USING PLANT COMMUNITY DIVERSITY IN RESERVE DESIGN FOR POTHOLE PRAIRIEON THE BLACKFEET-INDIAN-RESERVATION, MONTANA, USA

I sampled vegetation around 82 ponds in eight areas of glacial pothole prairie on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in north-central Montana by recording dominant species into two cover classes. I used these dat a to develop a community classification system and then determined the distribution of community types to calculate community richness and d iversity (Shannon's H') for each of the eight areas in order to assess their relative value in designing a prairie pothole reserve system. P lant species richness was not strongly correlated with community richn ess or community diversity. I used combined values of H' as well as di ssimilarity determined by Kendall's tau to select combinations of area s that provided optimal diversity and representativeness. These two me thods yielded comparable but not identical results. Inventorying plant communities and using community diversity and dissimilarity to select sites are efficient and effective techniques for reserve design.