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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.
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.
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.
Grasslands occur where there is insufficient rain to support trees, thus only grasses and a few shrubs can survive. There are three kinds of grasslands on the great plains, short grass prairie, mixed grass, and long grass prairie. In each of these, grass species serve all the keystone roles.
Bouteloua dactyloides, commonly known as buffalograss or buffalo grass, is a North American prairie grass native to Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It is a short grass found mainly on the High Plains and is co-dominant with blue grama (B. gracilis) over most of the shortgrass prairie. Buffalo grass in North America is not the same ...
This ecoregion largely corresponds with the geographical region known as the High Plains.It is located in southeastern Wyoming, western Nebraska (the Nebraska Panhandle), eastern Colorado, western Kansas, western Oklahoma (the Oklahoma Panhandle), eastern New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle and parts of west-central Texas and a very small portion of southwestern South Dakota.
Semi-arid steppe grassland (shortgrass prairie) is the most common vegetation, covering 79 percent of the Grassland (including the adjacent Rita Blanca National Grassland). Ten percent of the land is covered with Pinyon – Juniper woodland, almost entirely in the western sector.
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