Tag: grassland/prairie

A line of trees, shrubs, or constructed fencing planted or erected to reduce wind speed and protect soil, crops, livestock, or buildings on the leeward side. Windbreaks are landscape features that shape the microclimate for hundreds of feet downwind — they reduce evaporation, prevent soil erosion, trap snow for moisture, and create shelter for wildlife. The Great Plains shelterbelt program of the 1930s planted 220 million trees in windbreaks stretching from Texas to North Dakota.

Already entered in the main file — flagging here as a core tracking/sign term. A wallow is one of the most visible and long-lasting pieces of animal sign on a landscape. Bison wallows on the Great Plains were still identifiable decades after the herds were gone.

 A depression in the ground created by large animals — bison, elk, boar, rhinos — rolling and rubbing in mud or dust. Wallows serve multiple purposes: cooling, parasite removal, scent-marking, and social display. Old bison wallows on the Great Plains persisted for decades after the animals were gone, holding water and growing different vegetation than the surrounding grass — ghost baths.

A large, flat, grassy, treeless plain — or, in the American Southwest, a broad, low-lying area of fertile, well-watered ground along a river, suitable for cultivation. Las Vegas was named for the meadows that the springs there sustained in the desert.

A tall, dense, freshwater marsh plant (bulrush) native to the western United States, growing in thick stands around lakes, marshes, and river deltas. Tule marshes once covered vast areas of California's Central Valley. The plant gives its name to tule fog — the dense, ground-level radiation fog that forms in the Central Valley in winter, reducing visibility to near zero.

 A circle of stones on the ground marking where a tipi once stood — the rocks that held down the edges of the hide cover, left in place after the structure was taken down and the people moved on. Tipi rings are found across the Great Plains by the thousands, sometimes clustered in groups that indicate seasonal camps used repeatedly over generations. They are among the most understated and moving marks on the American landscape — just a ring of stones in the grass, and a whole way of life implied.

A vast, flat, treeless grassland in a semi-arid continental climate — too dry for forest, too cold for desert, supporting grasses and low shrubs but few or no trees. The Eurasian steppe stretches from Hungary to Mongolia, the largest continuous grassland on earth. The word implies openness, wind, and distance — a landscape of horizon.

A tropical or subtropical grassland with scattered trees — too dry for forest, too wet for desert. Savannas cover roughly a fifth of the earth's land surface, including the great plains of East Africa, the cerrado of Brazil, and the northern Australian outback. The defining character is openness with trees — enough grass to carry fire, enough trees to cast shade, and the interplay between the two maintained by climate, grazing, and flame.

 A cold, dry wind that sweeps across the Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay from the southwest, usually accompanying a cold front. It arrives suddenly, dropping temperatures and bringing brief, violent storms before clearing the sky.

A compact mass of indigestible material — fur, feathers, bone, insect exoskeletons, seeds — regurgitated by a bird of prey, an owl, a crow, or a gull. A pellet is not scat; it comes up, not down, and it preserves the prey's remains in a tidy package that can be pulled apart to reconstruct the bird's last several meals. Owl pellets found beneath a roost are a census of the local rodent population, delivered nightly.