Wet Prairies and Sedge Meadows of Northwestern Minnesota

Series Description

Sedge meadow wetlands were investigated in northwestern Minnesota. Located in the Glacial Lake Agassiz basin, the landscape is nearly level with a drop in elevation of only about one foot per mile. Water flows in a westerly direction overland and through ditches and creeks toward the Red River of the North. The wetlands are located in swales and flats and often form extensive complexes of several hundred acres.

Sedge meadows wetlands generally have several cm of standing water in the spring and early summer and are only saturated later in the season. Several species of sedges (Carex spp.) and rushes (Juncus spp.) dominate these wetlands along with grasses such as Canada bluejoint (Calamagrostis canadensis and Calamagrostis stricta) and cordgrass (Spartina pectinata), and forbs such as Hemp-dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), water hemlock (Cicuta maculata), and mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum). Interspersed throughout the wetlands are patches of shrubs such as dogwood (Cornus sp.) and willow (Salix sp.). Excluded from our study, but present in region, were shrub dominated wetlands, and wetlands with deeper water that supported species such as cattails (Typha spp.) or reed grass (Phragmites australis).

Forty-eight wet meadow sites were evaluated during the preliminary phase in 1995. These potential sites were identified by regional and local Department of Natural Resources wildlife managers, Natural Resource Conservation Service staff, and The Nature Conservancy land managers. Thirty-three of these sites were rejected primarily because they did not meet the criteria for a wet meadow (PEMA or PEMB, Class II). Generally, rejected sites were either too deep (emergent marsh) or dominated by scrub (PSS). A few sites were rejected because access was very difficult. Finally, some sites met all criteria but were dropped because fifteen sites were sought for the study. The fifteen sites selected were those that best represented a gradient from least impacted to most impacted. Least impacted conditions are represented by sites such as Beaches WMA (BE) and Pembina Trail Scientific and Natural Area (PT). Beaches is a 10,000 ha of continuous wetland, interrupted only by a few drainage ditches. The wetlands at Pembina Trail are within a large undisturbed preserve. A small portion of the surrounding upland had been restored from cultivation but the rest had minimal human use. Two of the most degraded sites were Mentor WMA (ME) and Hoff (HO). Mentor had been cultivated for many years until 1994. Hoff, a former cultivated field on private property, had been in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for several years. The Hoff site is surrounded by cultivated fields. Typical sites of moderate impact include Chicog WMA (CH), which had a history of on-site mowing and is adjacent to agricultural fields, and Malmberg SNA (MA), which had never been plowed but is relatively small (30 ha) and very isolated in a large agricultural area.

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