The I&M Program's Heartland Network (HTLN) recently completed inventories of vertebrate species and vascular plants at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (TAPR). In doing so, all existing data were cataloged, targeted field investigations were conducted, and species lists were certified by taxonomic experts. The primary goal of this efforts was to document at least 90% of the vertebrate and vascular plant species believed to occur in the park. This report provides a summary of results.

In 2012, the SOPN conducted a fourth season of exotic-plant monitoring to continue to test the methods and results of the network's proposed Exotic Plant Monitoring Protocol. A total of 824 vector blocks were sampled along high-invasion-probability vectors in SOPN parks. Results of the 2012 sampling for each park are presented in this report.

The I&M Program's Heartland Network (HTLN) recently completed inventories of vertebrate species and vascular plants at Pipestone National Monument (PIPE). In doing so, all existing data were cataloged, targeted field investigations were conducted, and species lists were certified by taxonomic experts. The primary goal of these efforts was to document at least 90% of the vertebrate and vascular plant species believed to occur in the park. This report provides a summary of results.

In 2011, the SOPN conducted a third season of exotic-plant monitoring to continue to test the methods and results of the network's proposed Exotic Plant Monitoring Protocol. A total of 886 vector blocks were sampled along high-invasion-probability vectors (primary units) in SOPN parks. These As part of the SOPN grassland and fire monitoring effort, 480 plots on 96 transects in areas not considered high-invasion probability (secondary units) were also sampled. Results of the 2011 sampling for each park are presented in this report.

"This book provides an excellent synthesis of conservation practices...The book has insightfully blended constructive concepts supported by well-recognised models and case studies on how to manage agricultural production and biodiversity...I strongly recommend this brilliant book to students, scientists, managers, policymakers and politicians engaging in biodiversity conservation in the agricultural landscape globally." Journal of Nature Conservation More intensive, monocultural agriculture has been associated with a decline in diversity of habitat and plant species which leads to corresponding declines in diversity of insect, bird and mammal species. There is mounting evidence that a more biodiverse landscape improves ecosystem services which benefits farmers. Reconciling agricultural production with biodiversity conservation provides an authoritative review of current biodiversity conservation practices, including field margins, agroforestry systems, hedgerows and improved pasture and grassland management. The collection additionally summarises the theoretical framework that underpins biodiversity conservation in agriculture, dedicating chapters to key developments in areas such as landscape approaches, mapping and modelling diversity, as well as ways of assessing the economic value of biodiversity conservation practices.

During 2010, a crew funded by both the I&M and Fire programs worked on a pilot of the collaborative field efforts. In addition to surveying standard Fire Program shrub transects and conducting biomass sampling (USDI National Park Service 2003), the crew fielded by the Southern Plains Fire Group sampled species composition and abundance using methods employed by the Southern Plains Inventory & Monitoring Network. Conditions were such in 2011 that each program had to field a monitoring team, but each team followed the integrated protocol and data was pooled for analysis. A total of 109 permanent transects were monitored across the Southern Plains in 2010, while 96 transects were sampled in 2011. The results presented in this two-year report represent two field seasons with very different growing conditions.

A three-year program was initiated to complete the task of mapping and classifying the vegetation at TAPR. The Kansas Biological Survey (KBS) in conjunction with NatureServe developed a vegetation classification using the National Vegetation Classification System and produced a digital vegetation map. To classify the vegetation, plots located throughout TAPR were sampled during the summer of 2008. Additional data were obtained from vegetation plots sampled by the Inventory & Monitoring program in 2006. Analysis of the plot data by KBS produced 12 map units (eight vegetated and four land-use) which are directly matched to corresponding plant associations and land-use classes. Descriptions and a field key for all plant communities of TAPR are included in this report. Draft maps were printed, field tested, reviewed and revised.

"Prairie Dreams" is an environmental history of the Great Plains, a history of the interaction between European culture and the North American grasslands. It argues that the stories of man and nature on the Plains are inextricably linked and that the development of a more ethical, conservation-focused future for the region must draw on a more complete and connected understanding of both its human and natural history. This history, though, is not just a story of physical change, of ranching, settlement, landscape transformation and wildlife extinction. It is also the story of our values, morals and ideology, of our mental relationship with the natural world, of how we imagine and understand a land and how it is shaped by our cultures and traditions. The Great Plains have been, and remain, a place for projecting our dreams and for discovering ourselves, who we are and what we value most. Their history is an inescapable parable of our relationship with the land.

Prevention and early detection are the principal strategies for successful invasive exotic plant management. During surveys in 2006, the authors documented 16 invasive, exotic plant species on Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. their findings and recommendations are detailed.

Part autobiography, part philosophical rumination, this evocative conservation odyssey explores the deep affinities between humans and our original habitat: grasslands. In a richly drawn, anecdotally driven narrative, Joe C. Truett, a grasslands ecologist who writes with a flair for language, traces the evolutionary, historical, and cultural forces that have reshaped North American rangelands over the past two centuries. He introduces an intriguing cast of characters - wildlife and grasslands biologists, archaeologists, ranchers, and petroleum geologists - to illuminate a wide range of related topics: our love affair with turf and how it manifests in lawns and sports, the ecological and economic dimensions of ranching, the glory of cowboy culture, grasslands and restoration ecology, and more. His book ultimately provides the background against which we can envision a new paradigm for restoring rangeland ecosystems-and a new paradigm for envisioning a more sustainable future.

Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae) and other herbaceous (non-woody) plants (forbs). Plants of the sedge (Cyperacae) and rush (Juncaceae) families can also be frequent in grasslands. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica, and in many other areas they have replaced the natural vegetation due to human influence. In temperate latitudes, such as north-west Europe, grasslands are dominated by perennial species, whereas in warmer climates annual species form a greater component of the vegetation. Grasslands can be found in most terrestrial climates. Grassland vegetation can vary in height from very short, as in chalk downland where the vegetation may be less than 30 cm high, to quite tall, as in the case of North American tallgrass prairie, South American grasslands and African savannah. Woody plants, shrubs or trees, may occur on some grasslands - forming wooded, scrubby or semi-wooded grassland, such as the African savannahs or the Iberian dehesa. Such grasslands are sometimes referred to as wood-pasture or Savannah woodland. Grasslands cover nearly fifty percent of the land surface of the continent of Africa. This book gathers new and important research from around the world in this field.

In the Anthropocene, the thawing of frozen earth due to global warming has drawn worldwide attention to permafrost. Contemporary scientists define permafrost as ground that maintains a negative temperature for at least two years. But where did this particular conception of permafrost originate, and what alternatives existed? The Life of Permafrost provides an intellectual history of permafrost, placing the phenomenon squarely in the political, social, and material context of Russian and Soviet science. Pey-Yi Chu shows that understandings of frozen earth were shaped by two key experiences in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. On one hand, the colonization and industrialization of Siberia nourished an engineering perspective on frozen earth that viewed the phenomenon as an aggregate physical structure: ground. On the other, a Russian and Soviet tradition of systems thinking encouraged approaching frozen earth as a process, condition, and space tied to planetary exchanges of energy and matter. Aided by the US militarization of the Arctic during the Cold War, the engineering view of frozen earth as an obstacle to construction became dominant. The Life of Permafrost tells the fascinating story of how permafrost came to acquire life as Russian and Soviet scientists studied, named, and defined it.

Colonial Geography charts changes in conceptions of the relationship between people and landscapes in mainland Tanzania during the German colonial period. In German minds, colonial development would depend on the relationship between East Africans and the landscape. Colonial Geography argues that the most important element in German imperialism was not its violence but its attempts to apply racial thinking to the mastery and control of space. Utilizing approaches drawn from critical geography, the book argues that the development of a representational space of empire had serious consequences for German colonialism and the population of East Africa. Colonial Geography shows how spatial thinking shaped ideas about race and empire in the period of New Imperialism.

The Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network and Prairie Cluster Prototype Monitoring Program (HTLN) implemented monitoring at TAPR to provide analysis of baseline conditions and to assess future change in floral communities

Innate Terrain addresses the varied perceptions of Canada's natural terrain, framing the discussion in the context of landscapes designed by Canadian landscape architects. This edited collection draws on contemporary works to theorize a distinct approach practiced by Canadian landscape architects from across the country. The essays - authored by Canadian scholars and practitioners, some of whom are Indigenous or have worked closely with Indigenous communities - are united by the argument that Canadian landscape architecture is intrinsically linked to the innate qualities of the surrounding terrain. Beautifully illustrated, Innate Terrain aims to capture distinct regional qualities that are rooted in the broader context of the Canadian landscape.

The High Plains region was once called the Great American Desert and thought to be, in the words of explorer Stephen Long, "wholly unfit for cultivation." Now we know that beneath the surface, unbeknownst to the explorers and early settlers, lies the Ogallala aquifer, an underground formation that stretches for 800 miles from the Texas panhandle to South Dakota. It holds more water than Lake Huron. Indeed, the Ogallala has been referred to as the sixth Great Lake. It is the water pumped for irrigation from the Ogallala that has enabled a naturally dry region to produce up to 40 percent of America's beef and 20 to 25 percent of its food and fiber, an output worth about $20 billion. In the forty years since the invention of center pivot irrigation, the High Plains aquifer system has been depleted at an astonishing rate. In 1978 the volume of water pumped from the aquifer exceeded the annual flow of the Colorado River. In Texas, water levels are down 200 feet in some areas. In Kansas, 700 miles of rivers that once flowed year round no longer flow at all. In short, the High Plains may be becoming the desert it was once thought to be. Is it too late to solve the problem? Geographers David Kromm and Stephen White assembled nine of the most knowledgeable scholars and water professionals in the Great Plains to help answer that question. The result is a collection of essays that insightfully examine the dilemmas of groundwater use. From a variety of perspectives they address both the technical problems and the politics of water management to provide a badly needed analysis of the implications of large-scale irrigation. They have included three case studies: the Nebraska Sand Hills, Northwestern Kansas, and West Texas. Kromm and White provide an introduction and conclusion to the volume.

From Abronia to Zinnia, Jewels of the Plains describes the natural history and garden merits of more than five hundred Great Plains wildflowers. Considered the authoritative guide by native plant enthusiasts and horticulturists, it captures the unique beauty, resilience, and variety of wildflowers in the Great Plains. Claude A. Barr did not set out to be a writer. In 1910, he homesteaded 160 acres of prairie in the southwest corner of South Dakota, intending to become a farmer. Despite challenging conditions, Barr fell in love with the land and its native flora. He began contributing profiles of plains wildflowers to gardening magazines, which precipitated requests for seed and led him to start a mail-order nursery, Prairie Gem Ranch. What began as a Depression-era sideline eventually gained a worldwide clientele, and Barr became a respected ambassador for the wildflowers of this part of the American landscape. Decades of observing plants in the wild and growing them for his nursery, as well as careful study of scientific sources, gave Barr unequaled knowledge that culminated in this acclaimed book. Wonderfully written and deeply researched, Jewels of the Plains is more than a field guide or how-to manual. It's a pioneering text on native plant horticulture that details plant life on the prairie in the voice of one with intimate familiarity with the subject. Each description reads like a mini nature essay, giving insight into both the plants and Barr's engaging personality. Edited to incorporate new scientific information, this edition includes an Introduction and supplemental notes by botanist and horticulturalist James H. Locklear. He places Barr's remarkable life and work in historic and scientific context, illuminating his accomplishments from a fresh perspective.

A respected author and scholar, Paul A. Johnsgard has spent a lifetime observing the natural delights of Nebraska's woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands. "Seasons of the Tallgrass Prairie" collects his musings on Nebraska's natural history and the issues of conservation facing our future.

Johnsgard crafts essays featuring snow geese, owls, hummingbirds, and other creatures against the backdrop of Great Plains landscapes. He describes prairie chickens courting during predawn hours and the calls of sandhill cranes; he evokes the magic of lying upon the prairie, hearing only the sounds of insects and the wind through the grasses. From reflections following a visit to a Pawnee sacred site to meditations on the perils facing the state's finite natural resources, "Seasons of the Tallgrass Prairie" celebrates the gifts of a half century spent roaming Nebraska's back roads, trails, and sometimes-forgotten places.

Americans in ever increasing numbers are rediscovering the prairie. This vast inland sea of grasses, buried for a hundred years beneath farms, cities, and suburbs, has endured not only in physical remnants but also in the memories of its settlers and their descendants, the books of prairie authors, and the work of prairie artists. As restoration ecologists and amateur prairie preservationists recover the land, this book recovers the prairie of the American imagination--past, present, and future. Beautifully illustrated with the work of sixteen contemporary prairie artists, Recovering the Prairie celebrates and examines the perspectives of artists, writers, native peoples, ecologists, and landscape architects--Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Jens Jensen, Alexander Gardner, and many others--who recognized the unique beauty of the prairie. And, this volume brings together people from many fields to consider the connections between aesthetics and economics, landscape and culture, politics and ethics, as illustrated by the prairie in American civilization. Contributors and artists include: Robert Adams Lee Allen Roger Brown James D. Butler Pauline Drobney Fred Easker Terry Evans Ed Folsom Lance M. Foster Harold L. Gregor Robert E. Grese Walter Hatke Harold D. Holoun Stan Hurd Gary Irving Wes Jackson Keith Jacobshagen Joni L. Kinsey Stuart Klipper Aldo Leopold Tom Lutz Curt Meine Genie H. Patrick David Plowden Rebecca Roberts Robert F. Sayre Jane E. Simonson Shelton Stromquist James R. Winn

Tundra ecosystems are seriously affected by global climate change. Understanding tundra history and post-glacial development may enhance the ability of biologists to anticipate biotic responses to current environmental changes. In this book, the authors analyse changes which have occurred in a vegetative cover and aboveground fauna of vertebrates at Yamal peninsula, one of the greatest plains on the globe. The authors also evaluate pedogenetic processes, soil nutrient status and plant distribution along an elevation gradient in the alpine tundra in the western Italian Alps. In addition, treeline ecotone is a belt of transition from forest vegetation to a non-forest one, which allow the monitoring of climate change. In this book, carbon deposition on the forests of two treeline ecotones is studied. Some of the current emerging theories, models and recent empirical evidence for the dynamics of these reciprocal interactions between climate and terrestrial microbial communities are also reviewed, with particular attention to biogeochemical and ecological perspectives.

Genetic diversity and species diversity are both crucial for ecosystem stability. Analysis of plant diversity aims to understand the organisation and the variability of biological populations within ecosystems. This book provides a review on chemotaxonomical criteria helping to understand complex structures of plant diversity. It focuses particularly on the chemotaxonomic usefulness of phenolic compounds in analysis of chemical polymorphisms at different taxonomic levels. The relationship between grazing pressure and grassland vegetation is also examined, using drastically improved information technology such as remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Ground Positioning Systems (GPS). Furthermore, an overview of the unique ecosystem of the South Brazilian Campos grasslands are given. The role of disturbance in maintaining Campos biodiversity and dynamics, and the importance of its conservation, is looked at as well. Other chapters in this book discuss the relationship between management and vegetation, and also suggest ways to conserve the species diversity of both plants and butterflies in semi-natural grassland.

"This book brings together nearly every aspect of grassland research in the American Southwest and is written to appeal to both academics and the general public. It refutes conventional myths about some causes of grassland change, tests hypotheses in restoration ecology, and offers new perspectives on the recovery of ecosystems free from livestock grazing. It is a book that every naturalist or ecologist should read."--Conrad Bahre, author of "A Legacy of Change"

"I expected another nature book. What I found was, to my surprise, a love story. Carl and Jane Bock visited the Research Ranch in the early 1970s and fell in love--with the Sonoita Plains, the plants and animals there, and the people who called it home. Like all good love stories, this one is full of passion and joy, excitement and disappointment, and sadness and humor. . . . With their successful blend of storytelling and scientific reporting, the Bocks share the most intimate details of their love affair and make the reader curious to learn more about this little-known land."--H. Ronald Pulliam, Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia

"Jane and Carl Bock write precisely as well as lovingly of the dynamics of the distinctive grasslands near the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona. They also bring 25 years of first-rate science to bear on their topic. Their seasoned view of ecological and perceptual changes in this community are unique and will go a long way toward healing and restoring the remaining fragments of this biome in southeastern Arizona."--Gary Paul Nabhan, author of "Cultures of Habitat

In 1987 Frank and Deborah Popper proposed a bold solution to the decline of America's Great Plains: create a vast nature preserve by returning 139,000 square miles in ten states to prairie and reintroducing the buffalo that once roamed there. In "Where the Buffalo Roam," Anne Matthews follows the Poppers from Montana to Texas as they try to sell their idea called the Buffalo Commons; in the process, she introduces us to the people who love these arid windswept lands.
This edition includes a new foreword by environmental historian Donald Worster. Matthews's new afterword describes how with growing support from Native Americans and private groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Poppers' dream of a Buffalo Commons is becoming a reality.
"An admirably crafted book, as poignant and entertaining as it is informative."--"Seattle Times
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"A priceless piece of Americana."--"The Boston Globe"
"Matthew's delightful account of the Poppers, their proposal and the controversy surrounding it does focus new attention on the region and its problems."--"The Philadelphia Inquirer
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"Bright, active, effective journalism. . . . An extremely savvy overlook of the dilemmas of the Great Plains."--Wallace Stegner