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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 km2. This community profile covers the 168,000-km2 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.

gif -- prairie pothole region of the Dakotas

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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