What do you think?
Rate this book
Prairie: A Natural History
Thorough, detailed, and scientifically up-to-date, A Natural History provides a comprehensive, nontechnical guide to the biology and ecology of the prairies, or the Great Plains grasslands of North America. This edition has been updated to include new information about declining bird species, enhanced protection of bison, the effect of industrialization on the prairies, and the effect of the increase in coyote numbers on red foxes and swift foxes, among other topics. The book also includes an entirely new preface.
Extending from Alberta south to the Mississippi River, the prairies are among the largest ecosystems in North America. Until recently, they were also one of the richest and most magnificent natural grasslands in the world. Today, however, they are among the most altered environments on Earth. Nevertheless, Candace calls the prairies a landscape of hope-a place that has experienced the onslaught of modernization yet still inspires us with its splendor.
Throughout the book, spectacular full-color photographs and elegant black-and-white line drawings illustrate the beauty and diversity of the North American heartland. Both an authoritative reference and an easy-to-read guide, A Natural History is a must for anyone who wants to know more about the dazzling natural variety of the prairies.
Extending from Alberta south to the Mississippi River, the prairies are among the largest ecosystems in North America. Until recently, they were also one of the richest and most magnificent natural grasslands in the world. Today, however, they are among the most altered environments on Earth. Nevertheless, Candace calls the prairies a landscape of hope-a place that has experienced the onslaught of modernization yet still inspires us with its splendor.
Throughout the book, spectacular full-color photographs and elegant black-and-white line drawings illustrate the beauty and diversity of the North American heartland. Both an authoritative reference and an easy-to-read guide, A Natural History is a must for anyone who wants to know more about the dazzling natural variety of the prairies.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
27 people are currently reading
446 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 16, 2014
The book starts off with geography, describing where and what the prairie is and how its many various designations differ across an area that is truly immense. Savage then continues with geology, and she is again thorough, bringing us current all the way from its early formation millions of years ago.
Following this comprehensive opening, it is then a careful review of the prairie’s soil, vegetation and animals – big stuff and small (and some infinitesimally tiny) – along with pieces on ranching and farming with its effects on the land, both positive and negative. It concludes with an assessment, and an attempt at general prediction, of the prairie’s future.
It’s an absolutely beautiful book, full of stunning photos, illustrations and maps (if you have this as an ebook, go and get yourself a paper copy as I did). Throughout the book there are plentiful sidebars and shorter pieces on particularly interesting facets of life on the prairie. It is excellent.
Following this comprehensive opening, it is then a careful review of the prairie’s soil, vegetation and animals – big stuff and small (and some infinitesimally tiny) – along with pieces on ranching and farming with its effects on the land, both positive and negative. It concludes with an assessment, and an attempt at general prediction, of the prairie’s future.
It’s an absolutely beautiful book, full of stunning photos, illustrations and maps (if you have this as an ebook, go and get yourself a paper copy as I did). Throughout the book there are plentiful sidebars and shorter pieces on particularly interesting facets of life on the prairie. It is excellent.
October 12, 2022
So refreshing to read a book that acknowledges the intricacies of the prairie ecosystems. The author is definitely a bird lover, and I wished there was more on other organisms - still great overall!
January 19, 2023
This excellent book on the prairies makes for very enjoyable reading. It is regretable that the author does not include footnotes to allow one to pursue some of her statements. However, there is a list of further reading.
1 Where Is Here?
Savage describes the prairie as an empire of grass. The first European to encounter it was Coronado who travelled north looking for gold. The prairies are comprised of a number of ecosystems, each with its own populations of plants and animals. The Northern Mixed Grasslands and of the Southern Short Grasslands both have a species richness index of about 3000, greater than the northern forests of California.
2 Digging Into the Past
The author provides an intriguing history of the geological processes that produced the prairies. Of interest were the prairie mountains - from the Sweet Grass Hills to the Black Hills - rocky peaks that pushed out of the seabed about 50 million years ago, before the main ranges to the west arose. About 17 million years ago, the global temperature dropped 8 degrees C. over a million years, destroying the tropical forests but opening the way for the grasses. About 13,000 years ago, a temperature drop and rebound caused the loss of much treed habitat and the formation of the "big and bold" grasslands. The prairies were less varied than the earlier mix of tundra, grass and forest. "And perhaps this in itself is enough to explain the disappearance of the Ice Age megamammals which required a rich and varied supply of foods that grasslands alone could not provide."
3 The Geography of Grass
The Great Plains Grasslands are the home to 140 species of grass in 41 genera - some short, some tall. Grasses are adapted to periodic unfavourable conditions in that they conserve water by decreasing their metabolism when conditions are poor. "... prairie grasses are lean, mean, growing machines ...". Their leaf structure allows them to conserve water. Much of the mass of a grass is underground in the roots. Energy is captured from the sun during the day, leaving the stomata closed to conserve water. At night, they open for respiration.
"If prairie people are obsessed by the weather, it is because they have a lot to obsess about." Distant from the ocean masses, the prairies experience quite variable weather with very high and very low temperatures. Precipitation, too, is very variable. One study in Kansas showed that in any month, the precipitation was significantly above or below the average - normal values were abnormal! Even since the 1930's, there have been many droughts on the prairies of three to eight years. The vegetation of the prairies is not constant, but ebbs and flows with the periods of lesser and greater precipitation.
4 Secret of the Soil
The soil has been described as the 'poor person's tropical rainforest". Within the soil live tardigrades, springtails, mites, nematodes, and many other tiny creatures. In pasturelands, the nematode population is thought to consume twice as much vegetation as the grazing cattle. Grasses produce huge volumes of roots which are fed upon by the nematodes, springtails and fungi, breaking them down into humus. The topsoil of the prairies is due to the grasses that have grown there for years. Sandy soils retain less water and allow material to be flushed away than silty soils, resulting in less humus. The plains north of the southern extent of the glaciation have no native earthworms; the digging in of dead vegetation is done by ground squirrels, pocket gophers and ants.
5 Home on the Range
In many ways, the replacement of bison with cattle was "not much of a shock to the ecosystem", they being similar members of the Bovidae. This is not true of the semi-desert grasslands west of the mountains which did not evolve with the bison. While bison eat mostly grasses (95 percent), cattle include 20 to 40 percent forbs in their diet. Bison wallows created short term pools that added to the diversity of insects and shore birds. The major change to the rangeland has been the introduction of barbed wire fences. Historically, the bison ranged widely, giving the land a chance to recover, while contained grazing results in continuous cropping.
Ranching has resulted in the decline of many animals including the prairie dogs and their predator, the black-footed ferret. The elimination of the wolves has allowed the coyote population to skyrocket. Surprisingly, coyote control results in an increase in mid-sized predators and then a reduction in the duck population.
6 Water of Life
Wetlands on the prairies include the playas of the south and the potholes of the north, the latter being left by the ice sheets when embedded chunks of ice melted out. The potholes originally had a combined area similar to Lake Superior. They range from sloughs that dry out in days to permanent bodies of water. The sloughs are a challenge for wildlife as they become starved for oxygen during the mid-summer dieback and without outflow the salt concentrations build up, making them saline (chlorides) or alkaline (sulfates). However, many are adapted to the annual drying, making such sloughs particularly diverse.
Historically the prairie potholes produced 90 percent of the North American ducks. An immense drought in the late 1980's resulted in the lowest number of ducks ever recorded. Recovery was slow because of the number of potholes lost to farming and development. It was also found that farming had inadvertently increased the numbers of foxes, raccoons and skunks which destroy duck eggs. The U.S. introduced the Conservation Reserve Program which returned marginal farmland to quality upland habitat. With the return of the rains in the 1990's the duck population recovered.
Prairie rivers had always had a flood cycle where the land was inundated, then dried, supporting a diverse insect and fish population. The construction of dams over the years has largely removed this mechanism. The diversity of fish has been much reduced.
7 Prairie Woodlands
As one goes north or east, the greater moisture allows more trees to grow on the prairies, eventually becoming mixed woodlands before the prairie gives way to the forests. Woodlands add complexity to the grasslands. The riparian forests, in particular, provide living space for 60 to 90 percent of the vertebrates on the prairies.
8 The Nature of Farming
Between the 1870's and 1920's, the bison were killed off, wildfire was brought under control by the settlers, and a mind-boggling expanse of grassland was put into cultivation. This change has caused a major shift in the flora and fauna. In natural prairie, grasses and other plants have many ways to protect themselves from herbivores. This has caused the grasshopper to evolve into over four hundred species in North America. The monoculture of grain farming provides unlimited food for a few generalist species. The predators of many pest insects, such as the tachinid flies and beetles, require more diverse vegetation to survive, making windbreaks and undisturbed land importance to pest control.
9 Long-Range Forecast
Agriculture threatens the prairies, with little land being still in its natural state. The author describes some of the inatiatives that may help to preserve some prairie lands.
1 Where Is Here?
Savage describes the prairie as an empire of grass. The first European to encounter it was Coronado who travelled north looking for gold. The prairies are comprised of a number of ecosystems, each with its own populations of plants and animals. The Northern Mixed Grasslands and of the Southern Short Grasslands both have a species richness index of about 3000, greater than the northern forests of California.
2 Digging Into the Past
The author provides an intriguing history of the geological processes that produced the prairies. Of interest were the prairie mountains - from the Sweet Grass Hills to the Black Hills - rocky peaks that pushed out of the seabed about 50 million years ago, before the main ranges to the west arose. About 17 million years ago, the global temperature dropped 8 degrees C. over a million years, destroying the tropical forests but opening the way for the grasses. About 13,000 years ago, a temperature drop and rebound caused the loss of much treed habitat and the formation of the "big and bold" grasslands. The prairies were less varied than the earlier mix of tundra, grass and forest. "And perhaps this in itself is enough to explain the disappearance of the Ice Age megamammals which required a rich and varied supply of foods that grasslands alone could not provide."
3 The Geography of Grass
The Great Plains Grasslands are the home to 140 species of grass in 41 genera - some short, some tall. Grasses are adapted to periodic unfavourable conditions in that they conserve water by decreasing their metabolism when conditions are poor. "... prairie grasses are lean, mean, growing machines ...". Their leaf structure allows them to conserve water. Much of the mass of a grass is underground in the roots. Energy is captured from the sun during the day, leaving the stomata closed to conserve water. At night, they open for respiration.
"If prairie people are obsessed by the weather, it is because they have a lot to obsess about." Distant from the ocean masses, the prairies experience quite variable weather with very high and very low temperatures. Precipitation, too, is very variable. One study in Kansas showed that in any month, the precipitation was significantly above or below the average - normal values were abnormal! Even since the 1930's, there have been many droughts on the prairies of three to eight years. The vegetation of the prairies is not constant, but ebbs and flows with the periods of lesser and greater precipitation.
4 Secret of the Soil
The soil has been described as the 'poor person's tropical rainforest". Within the soil live tardigrades, springtails, mites, nematodes, and many other tiny creatures. In pasturelands, the nematode population is thought to consume twice as much vegetation as the grazing cattle. Grasses produce huge volumes of roots which are fed upon by the nematodes, springtails and fungi, breaking them down into humus. The topsoil of the prairies is due to the grasses that have grown there for years. Sandy soils retain less water and allow material to be flushed away than silty soils, resulting in less humus. The plains north of the southern extent of the glaciation have no native earthworms; the digging in of dead vegetation is done by ground squirrels, pocket gophers and ants.
5 Home on the Range
In many ways, the replacement of bison with cattle was "not much of a shock to the ecosystem", they being similar members of the Bovidae. This is not true of the semi-desert grasslands west of the mountains which did not evolve with the bison. While bison eat mostly grasses (95 percent), cattle include 20 to 40 percent forbs in their diet. Bison wallows created short term pools that added to the diversity of insects and shore birds. The major change to the rangeland has been the introduction of barbed wire fences. Historically, the bison ranged widely, giving the land a chance to recover, while contained grazing results in continuous cropping.
Ranching has resulted in the decline of many animals including the prairie dogs and their predator, the black-footed ferret. The elimination of the wolves has allowed the coyote population to skyrocket. Surprisingly, coyote control results in an increase in mid-sized predators and then a reduction in the duck population.
6 Water of Life
Wetlands on the prairies include the playas of the south and the potholes of the north, the latter being left by the ice sheets when embedded chunks of ice melted out. The potholes originally had a combined area similar to Lake Superior. They range from sloughs that dry out in days to permanent bodies of water. The sloughs are a challenge for wildlife as they become starved for oxygen during the mid-summer dieback and without outflow the salt concentrations build up, making them saline (chlorides) or alkaline (sulfates). However, many are adapted to the annual drying, making such sloughs particularly diverse.
Historically the prairie potholes produced 90 percent of the North American ducks. An immense drought in the late 1980's resulted in the lowest number of ducks ever recorded. Recovery was slow because of the number of potholes lost to farming and development. It was also found that farming had inadvertently increased the numbers of foxes, raccoons and skunks which destroy duck eggs. The U.S. introduced the Conservation Reserve Program which returned marginal farmland to quality upland habitat. With the return of the rains in the 1990's the duck population recovered.
Prairie rivers had always had a flood cycle where the land was inundated, then dried, supporting a diverse insect and fish population. The construction of dams over the years has largely removed this mechanism. The diversity of fish has been much reduced.
7 Prairie Woodlands
As one goes north or east, the greater moisture allows more trees to grow on the prairies, eventually becoming mixed woodlands before the prairie gives way to the forests. Woodlands add complexity to the grasslands. The riparian forests, in particular, provide living space for 60 to 90 percent of the vertebrates on the prairies.
8 The Nature of Farming
Between the 1870's and 1920's, the bison were killed off, wildfire was brought under control by the settlers, and a mind-boggling expanse of grassland was put into cultivation. This change has caused a major shift in the flora and fauna. In natural prairie, grasses and other plants have many ways to protect themselves from herbivores. This has caused the grasshopper to evolve into over four hundred species in North America. The monoculture of grain farming provides unlimited food for a few generalist species. The predators of many pest insects, such as the tachinid flies and beetles, require more diverse vegetation to survive, making windbreaks and undisturbed land importance to pest control.
9 Long-Range Forecast
Agriculture threatens the prairies, with little land being still in its natural state. The author describes some of the inatiatives that may help to preserve some prairie lands.
October 18, 2021
Everyone dreams of picking up and moving to a beach town, or a mountain town or a big city. To the extent that anyone mentions the Prairies at all, it often seems to be as a place to escape (Hillbilly Elegy) or pass through on the way to somewhere better, more interesting and more picturesque- the prairies are literal and metaphorical ‘fly-over country’. I grew up on the prairies’ edge (the beautiful, gently rolling hills of the aspen parkland) and technically still live there (this would be short grass prairie, if we hadn’t built a city over it). Savage’s non-fiction exploration of this land is a biography and a love letter, and I loved it right back.
This non-fiction book explains the incredible geological history of the prairies, the flora and fauna that live on it, the river systems that run through it, and the ecological value it holds- hopefully- for our future. There are so many fun, random facts that I have been proclaiming to anyone who will listen: the prairies used to be an ocean; the pronghorn is the second fastest land animal, a close second after the cheetah; grass sequesters more carbon per square inch than trees; the Yellowstone is the longest undammed river in the US.
Savage writes well, and keeps things moving at a good clip. My progress was slower not because the book was uninteresting but because there was so much to read and google (what a sage grouse looks like; where the Flint Hills are; where the Red River is in Texas).
I gained such an appreciation for the prairies and have been recommending this book to everyone.
This non-fiction book explains the incredible geological history of the prairies, the flora and fauna that live on it, the river systems that run through it, and the ecological value it holds- hopefully- for our future. There are so many fun, random facts that I have been proclaiming to anyone who will listen: the prairies used to be an ocean; the pronghorn is the second fastest land animal, a close second after the cheetah; grass sequesters more carbon per square inch than trees; the Yellowstone is the longest undammed river in the US.
Savage writes well, and keeps things moving at a good clip. My progress was slower not because the book was uninteresting but because there was so much to read and google (what a sage grouse looks like; where the Flint Hills are; where the Red River is in Texas).
I gained such an appreciation for the prairies and have been recommending this book to everyone.
December 31, 2014
I've had this book on my "am reading" shelf for a while, because I've read it more than once this year; the first time for my own pleasure, and then again as a supporting text book for my course "Ecology Through the Writer's Lens". Savage provides a great introduction to the grasslands of North America, a spectacular and often under-appreciated ecosystem. I would judge the writing very accessible for the non-scientist, but then again, I'm an ecologist so what I judge as accessible may not be so to other eyes. This worked well as a textbook for my non-majors course on prairie ecology. However, general principles tend to get lost in the numerous stories of individual species, both plants and animals. To compensate for this, I gave my students study questions to help guide and synthesize their reading. Recommended for all fans of natural history. A wonderful tribute to the vast history and compelling diversity of North American prairies.
February 8, 2021
I cannot talk about this book enough. In a mood of free flowing wonder and reverence, she writes the complexities of the Great Plains in a beautiful and understandable pace. With manageable and rich with information and asides that only deepen the reader's understanding of the environment and it's relationships.
As an Ecologist and Science communicator who has lived on the Great Plains his entire life, this book is an eye opener and a welcome release from the "doom-and-gloom" of the modern era. She's written this to be honest without being pessimistic about the future and I cannot be more grateful for finding other people with that perspective.
Also, the Preface alone deserves 5 stars!!!
As an Ecologist and Science communicator who has lived on the Great Plains his entire life, this book is an eye opener and a welcome release from the "doom-and-gloom" of the modern era. She's written this to be honest without being pessimistic about the future and I cannot be more grateful for finding other people with that perspective.
Also, the Preface alone deserves 5 stars!!!
March 4, 2017
Although she basically ignored the existance of eastern tall grass prairie (yeah yeah we are transitional oak savannahs yaddah yaddah yaddah) this was a very informative well written natural history with really excellent photography mixed in.
November 21, 2012
In one word: Beautiful. Subject, writing, layout, photographs... the prairie itself. I have always loved the big skies and wide open spaces. And Savage's book makes me love home even more.
June 21, 2025
Natural history of the North American prairie, from pre-history to present. So very much information here—I loved every page. Except, of course, the pages that detailed how very of little of virgin tallgrass prairie is left. But the author is an optimist for all her realism, and she points out the many pockets of disjointed prairie that still exist in the edge rows and easements of the farmlands that destroyed all that wonderful land.
Those remnants hold a diminished and denuded portion of what once was a glorious landscape, but at least they promise that all isn’t completely lost and some might even be brought back, someday.
If only.
Those remnants hold a diminished and denuded portion of what once was a glorious landscape, but at least they promise that all isn’t completely lost and some might even be brought back, someday.
If only.
November 5, 2021
I would recommend this book to everyone! Anyone interested in natural history, nature, or agriculture. Anyone who has lived in or driven through the prairies. It is beautiful and eloquent. It is a mix of history, science, and poetry all coming together to praise one of the most criminally under appreciated ecosystems in the world. Everyone should appreciate the prairie more, and reading this book would be a good start!
September 5, 2025
Includes lots of interesting facts about plants, animals (current, extirpated, and extinct, including dinosaurs), and bodies of water. Great photos included throughout. I learned a lot and would recommend this book to anyone.
October 3, 2020
This book is incredible! Very interesting and very readable. She is an amazing writer! The pacing is perfect for reading a few sections before bed every night.
October 22, 2021
This book was exactly what I was hoping it would be. The second Candace Savage book I've read and loved this month - so happy to have discovered this great local author!
March 5, 2023
Such a good read for an ecology nerd like me.
July 20, 2023
In depth overview with excellent photos, updates needed as the threats continue.
January 2, 2013
If there is only one book you want to read and/or own about the North American prairie, this is it. I own many other books about the prairie grasslands: Costello, Jones/Cushman, Brown, several by Weaver, etc. I consider this the ideal one in terms of photography, rigorous yet accessible information, thoroughness and passion for the natural history of the region. My only complaint - it's mildly Canada-centric. It lacks information about Mexican grasslands (these could be considered Chihuahuan desert, but there are prairie dogs and a black-footed ferret recovery site there - Janos). Also in the final chapter there is no mention of the role of Charles Goodnight and other ranchers on the Southern Plains in bison conservation. However, the photography is gorgeous and it covers all the basics - geology, soils, climate, paleontology, biology, environmental history, zoology, it's there. If you are a fan of or live in or on the margins of the Great Plains and you want be to ecoliterate about this bio-region, start here.
December 15, 2023
I picked up this book from my favourite Saskatoon bookstore (hello, McNally Robinson!!) after moving to Saskachewan from BC. I wanted to learn more about this new place that I had moved to and I figured this would be a good place to start.
I certainly learned a lot about the Prairies and all they hold. The Prairies are more than just flat farmer's fields. They are so ecologically diverse and are thriving with life. From the waters, to the soil, to the forests and farms, the Prairies have so much to offer, and this book outlines all of these amazing details - past, present, and even future.
I wish more people would pick up this book. I know so many people who think the Prairies are boring but I think the truth of the matter is that they just don't know it well enough. Pick up this book today to learn why the Prairies are such an awesome corner of the world 😊🌾
I certainly learned a lot about the Prairies and all they hold. The Prairies are more than just flat farmer's fields. They are so ecologically diverse and are thriving with life. From the waters, to the soil, to the forests and farms, the Prairies have so much to offer, and this book outlines all of these amazing details - past, present, and even future.
I wish more people would pick up this book. I know so many people who think the Prairies are boring but I think the truth of the matter is that they just don't know it well enough. Pick up this book today to learn why the Prairies are such an awesome corner of the world 😊🌾
December 4, 2013
Beautifully written natural hisotry of the prairies. It makes clear why it is so important to preserve the remaining grasslands from exploitation.
August 1, 2014
Beautifully illustrated and wonderfully written.
March 6, 2015
A really beautiful book: photographs, drawings, layout. And some great words. Alas, the future looks a bit bleak for the Great Plains.
August 11, 2015
Tons of information about the history and current state of prairie in the United States. Excellent photography throughout.
April 8, 2017
This was a thorough and very readable popular natural history covering a vast swath of the interior of North America, from the prairie provinces of Canada (which got a good deal of treatment) down to Texas, from the western edge of the Great Lakes all the way to the foothills of the Rockies. It was well illustrated with gorgeous color photographs, black and white illustrations, a great many maps, and also a very extensive list of suggestions for further reading. I compare it very favorably to another similar almost coffee-table natural history book I read and reviewed earlier this year, _The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region_ by Wayne Grady. Also strangely like _The Great Lakes_ there is thorough coverage of the Canadian side of things and the author is Canadian (though both books dealt primarily with the United States).
The book was divided into nine chapters, each with a clear and distinct theme and with sidebar type essays on various topics related to the main chapter topic. I found this, as with the Great Lakes book I mentioned, an excellent format.
The introductory chapter, titled “Where is here?” is just that, an introduction to the region covered in the book. There is some brief treatment of the European discovery of the region, the author noting for instance that the region, “neither desert nor garden but something completely new to European and Euro-American experience,” required that a new term be invented, with “the early French fur traders…[extending] their term for a woodland meadow – une prairie – as a kind of metaphor for this big, wide, sparsely wooded, windswept world.”
The bulk of chapter one though focuses on the natural history of the region as a whole. There is a discussion of the various types of environments that comprise the grasslands of interior North America (such as Peace River Parklands that marks the frontier between the Great Plains Grasslands and the boreal forest and the Prairie-and-Oak Transition zone around the Great Lakes), though early on the author makes clear that at “the center of everything there was the main attraction, the Great Plains Grasslands themselves, a landscape that even today invites wonderment,” a place that is “truly big sky country.” Other topics include an introduction to how the Great Plains vary in vertical rise east to west, how the landscape bears the marks of past glaciation (whether how there are large “sweep[s] of country…blanketed in deep, countered drifts of fine silt, or loess….another gritty, wind-borne by-product of glaciation” or as in the northern plains, the “terrain is an unmade bed of glacial rubble, or till, lying exactly where it dropped when the ice sheets retreated from the landscape ten thousand years ago”), and how there is a regional transition in the height of plants, from the “luxuriant stands of big bluestem and Indian grass” that used to grow in the eastern tall-grass prairie region to the “ground-hugging mat of grama and buffalo grass” of the Southern Short Grasslands, an area the explorer Coronado called a land of “very small plants.”
Chapter two went into more depth about the geological and paleontological history of the Great Plains, a region where beneath the hooves of the great herds of bison lay “long-buried evidence of onrushing seas, rising mountains, silt-burdened rivers, and towering cliffs of ice.” Topics covered include the rise of grasses about 37 million years ago as the climate became cooler and drier and the tropical forests of the North American plains started to wither away, the wonderful parade of animals that once lived here (including various ancestral horse species and relations, llamalike camels, dwarf rhinos, and Paleocastor, which dug deep, corkscrew burrows in the prairie), and a very brief discussion of the Missouri Coteau, a region on the northern plains of broken hill country, formed when “dead ice,” ice that had been buried in gravel for centuries gradually melted away, which caused the ground to sag and formed depressions or potholes.
Chapter three, “the geography of grass,” was all about, well, grass, and was quite interesting. Rather than focus on individual grass species the author covered a number of topics relating to grass and I learned quite a bit I didn’t know. The author discussed how grasses avoid moisture loss by the shape of their leaves, how prairie grass is “partially nocturnal; they do most of their growing at night or in the early hours of the morning,” the differences between C4 or warm season grasses and C3 or cool season grasses, about how it is important to know not only about the south-to-north gradient in precipitation but the north-to-south gradient in evaporation as well (essentially, whatever the south gains as rain, they lose as water vapor, important in figuring out “effective precipitation”), the importance of fire (especially important in maintain the tall-grass prairie), and how the “boundaries between tall-, mixed-, and short-grass prairies are not as tidy as they look on a map,” forming a “patchwork quilt” as different types of grassland reflect subtle differences in terms of moisture, whether on a south-facing slope or in a more humid bottomland.
Chapter four is all about soil biology and the organisms that live in it. Far more organisms live in prairie soils than aboveground, whether in terms of numbers of individuals, species, or in sheer biomass. There is coverage of springtails (one square yard of prairie can have anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 individuals in the top foot of soil), pseudoscorpions (“jaunty little monsters” that hunt the springtails in “their shadowy world”), nematodes (“not only the most numerous multicellular animals on the grasslands” but also “the most important herbivores”), how grasses are in a sense more organism of the underground than aboveground world (on average “grasses produce three or four times more roots by weight than they do leaves and stems, giving them a root-to-shoot ratio that is ten times as high as that of a forest”), that earthworms were not native to most of the Great Plains (“across much of the Great Plains” earthworms are a “prime indicator of disturbance”), and the fact that in reality “ants are the earthworms of the Great Plains grasslands,” as “most of the ants of the grasslands nest in the soil.”
Chapter five, “home on the range,” turns to more macro-, aboveground animals. Topics covered include how grazing shapes the grasslands, how to my surprise in large part substituting the wild American bison for “tame Eurasian cattle” was relatively ecologically neutral (with many bison dependent animals such as dung beetles, a number of specialized mites, a number of rodent and bird species, and in the tall-grass prairie the ornate box turtle having switched to cattle “without any noticeable problems”), how there have been some changes since bison vanished (noticeably the decline in the number, creation, and maintenance of “wallows,” shallow bowls of dust created by bison wallowing around to coat their skin with dust to protect them from insects, once important in creating seedbeds for a number of species of plants), how different species of prairie birds have different requirements in terms of plant composition, height, and density (and at different times of the day and year), how prairie dogs “are the beavers of the grasslands, in the sense that they reengineer the environment and create living space for an astonishing variety of other creatures” and plants, and the chapter closing with a fascinating discussion of badgers, foxes, and coyotes (particularly how coyotes are keystone species on the prairie, as they keep kangaroo rats in check, promoting “flourishing numbers of…deer mice, pocket mice, harvest mice,” as well as kangaroo rats, as kangaroo rats are “aggressive foragers that can push grasslands over the brink and encourage the invasion of desert shrubs” while also keeping black-tailed jackrabbits from multiplying to such an extent that cattle suffer, acting as “unlikely guardians of the cattle industry”).
Chapter six focuses on the wetlands of the Great Plains and the plants and animals that call them home, with excellent coverage of the fauna, flora, and life cycle of the Prairie Potholes, a neat section on water striders, about how certain species of plants and animals are dependent upon a wet-dry cycle of wetlands that flood and then go completely dry, coverage of the rise and fall and rise again of the “duck factory” of the Great Plains, the two major rivers systems of the Great Plains (the Saskatchewan in the north and the Missouri in the south), and of the plight of prairie fish, which have struggled with how many rivers and streams went form “silty, warm, seasonal” to a “clear, cold, managed flow” thanks to the needs of agriculture and flood control, with fish like the pallid sturgeon in danger of extinction as a result.
Chapter seven covers a seeming anomaly, the prairie woodland. Much is discussed, including the amazing biology of aspen, the various types of woodlands found throughout the region and the plant species that comprise them, the scarp forests, relicts of the last Ice Age, remnants of the dense coniferous forests that once covered the cooler, damper plains when the boreal forest was much further south, now isolated on the crowns of the “tallest breaks and ridges…[h]igh enough to catch the rain and snow, and cooler than the grasslands below,” a microclimate that allows them to “retain a toehold.” Other topics include the role of fire in prairie forests, the importance of cottonwoods in riverine forests, how artificial woodlands (planted by humans) have extended the range of many western and eastern woodland species (and the impact this may have on once geographically separated but related species of birds and the resulting interbreeding), how the penetration of grassland by woodlands has been a huge threat to ground nesting grassland birds (whether from the increase in cowbird nest brood parasitism or the expanded habitat of nest-raiding mammals such as skunks, raccoons, and opossums), and the relative fall of mule deer and the rise of white-tailed deer, again thanks to “expansion of invasive trees.”
Chapter eight is about how the nature of the Great Plains interacts with agriculture and surprisingly wasn’t too depressing. Some insects are absolutely no threat to farmers (such as the Harris’ checkerspot butterfly, whose larvae will only feed on wild flat-topped aster), while others adopted to crops with enthusiasm (such as the wheat-stem sawfly and a number of grasshopper species, already generalists in their diet). Surprisingly some grasshoppers are allies of farmers (such as the Turnbull’s grasshopper, which loves the invasive Russian thistle). Indeed a number of species provide vital ecological services to agriculture well beyond pollination, such the carabid beetles, “small, black, shiny, and intensely busy” beetles that are “voracious predators that prowl through the dark, searching for insect eggs, larvae, pupae, and soft-bodied adult forms,” eating “untold quantities of insects that might otherwise damage crops, including wireworms, cutworms, caterpillars, maggots, and aphids.” They exist in astounding numbers, with “peak, late-summer populations of 4,000 to 6,000 beetles per acre.” So valued are they, there have been experiments with creating “beetle banks,” essentially undisturbed patches of vegetation around farmland where the beetles can overwinter. Other topics covered included no-till agriculture, the rise in snow geese populations as a result of agricultural practices, and the concept of ecological traps.
The final chapter, chapter nine, dealt with long-range issues relating to the Great Plains. Topics covered included the struggle to maintain pure-bred bison (not mixed with genes from domestic cattle), prairie restoration, and two concepts in prairie conservation, “to protect and enhance wild prairie wherever it still exists” and “to manage the working landscape for wildness so that it not only serves the interest of people” but also native plants and animals.
The book was divided into nine chapters, each with a clear and distinct theme and with sidebar type essays on various topics related to the main chapter topic. I found this, as with the Great Lakes book I mentioned, an excellent format.
The introductory chapter, titled “Where is here?” is just that, an introduction to the region covered in the book. There is some brief treatment of the European discovery of the region, the author noting for instance that the region, “neither desert nor garden but something completely new to European and Euro-American experience,” required that a new term be invented, with “the early French fur traders…[extending] their term for a woodland meadow – une prairie – as a kind of metaphor for this big, wide, sparsely wooded, windswept world.”
The bulk of chapter one though focuses on the natural history of the region as a whole. There is a discussion of the various types of environments that comprise the grasslands of interior North America (such as Peace River Parklands that marks the frontier between the Great Plains Grasslands and the boreal forest and the Prairie-and-Oak Transition zone around the Great Lakes), though early on the author makes clear that at “the center of everything there was the main attraction, the Great Plains Grasslands themselves, a landscape that even today invites wonderment,” a place that is “truly big sky country.” Other topics include an introduction to how the Great Plains vary in vertical rise east to west, how the landscape bears the marks of past glaciation (whether how there are large “sweep[s] of country…blanketed in deep, countered drifts of fine silt, or loess….another gritty, wind-borne by-product of glaciation” or as in the northern plains, the “terrain is an unmade bed of glacial rubble, or till, lying exactly where it dropped when the ice sheets retreated from the landscape ten thousand years ago”), and how there is a regional transition in the height of plants, from the “luxuriant stands of big bluestem and Indian grass” that used to grow in the eastern tall-grass prairie region to the “ground-hugging mat of grama and buffalo grass” of the Southern Short Grasslands, an area the explorer Coronado called a land of “very small plants.”
Chapter two went into more depth about the geological and paleontological history of the Great Plains, a region where beneath the hooves of the great herds of bison lay “long-buried evidence of onrushing seas, rising mountains, silt-burdened rivers, and towering cliffs of ice.” Topics covered include the rise of grasses about 37 million years ago as the climate became cooler and drier and the tropical forests of the North American plains started to wither away, the wonderful parade of animals that once lived here (including various ancestral horse species and relations, llamalike camels, dwarf rhinos, and Paleocastor, which dug deep, corkscrew burrows in the prairie), and a very brief discussion of the Missouri Coteau, a region on the northern plains of broken hill country, formed when “dead ice,” ice that had been buried in gravel for centuries gradually melted away, which caused the ground to sag and formed depressions or potholes.
Chapter three, “the geography of grass,” was all about, well, grass, and was quite interesting. Rather than focus on individual grass species the author covered a number of topics relating to grass and I learned quite a bit I didn’t know. The author discussed how grasses avoid moisture loss by the shape of their leaves, how prairie grass is “partially nocturnal; they do most of their growing at night or in the early hours of the morning,” the differences between C4 or warm season grasses and C3 or cool season grasses, about how it is important to know not only about the south-to-north gradient in precipitation but the north-to-south gradient in evaporation as well (essentially, whatever the south gains as rain, they lose as water vapor, important in figuring out “effective precipitation”), the importance of fire (especially important in maintain the tall-grass prairie), and how the “boundaries between tall-, mixed-, and short-grass prairies are not as tidy as they look on a map,” forming a “patchwork quilt” as different types of grassland reflect subtle differences in terms of moisture, whether on a south-facing slope or in a more humid bottomland.
Chapter four is all about soil biology and the organisms that live in it. Far more organisms live in prairie soils than aboveground, whether in terms of numbers of individuals, species, or in sheer biomass. There is coverage of springtails (one square yard of prairie can have anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 individuals in the top foot of soil), pseudoscorpions (“jaunty little monsters” that hunt the springtails in “their shadowy world”), nematodes (“not only the most numerous multicellular animals on the grasslands” but also “the most important herbivores”), how grasses are in a sense more organism of the underground than aboveground world (on average “grasses produce three or four times more roots by weight than they do leaves and stems, giving them a root-to-shoot ratio that is ten times as high as that of a forest”), that earthworms were not native to most of the Great Plains (“across much of the Great Plains” earthworms are a “prime indicator of disturbance”), and the fact that in reality “ants are the earthworms of the Great Plains grasslands,” as “most of the ants of the grasslands nest in the soil.”
Chapter five, “home on the range,” turns to more macro-, aboveground animals. Topics covered include how grazing shapes the grasslands, how to my surprise in large part substituting the wild American bison for “tame Eurasian cattle” was relatively ecologically neutral (with many bison dependent animals such as dung beetles, a number of specialized mites, a number of rodent and bird species, and in the tall-grass prairie the ornate box turtle having switched to cattle “without any noticeable problems”), how there have been some changes since bison vanished (noticeably the decline in the number, creation, and maintenance of “wallows,” shallow bowls of dust created by bison wallowing around to coat their skin with dust to protect them from insects, once important in creating seedbeds for a number of species of plants), how different species of prairie birds have different requirements in terms of plant composition, height, and density (and at different times of the day and year), how prairie dogs “are the beavers of the grasslands, in the sense that they reengineer the environment and create living space for an astonishing variety of other creatures” and plants, and the chapter closing with a fascinating discussion of badgers, foxes, and coyotes (particularly how coyotes are keystone species on the prairie, as they keep kangaroo rats in check, promoting “flourishing numbers of…deer mice, pocket mice, harvest mice,” as well as kangaroo rats, as kangaroo rats are “aggressive foragers that can push grasslands over the brink and encourage the invasion of desert shrubs” while also keeping black-tailed jackrabbits from multiplying to such an extent that cattle suffer, acting as “unlikely guardians of the cattle industry”).
Chapter six focuses on the wetlands of the Great Plains and the plants and animals that call them home, with excellent coverage of the fauna, flora, and life cycle of the Prairie Potholes, a neat section on water striders, about how certain species of plants and animals are dependent upon a wet-dry cycle of wetlands that flood and then go completely dry, coverage of the rise and fall and rise again of the “duck factory” of the Great Plains, the two major rivers systems of the Great Plains (the Saskatchewan in the north and the Missouri in the south), and of the plight of prairie fish, which have struggled with how many rivers and streams went form “silty, warm, seasonal” to a “clear, cold, managed flow” thanks to the needs of agriculture and flood control, with fish like the pallid sturgeon in danger of extinction as a result.
Chapter seven covers a seeming anomaly, the prairie woodland. Much is discussed, including the amazing biology of aspen, the various types of woodlands found throughout the region and the plant species that comprise them, the scarp forests, relicts of the last Ice Age, remnants of the dense coniferous forests that once covered the cooler, damper plains when the boreal forest was much further south, now isolated on the crowns of the “tallest breaks and ridges…[h]igh enough to catch the rain and snow, and cooler than the grasslands below,” a microclimate that allows them to “retain a toehold.” Other topics include the role of fire in prairie forests, the importance of cottonwoods in riverine forests, how artificial woodlands (planted by humans) have extended the range of many western and eastern woodland species (and the impact this may have on once geographically separated but related species of birds and the resulting interbreeding), how the penetration of grassland by woodlands has been a huge threat to ground nesting grassland birds (whether from the increase in cowbird nest brood parasitism or the expanded habitat of nest-raiding mammals such as skunks, raccoons, and opossums), and the relative fall of mule deer and the rise of white-tailed deer, again thanks to “expansion of invasive trees.”
Chapter eight is about how the nature of the Great Plains interacts with agriculture and surprisingly wasn’t too depressing. Some insects are absolutely no threat to farmers (such as the Harris’ checkerspot butterfly, whose larvae will only feed on wild flat-topped aster), while others adopted to crops with enthusiasm (such as the wheat-stem sawfly and a number of grasshopper species, already generalists in their diet). Surprisingly some grasshoppers are allies of farmers (such as the Turnbull’s grasshopper, which loves the invasive Russian thistle). Indeed a number of species provide vital ecological services to agriculture well beyond pollination, such the carabid beetles, “small, black, shiny, and intensely busy” beetles that are “voracious predators that prowl through the dark, searching for insect eggs, larvae, pupae, and soft-bodied adult forms,” eating “untold quantities of insects that might otherwise damage crops, including wireworms, cutworms, caterpillars, maggots, and aphids.” They exist in astounding numbers, with “peak, late-summer populations of 4,000 to 6,000 beetles per acre.” So valued are they, there have been experiments with creating “beetle banks,” essentially undisturbed patches of vegetation around farmland where the beetles can overwinter. Other topics covered included no-till agriculture, the rise in snow geese populations as a result of agricultural practices, and the concept of ecological traps.
The final chapter, chapter nine, dealt with long-range issues relating to the Great Plains. Topics covered included the struggle to maintain pure-bred bison (not mixed with genes from domestic cattle), prairie restoration, and two concepts in prairie conservation, “to protect and enhance wild prairie wherever it still exists” and “to manage the working landscape for wildness so that it not only serves the interest of people” but also native plants and animals.
Want to read
May 6, 2017I know I read at least part of this book, if not all. Will have to check it out. I recall it as an excellent read!
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews