. Aquatic surveys and assessment of the Slim Buttes region of Harding and Butte Co., SD . Aquatic invertebrates; Aquatic invertebrates; Stream ecology; Stream ecology; Watershed ecology; Watershed ecology. Figure 1. Picnic Spring in the Cave Hills, a small Northwestern Great Plains perennial As a whole, the Slim Buttes area is an important part of a large swath of untilled prairie area in the Level III Northwestern Great Plains ecoregion (Omerink 1995) (Figure 3), also known as the Northern Great Plains Steppe (TNC 1999). Four Level IV ecoregions are found within the Slim Buttes area
. Aquatic surveys and assessment of the Slim Buttes region of Harding and Butte Co., SD . Aquatic invertebrates; Aquatic invertebrates; Stream ecology; Stream ecology; Watershed ecology; Watershed ecology. Figure 1. Picnic Spring in the Cave Hills, a small Northwestern Great Plains perennial As a whole, the Slim Buttes area is an important part of a large swath of untilled prairie area in the Level III Northwestern Great Plains ecoregion (Omerink 1995) (Figure 3), also known as the Northern Great Plains Steppe (TNC 1999). Four Level IV ecoregions are found within the Slim Buttes area (Figure 4). Because intact watershed landscapes at the regional scale have been shown to support aquatic communities with high biological integrity (Allan et al. 1997), we surmised that the Slim Buttes region might support some of the most intact native prairie fish and macroinvertebrate communities in the state. One fairly recent study in the Moreau River Basin downstream from our study area reported 19 species offish (16 native) (Loomis 1997). To determine if this were true, we used an aquatic ecosystem classification approach developed by the Montana Natural Heritage Program (MTNHP) to increase the understanding of Montana's aquatic prairie ecosystems (Stagliano 2005). Ecosystem classification provides a way to understand the complexity of ecosystems and creates distinctions among ecosystem types based on factors that determine the distribution of ecological processes and biota (Hawkins and Norris 2000). We previously classified biological communities (fish and macro invertebrates) within the Missouri River Zoogeographic Region with respect to the common repeatable habitat units within the watersheds that they occur. The Slim Buttes area is within the same Level III ecoregion, so we hoped that utilizing these classifications would validate their regional applicability while allowing us to predict community types in the scope of watersheds and aquatic ecological units. Figure
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