'Tallgrass Prairie\r'

'The exalted grass prairie is an ecosystem aborigine to central North America, with antiaircraft as its primary periodic disturbance. In the past, marvelous grass prairies covered a large dish out of the American Midwest, just east of the Great Plains, and portions of the Canadian Prairies. They flourished in areas with rich loess soils and moderate rainfall of more or less 30 to 35 inches per year. To the east were the fire-maintained eastern savannas. In the northeast, where fire was infrequent and periodic wind oblige represented the main source of disturbance, beech-maple forests dominated.Once this prairie covered around 140 million acres; now entirely isolated remnants exist. (Heat-Moon 261). The homesteaders saw it as a painfulness to be replaced as soon as workable with crops that paid their way. Within one generation a great legal age of the native realm was plowed under and developed. Currently, less than 4% remains, while the majority is located in the Kansas Flint Hills and surrounding areas. (Manning 76). Today, prairie is macrocosm brought back in places using a land management technique borrowed from the Plains tribes: controlled burning.Spring fires clear out non-native grasses in front the later â€Å"sun-seeking” native grasses begin to grow. ( Heat-Moon 43-44). Fire in like manner burns up dead arrange detritus on the ground, allowing the sun and rain to penetrate the soil, and releases nutrients, promoting product and increasing seed yields. This and other prairie restoration methods befriend ensure that, at least in nearly places, we can look out over a sea of grass and feel the wonder of the eldest homesteaders.According to a semipermanent research study on steep grass prairies done at the Konza Prairie look for Natural Area by a common chord of Kansas State University biology professors, bison grazing or mowing appends the species variety show or the number of plant species that exist at a particular site of grasses on the prairie. (KSU 1). eat and mowing keep plant diversity high make up in annually burned or fertilized prairie where nigh plant species would otherwise be lost. Their research was produce today in the journal Science.Alan Knapp, canful Blair and John Briggs, along with two other colleagues have got been conducting long-term studies on the effects of fire, grazing and climatic disagreement on tall grass prairies. This on-going research looks at these various factors alone and in combination. â€Å"One of the things we have learned in the past is that if you burn a prairie annually, species diversity tends to decrease,” Knapp said. â€Å"Grazing the prairie or removing part of the plant canopy, tends to offset the effects of frequent burning. Knapp said the re-introduction of bison, the prairies native herbivores, over the past decade also has increase species diversity. (Cushman 13).â€Å"Bison, which were historically a very abundant herbivore on the tall grass prairies, played an important region in maintaining the plant species diversity in these systems,” Knapp said. â€Å"The increase in plant diversity we see at Konza Prairie after bison are re-introduced can be related to to increases with bison grazing activities. (KSU 1). The bison that at one time roamed these prairies numbered close to 30 million, at once settlers began to encroach on the area, and began to use the land for homesteading and culture the numbers dipped to nearly 500 individuals. As the bison left, the domestic cattle moved in with the homesteaders, once again disrupting the natural biodiversity of the land. In addition to the passing play of the bison, fire on the prairie was a key component as well. (White 88).Typically, prairie fires were naturally occurring due to lightening strikes, and were in fact beneficial. As people began to settle and tarry in these areas these fires were seen as a hindrance, and were extinguished as quickly as p ossible. (Savage 124-26). These actions were not favorable for the grasses as these fires typically helped the natural species regenerate and helped to keep trees at bay as well. As time went on, the more human interaction that took place, the more it was destroying the natural tall grass prairie as it once was.\r\n'