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The shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America.The two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides), the two less dominant grasses in the prairie are greasegrass (Tridens flavus) and sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula).
The Northern Shortgrass Prairies have a semi-arid climate, with annual average precipitation ranging from 270mm to 450mm. [citation needed] Winters here are cold, with a mean winter temperature of −10 °C (14 °F), but chinook winds, most common in the western part of the region, closest to the Rocky Mountains, ameliorate the cold temporarily when they pass over.
But the dominant grasses of shortgrass prairies include mesquite and buffalo grass, gramma grasses, three-awn grasses, little barley and silver bluestem. As expected, mixed grass prairies are ...
Tallgrass prairies receive over 30 inches of rainfall per year, whereas shortgrass prairies are much more arid, receiving only 12 inches or so, and mixed-grass prairies receive intermediate rainfall. [13] [14] Wet, mesic, and dry prairie ecosystems can also form more locally due to soil and terrain characteristics. Wet prairies may form in low ...
The predominant vegetation of the Central Great Plains ecoregion is a rich mixture of prairie Central and Southern mixed grasslands of medium height. The ecoregion is encompassed by the tallgrass and shortgrass prairies — this region has a mix of both tallgrass and shortgrass. Wildflowers occur among the grasses, but very few trees and shrubs do.
American Prairie (formerly known as American Prairie Reserve or APR) is a prairie-based nature reserve in Central Montana, United States, on a shortgrass prairie ecosystem with migration corridors and native wildlife.
The lesser prairie chicken is the only grassland bird federally listed as endangered, but only in part of its range. It has declined by more than 90% with an estimated remaining 2022 population of ...
The tallgrass prairie, with moderate rainfall and rich soils, were ideally suited to agriculture so it became a productive grain-growing region. The tallgrass prairie ecosystem covered some 170 million acres (690,000 km 2) of North America. Besides agriculture, much of the shortgrass prairie became grazing land for domestic livestock.