Long-term Trends in Wooded Draw Vegetation in the North Dakota Badlands

Wooded draws comprise about 1% of the landscape in the Northern Great Plains but provide various mammalian and avian species, including some listed as species of conservation priority, with food, cover, and protection. However, understanding the status of wooded draw health is lacking. Therefore, our objectives were to identify if wooded draws were regenerating by assessing long-term trends of sampled wooded draws while using predictive equations to assign the seral stage of each sampled wooded draw as an indicator of wooded draw health in North Dakota, USA. We found decreasing numbers of green ash (Fraxinus pennslyvanicus) and American elm (Ulmus americanus) stems temporally while percent cover of Prunus spp and Symphoricarpos spp increased temporally. However, we found a general trend for percent shrubby cover to decrease within our microplots. Using predictive equations, we classified 61% of wooded draws as late seral stage, 7% as late intermediate, 8% as early intermediate, and 24% as early successional by their last year of data collection. Our results indicate most wooded draws in North Dakota are aging and not regenerating. Given the importance of this rare cover type, management strategies aimed at regenerating wooded draws are discussed.