Abstracts

Presented by James R. Morel - Email: james.morel@ttu.edu

The Oaks and Prairies Ecoregion of east-central Texas harbor numerous man-made stock ponds, which regionally are the dominant landscape water feature and collectively provide abundant habitat for wintering waterfowl. Recent Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Mid-Winter Waterfowl Surveys indicate that the Oaks and Prairies Ecoregion may harbor > 1/3 of all wintering waterfowl in Texas, with nearly half observed occurring on stock ponds. We quantified waterfowl forage on 10 stock ponds within the MT7 Ranch, Stephens County, Texas. Aquatic invertebrate samples (n = 980), seeding plant samples (n = 89), and submerged aquatic samples (n = 21) were collected monthly to quantify total waterfowl forage biomass between 1 September - 15 March (waterfowl migration and wintering period), 2016/2017. Invertebrate and vegetation biomass data were used to build waterfowl carrying capacity estimates which indicate high diversity and variability of forage characteristics, both temporally and spatially among all study ponds. Waterfowl duck-energy-days (DEDs) were variable throughout the study period and among ponds (range = 0 128, x = 16.2) and cumulatively among all ponds, (range = 30 190, x = 95.9) and appear to be influenced by pond size and depth, which presumably limits available space for forage production, as well as cyclical differences throughout migration and winter. Although total DEDs were relatively low for individual ponds, when extrapolated to the number of stock ponds 4 acres over the Texas portion of the ecoregion (n = 440,510), monthly DEDs ranged between 2.7 million and 5 million.