Climate and habitat type interact to influence contemporary dispersal potential in Prairie Smoke ().

Understanding dispersal potential, or the probability a species will move a given distance, under different environmental conditions is essential to predicting species' ability to move across the landscape and track shifting ecological niches. Two important drivers of dispersal ability are climatic differences and variations in local habitat type. Despite the likelihood these global drivers act simultaneously on plant populations, and thus dispersal potential is likely to change as a result, their combined effects on dispersal are rarely examined.