The One Minute Geographer: The Great Plains — The Mixed Grass Prairie
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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.
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 predominates, so in the mixed region, depending on local climate, soil, and elevation, the natural vegetation may have been acres of tall grasses here and acres of short grasses there.
The mixed grass prairie zone has greater biological diversity, not only of plants, but of birds and other animals as well. That’s why botanists call it an ‘ecotone’ — a zone of transition. I’ve included photos of both the tallgrass and the shortgrass prairies.
We’ll look at how the 100th meridian corresponds with elevation in this next post in the Great Plains/Magical Meridian series
I’m a retired geography professor. Follow me on Medium.com for more posts from on The One (or Two or even Three) Minute Geographer. You can get an email when I publish by clicking this link (6 or so posts each month): https://jimwfonseca.medium.com/subscribe
