The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Prairie Restoration in the Upper Midwest

Introduction: Returning Prairie to the Upper Midwest

Introduction:฀฀ Returning฀Prairie฀to฀the฀Upper฀Midwest daryl฀smith The฀Original฀Tallgrass฀Prairie An immense landscape of grass, wind, and sky once occupied midcontinental North America. This distinctive landscape dominated the horizon from the forest margins of Indiana and Wisconsin to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the boreal forest of central Canada. Early French explorers traversing the eastern edge of this wilderness used “prairie,” their word for meadow, to describe it. This vast grassland consisted of three regions distinguished by the vegetation types associated with variations in annual precipitation. The dominant species of the shortgrass prairie occupying the high plains just east of the Rockies were the short, dry-adapted buffalo grass and blue grama. Taller grasses such as big bluestem, Indian grass, and prairie cord grass dominated the tallgrass prairie of the moist eastern zone. Between the two was a shifting zone of mixed prairie distinguished by mid-size grasses like little bluestem, side-oats grama, June grass, and other species representative of both tallgrass and shortgrass prairies. Cool-season grasses were more prominent in the northern prairie. The eastern boundary of the tallgrass prairie interfaced with deciduous forest to form savannas , a mosaic of prairie openings, oak groves, and scattered trees. TallgrassprairieencompassedanareawestwardfromtheWabashRivertojust beyondtheMissouriRiver(fig.i-1).ThelonggrassesdominatedmostofIowaand parts of Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, andNorthandSouthDakota.Theirdominanceextendedtothenorthintosouthern Manitoba and southward across eastern Oklahoma and Texas to the Gulf Coast. Scattered tallgrass outliers occurred in Ontario, Ohio, Kentucky, Arkansas , and Alabama. In the core of the tallgrass prairie—Iowa, northern Illinois, northwestern Indiana, southwestern Minnesota, and northwestern Missouri —black soil rich in organic matter derived from extensive prairie root systems developed over mineral-rich glacial till. xviii฀ Introduction Tallgrass prairie consists of drought-tolerant grasses, sedges, and wildflowers with occasional shrubs. A good-quality tallgrass remnant may contain up to 300 native species. Grasses dominate by sheer numbers of individual stems and biomass, but the majority of the species are wildflowers and sedges. The aster (daisy) family is represented by more species than any other plant family. The showy flowers of forbs and shrubs intermingle with the grasses and sedges to create a colorful patchwork display. The overall height of the plants of the prairie increases throughout the growing season. Some species bloom briefly; others persist for several weeks. From the first green-up in the spring to the fading russets and golds of autumn, the prairie is an ever-changing panorama of color: purple, blue, lavender, green, yellow, orange, white, pink, and magenta. The฀Demise฀of฀the฀Tallgrass฀Prairie Tallgrass prairie, part of our biological and cultural heritages, is globally threatened . It is the most decimated ecosystem in continental North America; less than 2 to 3 percent of this original landscape remains. The demise of the tallgrass prairie was rapid and extensive. Within 70 years after Euro-American settlement , by about 1900, more than 90 percent had been converted to agriculture. The blacksoil portion of the tallgrass prairie was hit the hardest; less than 0.05 percent remains. In Iowa, 28 million acres of tallgrass prairie of the presettlement landscape were reduced to widely scattered fragments totaling less than 28,000 acres (Noss et al. 1995; Smith 1998). John Madson succinctly summed the result, “We spent our tallgrass prairie with a prodigal hand, and it probably had to be that way for these are the richest farm soils in the world” (1972). Most prairie remnants persist on sites poorly suited for row crops. Small remnants exist as isolated islands awash in an agricultural sea, scattered across railroad rights-of-way, roadside ditches, settler cemeteries, and other out-ofthe -way places. Occasionally larger pieces (160–200 acres) remain because they were retained for prairie hay. These remnants are small, incomplete samples of the original prairie landscape; as Madson indicates, “To be prairie, really good prairie, it must embrace the horizons” (1972). Some large tallgrass tracts remain on untillable land in the shallow, rocky soil of the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas and the Osage Hills of north-central Oklahoma, the glacial moraines of northeastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota, and the Loess Hills of western Iowa. Conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, natural heritage foundations, and state preserves boards have set aside smaller remnants Introduction฀ xix to preserve tallgrass prairie flora and fauna and convey a limited sense of the original prairie landscape. While these preserves don...