The One Minute Geographer: The Great Plains — The Mixed Grass Prairie

The mixed grass prairie, center, under the 100th meridian. Map from Wikipedia; line drawn by the author.

We’re continuing a series of posts about the 100-degree meridian, shown above running through the ‘mixed grass prairie’ of the Great Plains. The mixed grass prairie is an ecotone, a zone of transition that lies between the tallgrass prairie to the east, shown in dark green, and the shortgrass prairie, shown in light green to the west.

These are three zones of natural vegetation, now greatly modified by agriculture. It makes sense that the tallgrass prairie lies to the east, an area of greater rainfall. That zone has become the corn and soybean belt. The mixed grass prairie tends to be better for wheat and, as rainfall decreases to the west, it’s mostly used for grazing.

Tallgrass prairie in eastern Nebraska. Photo from the Prairie Corridor Foundation on railstotrails.org

But a lot of the Great Plains takes advantage of irrigation — often irrigated crop circles. Irrigated areas have a much greater variety of crops. In all these agricultural zones the biggest income producer for farmers is often livestock, particularly beef cattle on the Great Plains and hogs in the former tall grass area.

The term ‘mixed’ doesn’t necessarily mean that the height of the grasses is mixed in all areas. One or the other usually…