along the Platte River, Nebraska

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: effort. As part of the study; scientists; Arctic; Canada; Corridor The; Corridor, The; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.404.5344; http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3029/pdf/fs2005-3029.pdf

Each spring approximately 500,000 sandhill cranes and some endangered whooping cranes use the Central Platte River Valley in Nebraska as a staging habitat during their migration north to breeding and nesting grounds in Canada, Alaska, and the Siberian Arctic. Over the last century changes in the flow of the river have altered the river channels and the distribution of roost sites. USGS researchers studied linkages between water flow, sediment supply, channel morphology, and preferred sites for crane roosting. These results are useful for estimating crane populations and for providing resource managers with techniques to understand crane habitats. Over the last century, upstream waterresource development has affected the delivery of water and sediment to the central Platte River by eliminating high flows from the river and decreasing the sediment supply (Williams, 1978; Eschner and others, 1983). These changes have resulted in channel incision and vegetation encroachment along the riparian corridor. The once braided, wide, and shallow channels of the Platte have narrowed and deepened, and the sediment in these channels has become significantly coarser (Kinzel and others, 1999). During the same period of time, wetland meadow