Prairie Basin Wetlands of the Dakotas:
A Community Profile
Chapter 1 -- Introduction
1.1 -- Geographic Area Covered
The Prairie Pothole Region of North America stretches from central Alberta to
central Iowa and encompasses well over 700,000 km
2. This community
profile covers the 168,000-km
2 portion of the region lying in North
and South Dakota (Figure 1). This area is bounded on the north by the International
Boundary, east by the Red and Minnesota River Valleys and portions of the western
boundaries of Minnesota and Iowa, and on the south and west by headwaters of
numerous small streams and rivers along the north and east sides of the Missouri
River. A few small areas of pot-holed land not shown in Figure 1 lie west of
the Missouri River.
Figure 1. Prairie Pothole Region of the Dakotas showing relation
to maximum extent of glaciation and Missouri River. The Missouri Escarpment
separates two major biogeographic regions of North America, the Great Plains,
and Central Lowlands (after Bluemle 1977).
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