Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Farmers can take odd areas or difficult-to-farm areas out of production as they integrate native plant species into farm fields as contour buffers and edge-of-field filters. [4] In Iowa, most of the rich and fertile soils have been dedicated to corn and soybean crops. Only around 0.1 percent of the original tallgrass prairie remains. [5]
Tallgrass prairie is highly biodiverse grassland; more than 150 species of plant on any given native prairie site would be typical. Researchers observing Rochester Cemetery Prairie in Rochester, Iowa—one of the best-studied and most notable cemetery prairies—have found 360 plant species.
The Hayden Prairie is a remnant of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem that once made up 75 to 80 percent of Iowa’s landscape. [4] Although this remnant is only 240 acres (0.97 km 2) in size – less than a half section of land – it is the largest remaining parcel of tallgrass prairies surviving in Iowa outside of the Loess Hills on the western border of the state.
The Northwest Iowa Loess Prairies ecoregion is a gently undulating plain with a moderate to thick layer of loess. It is the highest and driest region of the Western Corn Belt Plains, as it rises to meet the Northern Glaciated Plains (46) of the Dakotas.
The core of the Neal Smith refuge was a 3,600-acre (1,500 ha) block of land originally acquired by Iowa Power and Light) for a nuclear power plant. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired this land in 1990. [ 4 ]
The native habitat of the plant includes prairie and meadows. [2] It grows in moist areas, such as river bottomland. [1] The original range of Asclepias sullivantii was the tall grass prairie, but very little of that habitat remains because of wide spread conversion to farming. [4]
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.
Flowering big bluestem, a characteristic tallgrass prairie plant. The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America.Historically, natural and anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals (primarily bison) provided periodic disturbances to these ecosystems, limiting the encroachment of trees, recycling soil nutrients, and facilitating seed dispersal and germination.