Climate and topography: the two essential ingredients in predicting wetland permanence

Abstract. Wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) are forecast to retract in their ranges due to climate change and potholes that typically contain ponded water year-round, which support a larger proportion of biological communities, are most sensitive to climate change. In addition to climate, land use activities and terrain also influence ponded water amounts in PPR wetlands. However, terrain is not typically included in models forecasting the impacts of climate change on PPR wetlands. Using a combination of variables representing climate, land cover and land use, and terrain, we predicted wetland permanence class in the southern Boreal, Parkland and Grassland of the Alberta PPR. We show that while climate is the strongest predictor of wetland permanence class in each Natural Region, topography was nearly as important in the Parkland and Southern Boreal.