Landscape requirements of prairie sharp-tailed grouse Tympanuchus phasianellus campestris in Minnesota, USA

The prairie sharp-tailed grouse Tympanuchus phasianellus campestris occurs throughout the north central region of North America. It is of management c oncern because it has decreased in the southeast portion of its range over the past three decades, including marked declines in Minnesota and the Grea t Lakes region, USA. Although there is general knowledge about the habitat requirements for this species, no quantitative lek site or landscape inform ation has been documented. We quantified landscape composition around activ e and inactive sharp-tailed grouse lek sites and random points in brush lan dscapes in northeast Minnesota at multiple scales (200-3,000 m radii circle s). Our objective was to compare landscape composition among these sites. W e also developed a model to predict the probability of grouse lek site occu rrence in the study area. Landscape composition around active and inactive lek sites differed from each other primarily at the 500 m and 1,000 m radii scales. Inactive sites had higher proportions of upland forest and brush c over types and active sites had a higher percentage of native grass than in active sites. No differences were found in landscape composition between si te types at the 200 m radius scale and only one landscape variable (number of cover types) was different at the 3,000 m radius scale. We found non-ran dom distributions of this grouse species at four different scales. Random b rush land sites differed from both active and inactive sites having higher percentages of forest and brush cover. In contrast, lek sites had more bare ground, emergent aquatic vegetation, bog brush and roads than the random p oints. A regression model for the grouse at the 3,000 m scale was used to p redict the probability of grouse occurrence in the landscape. The model res ulted in a spatial map with about 8% of the area having a probability of gr ouse occurrence of >80%. This information can be used to locate new lek sit es and to guide management activities for this species.