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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 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 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 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.
Short-grass prairies are found in the high plains of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. 70% of the original short-grass prairie remains today, making it one of the least fragmented prairie ecosystems. [6]
The habitat type is known as prairie in North America, pampas in South America, veld in Southern Africa and steppe in Asia. Generally speaking, these regions are devoid of trees, except for riparian or gallery forests associated with streams and rivers. [1] Steppes/shortgrass prairies are short grasslands that occur in semi-arid climates.
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 ...
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 ...
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