The 2006 study of the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Centre in North Dakota found wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region of Canada and the U.S. comprise only 17 per cent of the landscape, but may detain twice as much carbon as surrounding agricultural soils employing no tillage management.

The study estimated that prairie wetlands have the potential to offset 2.4 per cent of the carbon emissions produced annually by the burning of fossil fuels in North America at 1990 levels.