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Insectivorous bats are highly important ecosystem service providers that are increasingly threatened by factors such as land use change, climate change and disease. Despite their ecological importance, relatively little is known about the distribution and resource needs of bats in the Great Plains. Our objective was to inventory bats in the northern Great Plains using acoustic survey methods, and model the influence of landscape variables on resource use. We deployed Pettersson d500x ultrasonic bat detectors at 244 sites randomly selected from a 1 km point grid covering the study area for a total of 854 detector-nights. We identified the collected calls using Sonobat autoclassification software and accepted classifications made with at least 95% confidence. We recorded 5,514 calls that met our inclusion criterion from four bat species: big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus), eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis), silver haired bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans) and hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus), and we confirmed the presence of these species with mist netting. The most commonly recorded bat was�L. noctivagans�(78% of sites), followed by�L. cinereus�(61% of sites),�E. fuscus�(52% of sites) and�L. borealis�(9% of sites). Future analyses will model the responses of these species to landscape variables including the amount of open water, trees, row crops and open grassland in the surrounding landscape, the distance to trees, water or human-built structures, and road density. This study has added greatly to our understanding of the distribution and resource use of bats in the northern Great Plains and will guide future conservation planning for these species.