A prairie remnant commonly refers to grassland areas in the

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

and

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

that remain to some extent undisturbed by European settlement. Prairie remnants range in levels of degradation but nearly all contain at least some semblance of the

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

local plant assemblage of a particular region. Prairie remnants have become increasingly threatened due to the threats of agricultural, urban and suburban development, pollution,

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames a ...

suppression, and the incursion of invasive species.

Prairie remnants in restoration ecology

Prairie remnants offer valuable varieties of rare species thus providing excellent opportunities for restoration ecology projects. Many restoration projects are simply recreations of prairie habitats, but restoring prairie remnants provides the preservation of more complete ecological structures that were naturally created after the end of the last ice age. Remnants can also serve as platforms for additional surrounding

ecological restoration Restoration ecology is the scientific study supporting the practice of ecological restoration, which is the practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human interrupt ...

activities.

Tallgrass prairies in North America

It has been estimated that 99% of

tallgrass prairie The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. Historically, natural and anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals (primarily bison) provided periodic disturbances to these ecosystems, limiting the encroachm ...

habitats in North America have been destroyed mainly due to conversion to agriculture.Crescent Lake Wildlife Refuge, Nebraska
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Retrieved 29 November 2016 Tallgrass prairies are generally composed of a mixture of native grasses, sedges, and forbs but are usually dominated by grasses. File:Mesic Prairie Remnant Illinois.jpg, A mesic prairie remnant in Illinois

Shortgrass prairies in North America

The

shortgrass prairie The shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama (''Bouteloua gracilis'') and buffalograss ('' Bouteloua dactyloides''), the two less domi ...

is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The prairie includes lands to the west as far as the eastern foothills of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

and extends east as far as

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

and north into

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dak ...

. The prairie stretches through parts of Alberta, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas, and passes south through the high plains of Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

References

Grasslands of North America Conservation biology {{geo-term-stub