50 Fun Facts About Prairie

The word 'prairie' comes from which language's word for meadow?

American backwoodsmen borrowed it because they had no word for the great grasslands they found beyond the forests.

To which biome do ecologists assign prairies?

The steppes of Ukraine and Kazakhstan and the grasslands of Argentina belong to the same biome.

Which of these South American grasslands is in the same biome as the prairie?

They stretch across Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

Moving from west to east across the prairie, which type gives way to the others?

The drier expanse under the Rockies gradually becomes the richer, wetter soils of the east.

Roughly how much rain does a tallgrass prairie receive per year?

Shortgrass prairies get only about 12 inches, and mixed-grass prairies fall between the two.

Which three Canadian provinces are known as the Prairie Provinces?

Their grasslands lie mostly in the south; the north is forest with more varied terrain.

Which dry southern Canadian region, once thought unarable, became a major wheat producer?

Advances in irrigation turned it into one of the most important agricultural regions in Canada.

What geological process spread the parent material for most prairie soils?

Wind-blown loess is the other major parent material; the last glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago.

What created the rain shadow that helped form the Canadian Prairies?

Lower precipitation downwind of the mountains favoured grasses over trees.

How deep can the roots of prairie plants reach?

Up to three quarters of a prairie plant's biomass is below ground, which is why fire kills trees but not grasses.

What was the overwhelming source of the fires that shaped the tallgrass prairie?

Native people burned the land annually for 10,000 to 20,000 years to aid hunting, travel and safety.

How many different grass species may a single prairie contain?

On top of that, prairies can host more than 300 species of flowering plants.

Which of these is one of the dominant grasses of the prairie?

Indian grass, side-oats grama, Canada wildrye and switchgrass are the others usually listed.

The Konza Tallgrass Prairie research site is in which state?

It hosts 250 native plant species and more than 3,000 kinds of insect.

Which large grazing animal is considered essential to the prairie ecosystem?

Their grazing, trampling, wallowing and dung shape the plant community; their dung alone supports over 1,000 insect species.

How does the prairie's great grazer differ from cattle in its diet, according to ecologists?

That preference increases plant diversity, while cattle seem to favour the flowers.

What was the estimated population of North America's great grazing animal in the late 18th century?

By 1889 the species had been reduced to just 541 animals.

To how many animals had that population been reduced by 1889?

Wild numbers had recovered to roughly 31,000 by 2019.

What was a 'buffalo jump'?

Native hunters also drove herds into fenced pens called buffalo pounds.

Prairie dogs belong to which animal family?

They are ground squirrels named for a warning call that sounds like a bark; five species are recognised.

How many species of prairie dog are recognised?

Black-tailed, white-tailed, Gunnison's, Utah and Mexican.

What is a family group of black-tailed members of the burrowing squirrel genus Cynomys called?

Family groups of the white-tailed, Gunnison's and Utah species are called clans; towns are divided into wards.

What does the genus name Cynomys, shared by the prairie's barking burrowers, mean in Greek?

Lewis and Clark's 1804 journals recorded 'a Village' of the animal, using the name they had picked up from local traders.

Researcher Con Slobodchikoff claims prairie-dog alarm calls encode what about a predator?

He describes the call system as a form of grammar; there are distinct calls for hawks and for mammals such as coyotes.

Which endangered mustelid gets up to 90 percent of its diet from prairie dogs?

Declared extinct in 1979, a remnant population turned up in 1981 and a clone named Elizabeth Ann was born in 2021.

In which state was a surviving wild population of black-footed ferrets discovered in 1981?

The species had been declared extinct two years earlier; captive breeding has since returned it to eight states.

Which prairie animal is the fastest land mammal in the Americas, at up to 55 mph?

Though called an antelope, its closest living relatives are the giraffe and okapi.

The mating display of the greater prairie chicken is known by what name?

Once abundant, the grouse is now extremely rare or gone across much of its former range.

Which Illinois blacksmith solved the problem of sticky prairie soil with a steel moldboard plow in 1837?

Wooden plows bounced and clogged in the dense sod; the steel version cut the roots and opened the land to farming.

Roughly what fraction of the original tallgrass prairie land cover remains today?

Much of what survives is in cemeteries, railroad rights-of-way and rocky or hilly spots unfit for the plow.

Which two states rank 49th and 50th of the 50 US states in uncultivated land remaining?

Their former tallgrass prairie soils made them the heart of the Corn Belt.

What 1870s invention helped convert the open-range shortgrass prairie into fenced pastures and cropland?

Improved irrigation did the rest, though the region remains prone to long droughts.

The 1930s 'black blizzards' of airborne prairie soil were known collectively as what?

They darkened skies across 19 states and drove hundreds of thousands of people from the Great Plains.

How many people were forced off the Great Plains by the 1930s soil-storm disaster?

Plowing had destroyed the deep-rooted native grasses that once held the soil through droughts.

The 1930s soil-storm disaster was roughly centred on which region?

It also took in parts of four neighbouring states, from south-eastern Colorado to a corner of New Mexico.

Which University of Minnesota ecologist found that mixed prairie-plant biofuels could yield 51 percent more energy per acre than corn ethanol?

Prairie grasses grow on infertile soil and are not food crops, unlike corn and soybeans.

What term describes grassland that has never been plowed?

Restored prairie, by contrast, has been reseeded after plowing or other disturbance.

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, north of Strong City, is in which region of its state?

Less than five percent of the tallgrass prairie survives, mostly there.

How much tallgrass prairie once covered North America, according to the National Park Service?

The preserve near Strong City has hosted a herd of the prairie's great grazer since 2009.

What did early settlers call the prairie region they later turned into farmland?

'The Inland Sea' was another name; the vast majority was destroyed between 1800 and 1930.

The 100th meridian splits the Great Plains into areas getting more or less than how much yearly rainfall?

West of it, the High Plains are semi-arid steppe better suited to rangeland than crops.

What is the huge underground water source beneath the southern Great Plains called?

Centre-pivot irrigation is draining it faster than it can recharge.

The twister-prone south-eastern Great Plains are popularly known as what?

It is the most tornado-active area in the world.

Which author wrote the Little House on the Prairie books, based on her Midwestern childhood?

Eight novels appeared in her lifetime, set across five Midwestern states between 1872 and 1894.

The Amarillo Sod Poodles, a minor-league baseball team, are named after which burrowing animal?

Office workers popping up over cubicle walls are said to be 'prairie dogging' after the same animal.

Which far-western region, along with California's Central Valley, is singled out as prairie?

The rolling Palouse hills are famed for wheat.

Besides glacial till, which wind-blown deposit is an important parent material for prairie soils?

The last glacial advance began about 110,000 years ago and the retreating ice left its till about 10,000 years ago.

Elliptical glacial hills up to 200 feet high found on the prairie take their name from which country?

Drumlins run parallel to the old ice flow; western New York has over 6,000 and southern Wisconsin some 5,000.

Parts of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota untouched by the ice sheets are known as what?

Highlands to the north deflected the ice, which passed the region on both sides and rejoined around its southern border.

The 32,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is located in which US state?

Other notable remnants include Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois and Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa.