Shortgrass prairie

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Historic photo of the High Plains in Haskell County, Kansas, showing a shortgrass prairie with a buffalo wallow or shallow circular depression in the level surface. (USGS photo by W.D. Johnson, 1897) [1]
Shortgrass prairie of the Llano Estacado in 1900 [2]

The shortgrass prairie ecosystem of the North American Great Plains is a prairie that includes lands from the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains east to Nebraska, including rangelands in Colorado and Kansas, and extending to the south through the high plains of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

These rangelands were formerly maintained by grazing pressure of American Bison, the keystone species; the dominant grasses are blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides). The semi-arid continental climate receives on average less rainfall than that which supports the tallgrass prairie formerly to the east.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Darton, N.H. 1920. Syracuse-Lakin folio, Kansas. United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Folios of the Geologic Atlas, No. 212, 10 pp. (See Plate 2)
  2. ^ Hill, R.T. 1901. Geography and Geology of the Black and Grand Prairies, Texas. In: Walcott, C.D. (ed), Twenty-First Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior (1899-1900), Part VII - Texas, 666 pp. (See Plate III)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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