Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Iowa
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

The goal of this proposed project is to evaluate the success of restored wetlands (created to mitigate wetland losses) in the Missouri River floodplain of Iowa, managed and given the desired endpoints by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). This project is one of four similar cooperative projects to be conducted in the Missouri River floodplain reaches of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri (trans-boundary collaboration). A four-year field assessment of herpetofauna - primarily amphibians - will be used as indicators of wetland quality. This will be accomplished by - Quantifying the occurrence and recruitment of amphibians at existing mitigation sites (survey frog calls, operate drift fences, assess population size and reproduction.) - Formulating models of quality wetland restorations; statistical tools will include mark-recapture modeling and parameter estimation from field surveys. These models will then be used by managers in future habitat restorations and for adaptive management of existing restorations.