Where is our research conducted?

Nesting Success Research

We’ve been conducting our research across broad areas of the Missouri Coteau physiographic region. The Coteau is in geological terms, a terminal, dead-ice morain, which is an area created when the glaciers stopped and dropped all the materials it had been carrying. As a result, the Coteau is comprised of rolling hills of glacial till filled with numerous boulders, rocks, sand and gravel. These glacial origins have rendered the Coteau most suitable for grassland-based agriculture and ranching but some areas have been converted to agriculture. As a result, the Coteau provided an ideal region to examine how landscape characteristics influence duck nesting success as we were able to find landscapes dominated by cropland, landscapes composed entirely of native grassland and all combinations in between.