Monitoring the Wildlife, Hydrology and Water Quality of Drained Wetlands of the Des Moines Lobe, Northern Iowa: Introduction to Special Feature

The vast majority of prairie-pothole wetlands in a region that extends from northcentral Alberta in Canada to central Iowa in the United States have been drained to facilitate agricultural crop production. However, many of these drained wetlands continue to pond surface water immediately following snowmelt or heavy rains, making them too wet to provide a consistent crop and yet too dry to function as normal wetlands. These systems which we label “drained wetlands” were the subject of a four-year monitoring study (2011–2014) funded by the U.S. EPA that focused on monitoring the wildlife value, hydrology and water quality of drained wetlands of the Des Moines Lobe. Herein we describe highlights from the various monitoring components of the multi-year study and introduce a collection of five papers begins to describe the ecosystem value and complexity of these under-studied wetland systems.