist on the effects of agricultural cultivation of wetland watersheds on amphibians, and results from previous studies are contradictory. Our objective was to test the effects of general anthropogenic land use (cultivation vs. grassland) on the demographics of se...

Sedimentation (primarily from human land use) is a major threat to runoff-fed wetlands of the Great Plains of North America (playas), but it is unknown how many playas are turbid, how prevalence of turbidity has changed over time, and how turbidity is related to surrounding land use. We used remotely sensed imagery to assess sedimentation in the waters of over 7700 playa basins in Texas on four...

Although amphibians are the dominant vertebrate inhabiting playa wetlands during spring and summer in the Southern Great Plains, little is known about their diet and role in playa trophic structure. Because new metamorphs are more numerous than other terrestrial life stages of amphibians, we describe the diets of recently (,2 weeks) metamorphosed Great Plains toad (Bufo cognatus), barred tiger ...

There are 25,000–30,000 playa wetlands in the intensively cultivated Southern Great Plains of the United States. Knowledge of area and watershed influences on wetland flora are needed to guide their conservation. We surveyed plant-community composition in 224 playas over 360,000 km 2 and examined the relationships of species richness and diversity (Shannon’s) to playa area and watershed disturb...

Playas are ecologically and hydrologically important ephemeral wetlands found in arid semi-arid regions of the world. Urbanization, changes agricultural land use irrigation practices, climate change all threaten playas. While variations playa inundation on Great Plains North America have been previously analyzed by satellite using annual decadal time scales, no study to our knowledge has monito...