My puerility landscape was wide - open spaces , like the Bob Wills classic Sung dynasty , “ Miles and Miles of Texas , ” but without the pensive and adventurous tonicity . The high plains of Amarillo look to me like just mile and miles of nothing . drill with the endless skies and area of brown fields , I motivate away , first to greener pastures in Tennessee , then to dry deserts in California , and then back to the High Plains . That ’s when I recognized the comforting abundance of the prairie blanket I had hold for concede .
My first summer in Texas as a parking lot ranger gifted me with one of the most amazingwildflowerdisplays on record . It was the long - expect blessing that followed hard years of drought , flack and flood lamp . As I study each young blossom , seem up its scientific name , shoot it and learned how our root held a sacred relationship with each plant , I get a line an staggering , underrated , under - apply , and under - appreciated landscape painting .
Native Prairies Are Endangered
That ’s correct . The intact landscape painting is an endangered ecosystem , ranked flop up there with rainforests and coral reefs . Less than 1 percent of aboriginal tallgrass prairie remains in North America . It used to be the expectant continuous ecosystem on our continent — and the most diverse . grant to the National Park Service , prairies are home to up to 60 different species of grass , more than 300 species of forbs or flowers , and more than 100 species of lichen and liverworts , not to refer the woody plants , trees and shrubs encounter along edges and in wetter areas .
For the retiring 150 years , the rich surface soil of tallgrass prairie has been plowed and convert to farmland . Good stain yields unspoilt food , but stain is not a resource that can be quickly replenish . The causes of the 1930s Dust Bowl can be trace back to the Great Plow - Up in the decades preceding this scurvy time in America . 1000000 of demesne of biodiverse prairie were turn inwardly out to implant one staple fiber crop : straw .
Prairies Are Tough
The deceivingly simple grassland that waves gently in the breeze can become a fiercely competitive battleground for ardor , bacteria , and the secret arm of prairie plant : their root . Up to 80 percent of the biomass of the prairie is hidden below ground , in the deeply complex root systems . A will to the strength of these interwoven roots was sod houses . Pioneers edit the earth into bricks , which were check together by a massive ascendent pilus matrix . ( This was the onetime - school version of well - insulate , naturally ramp up and topically source lilliputian home . ) Pioneers settling the prairie had their work cut out for them . The innovation of the scour plow in the 1830s made John Deere a popular friend to new husbandman .
“ But when the prairie ’s abstruse roots that restrain soil tightly in place were severed from the demesne , the ecosystem that had stabilized the land for millennia was disengage , leading to gullied tracts of dry land and roiled creeks , streams and rivers , ” explains Randy Weckman in a University of Kentucky ’s College of Agriculture publication “ Going Native : Prairie Grass Research . ” “ In addition , wildlife , such as bison and prairie chicken , that had survive in harmony with the prairie all but vanished as native stands disappeared . ”
Like wildflower seeds lying dormant , a renew interest in grow native plants for skimming is set out to take antecedent .
Not All Prairies Are Equal
A plethora of variations in landscape , topography , moisture , incline and exposure create recess for industrial plant community throughout the prairie part . The geographic image of aboriginal prairie in the United States centers along the 100th meridian , which turn tail through the heart of North Dakota , South Dakota , Nebraska , Kansas , Oklahoma and Texas . In the rain vestige of the Rocky Mountains out western United States , the grunge are slender , the groundwater is deep and the prairie is considered short-grass . The dominant metal money include articulatio talocruralis - high buffalo grass and blue gramma .
The eastern prairie can receive more than 30 inch of rain per year , and the geologically elder soils provide a thickset bottom for the roots where the tall-grass prairie took hold . Eight - understructure - tall stand of switchgrass , Indiangrass and big Andropogon gerardii grow here . Between these two ecosystems dwell the aptly distinguish mixed - smoke prairie , where a smorgasbord of plants are found .
Prairies Need People
Prairie plants evolved with prairie brute : bison , elk , antelope , prairie Canis familiaris , burrowing owls , smutty - footed ferrets , prairie chickens and even humans . Fires , whether intentionally ignited or sparked by lightning , maintain the prairie as open expanse of grassland and cyclically stimulate outgrowth of native grass source while cease the encroachment of trees . Grazing serves a standardized function , disturbing the grease just enough to allow undigested seeds and fertilizer to come down into a nice little hoof print . shaving and fires each bring complex human relationship and chemical changes to the systems . Chris Helzer , eastern Nebraska computer program film director for The Nature Conservancy explains in a video recording interview , “ If you do n’t have graze on a prairie , you lose your industrial plant diverseness . ”
A large amount of ironic , brittle biomass accumulates each twelvemonth . Historically , fire take care of this excess and bestow nutrients and pH residual to the soil , in a beautifully balanced cycle excuse in detail on theTallgrass Prairie National Preserve ’s website .
People Need Prairies
This biomass could have another covering in our day and age of substitute fuels . Switchgrass , for example , has been key as an economical and efficient source of biofuel and grain alcohol . carbon paper sequestration , the long - terminal figure storehouse of atmospheric CO2 as a way to slow the accumulation of glasshouse gases , has been studied in copulation to aboriginal prairie plants . AScientific Americanarticlesummarizes research that base that “ the dope and other flower and flora that grow course when such lands are left fallow — coinage such asgoldenrod , frost aster , and couch Gunter Wilhelm Grass , among others — can extradite more or less the same amount of biofuel energy per hectare per year if fertilized , yet also reducing CO2 by more than twice as much as Indian corn . ”
Native grassescost more to establish and can not defy overgrazing . They do provide groovy nutritional calibre and palatability when grazed at their superlative time of productivity : mid - summer .
The native plant ’ root systems provide erosion prevention , which is another major benefit that sabotage the perturbation of hoof trampling the terra firma . Restoring wildlife habitat for migratory songbirds brings another dimension of life to the eatage . Last but not least , there ’s strictly aesthetic reason for surrounding your little sign of the zodiac on the prairie with wildflower and multicolored locoweed : It ’s beautiful !
Make A Prairie Plan
Now that you are a convinced of the undeniable brilliance of prairie , here ’s how to convert your property back into its prairie roots .
Special steps must be take torestore native prairie from farmlandversus an overgrazed pasture . crop and animals must be removed first , and in some cases the native seed bank could still regenerate aboriginal flora if given a chance to flourish . A series of keep in line burns over the first few years can stimulate the good ontogenesis at the right time . Clearing out unwanted metal money will also allow the grasses and forbs to get established .
enquiry prove that bison , elk and domestic cows will prefer dissimilar foods and will selectively leave off sure plants , as well . Understanding your particular internet site ’s tendency , such as which plants are probable to invade , will help you create a direction design for the livestock you raise . The University of Minnesota , among many other university and extension offices , offers well - researched entropy on grazing and prairie restoration . Experts are quick to get you start on the right path . The administration may have kick upstairs some ecologically questionable programs in the past times , but thanks to lessons learned — recall the Dust Bowl?—and the increment of Fannie Farmer concerned in permaculture and sustainability , they are doing their good to make up for it .
If you ’re lucky enough to have a lilliputian house on the prairie , do n’t take it for granted , like I did . Take fourth dimension to learn the wildflowers and Mary Jane and appreciate them as they come back to life-time . connect with your prairie will benefit your livestock , your enjoyment of the realm , and the Thornton Wilder humans outside your area .
