Abstract. Ecological reserves provide important wildlife habitat in many landscapes, and the functional connectivity of reserves and other suitable habitat patches is crucial for the persistence and resilience of spatially structured populations. To maintain or increase connectivity at spatial scales larger than individual patches, conservation actions may focus on creating and maintaining reserves and/or influencing management on non-reserves. Using a graph-theoretic approach, we assessed the functional connectivity and spatial distribution of wetlands in the Rainwater Basin of Nebraska, USA, an intensively cultivated agricultural matrix, at four assumed, but ecologically realistic, anuran dispersal distances. We compared connectivity in the current landscape to the historical landscape and putative future landscapes, and evaluated the importance of individual and aggregated reserve and non-reserve wetlands for maintaining connectivity. Connectivity was greatest in the historical landscape, where wetlands were also the most densely distributed. The construction of irrigation reuse pits for water storage has maintained connectivity in the current landscape by replacing destroyed wetlands, but these pits likely provide suboptimal habitat. Also, because there are fewer total wetlands (i.e., wetlands and irrigation reuse pits) in the current landscape than the historical landscape, and because the distribution of current wetlands is less clustered than that of historical wetlands, larger and longer dispersing, sometimes nonnative species may be favored over smaller, shorter dispersing species of conservation concern. Because of their relatively low number, wetland reserves do not affect connectivity as greatly as non-reserve wetlands or irrigation reuse pits; however, they likely provide the highest quality anuran habitat. To improve future levels of resilience in this wetland habitat network, management could focus on continuing to improve the conservation status of non-reserve wetlands, restoring wetlands at spatial scales that promote movements of shorter dispersing species, and further scrutinizing irrigation reuse pit removal by considering effects on functional connectivity for anurans, an emblematic and threatened group of organisms. However, broader conservation plans will need to give consideration to other wetland-dependent species, incorporate invasive species management, and address additional challenges arising from global change in social-ecological systems like the Rainwater Basin.

Abstract:The growing complexity and interdependence of water management processes requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders in water governance. Multi-party collaboration is increasingly vital at both the strategy development and implementation levels. Multi-party collaboration involves a process of joint decision-making among key stakeholders in a problem domain directed towards the future of that domain. However, the common goal is not present from the beginning; rather, the common goal emerges during the process of collaboration. Unfortunately, when the conflicting interests of different actors are at stake, the large majority of environmental multi-party efforts often do not reliably deliver sustainable improvements to policy and/or practice. One of the reasons for this, which has been long established by many case studies, is that social learning with a focus on relational practices is missing. The purpose of this paper is to present the design and initial results of a pilot study that utilized a game-based approach to explore the effects of relational practices on the effectiveness of water governance. This paper verifies the methods used by addressing the following question: are game mechanisms, protocols for facilitation and observation, the recording of decisions and results, and participant surveys adequate to reliably test hypotheses about behavioral decisions related to water governance? We used the "Lords of the Valley" (LOV) game, which focuses on the local-level management of a hypothetical river valley involving many stakeholders. We used an observation protocol to collect data on the quality of relational practices and compared this data with the quantitative outcomes achieved by participants in the game. In this pilot study, we ran the game three times with different groups of participants, and here we provide the outcomes within the context of verifying and improving the methods.

The negative effect of invasive species on native species, communities, and ecosystems is widely recognized, and the economic effects in the United States are estimated to be billions of dollars annually. Studies often examine traits of nonnative species or examine what makes a particular habitat invasible. To better understand the factors governing invasions, we used the flora of Nebraska to characterize and compare native and nonnative plant occurrences throughout the state. In addition, we assessed four critical landscape predictors of nonnative plant richness: human population size and three land cover attributes that included percentage of grassland, percentage of agriculture, and percentage of public lands. Results indicated that individual plant species richness has increased by about 35% through invasions (primarily of annuals from the family Poaceae). In addition, human population density, percentage of agriculture, and percentage of public lands all show a positive association with nonnative plant richness. Successful plant invasions may change the composition of species communities, basic ecological functions, and the delivery of ecosystem services. Thus, identifying the factors that influence such variation in distribution patterns can be fundamental to recognizing the present and potential future extent of nonnative plant infestations and, in turn, developing appropriate management programs.

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The Chinese mystery snail (Bellamya chinensis) is a non-indigenous, invasive species in freshwater ecosystems of North America. We provide fecundity estimates for a population of these snails in a Nebraska reservoir. We dissected 70 snails, of which 29 were females. Nearly all female snails contained developing young, with an average of 25 young per female. Annual fecundity was estimated at between 27.2 and 33.3 young per female per year. Based on an estimated adult population and the calculated fecundity, the annual production for this reservoir was between 2.2 and 3.7 million young.