Nebraska Sandhills named largest intact temperate grasslands on planet

[UngulateNerd92]

Nebraskans have always considered the Sandhills one of the state’s jewels.

Now a study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has underscored how significant that jewel is.

Work by UNL researchers Dirac Twidwell and Rheinhardt Scholtz has concluded that the Sandhills are Earth’s largest remaining intact, temperate grassland.

That’s probably a surprise to some because the Sandhills aren’t well-known outside the state, Twidwell said.

Nebraska Sandhills named largest intact temperate grasslands on planet | | nptelegraph.com

 

[birdsandbats]

I think the solution to the invasive redcedar trees is somewhat simple (at least on paper). That species is extremely fire-sensitive and it would only take a few burns to eradicate them from the area.

 

[UngulateNerd92]

I think the solution to the invasive redcedar trees is somewhat simple (at least on paper). That species is extremely fire-sensitive and it would only take a few burns to eradicate them from the area.

I wonder if this management strategy ever crossed the minds of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission? I also wonder what percentage of this ecoregion is on private land and what percentage is public (state or even federal)?

For anyone interested in learning more about this ecoregion (Nebraska Sandhills). Here is the Wikipedia article; Sandhills (Nebraska) - Wikipedia

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Here is another relevant article.

Nebraska Sandhills rated as world’s most intact prairie

Study identifies just seven large, intact grassland regions remaining worldwide.

“…then you should care about grasslands.”

To speak with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Dirac Twidwell is to hear the sentiment emerge as a sort of mantra. The reasons preceding the statement, and behind the sentiment, are legion. Protecting signature species from extinction. Maintaining the quality of air and aquifers. Mitigating wildfires and floods. Preserving cultures and livelihoods that echo across generations.

It’s for those reasons that the associate professor of agronomy and horticulture has spent years researching and combating the decline of grasslands, especially the one just a few hundred miles to his northwest: the Nebraska Sandhills. That distance, as relatively short as it is, represents the gulf between what Nebraska is and what it was even a few hundred years ago.

What it was, what the Sandhills remain, is what an ecologist would call a temperate grassland: a mostly treeless, grass- and wildflower-covered region that grounds the surrounding ecology and culture. Or, as Twidwell would describe it, one of the last “true prairies.” Researchers have known for a while that many grasslands, whether temperate or tropical or desert, are shrinking in size or outright disappearing from the planet. But few had tried to quantify the full extent of that disappearance, or the extent to which certain grasslands have resisted it.

Nebraska Sandhills rated as world’s most intact prairie

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Here is another relevant article.

Where to find the largest sand dunes in the Western Hemisphere

A road trip through the Nebraska Sandhills reveals wide-open spaces and natural wonders.

Novelist Jim Harrison once called the Nebraska Sandhills “without a doubt the most mysterious landscape in the United States,” and for good reason. “The vastness and waving of the hilly grasslands in the wind make you smell salt,” he wrote.

Stabilized by a fragile hide of prairie grass and encompassing roughly 20,000 square miles, the Sandhills is the largest sand dune formation in the Western Hemisphere. As the last Ice Age began to wane, glacial meltwater carried sand and silt from the Rocky Mountains to central Nebraska, where the relentless winds whipped up dunes like surf cresting offshore.

Where to find the Western Hemisphere’s largest sand dunes