Hays, Kansas, USA Photograph by The GLOBE Program   Central North America: Central United States Temperate Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands   108,900 square miles (282,100 square kilometers) -- about the size of Nevada Critical/Endangered

· What’s an Ecotone?
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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What’s an Ecotone?

The Central and Southern Mixed Grasslands ecoregion is an example of an ecotone, a transitional zone where one ecosystem merges with another. In this case, it is where the central forests and the tallgrass prairies meet the shortgrass prairies. Unlike the central forests, this mixed grassland has very few trees or shrubs.

Special Features

Grazing by wild and domestic herbivores such as bison and cattle, along with the forces of drought and fire, helps to maintain the grasses here. The mixed-grass prairie contains plants from the tallgrass and shortgrass prairies and contains the highest diversity of grasses and other plants of any North American grassland ecoregion.

	The Platte River Valley in Nebraska is an important stopover for sandhill cranes on their migration to breeding grounds further north. This impressive bird's wingspan measures up to seven feet (2 m) from tip to tip!

Wild Side

Being a mixed-grass prairie, the plants that grow here are a combination of those of the tallgrass and shortgrass prairies and are intermediate in height. Grasses include little bluestem, western wheatgrass, and grama. Taller grasses grow in the wetter areas and shorter grasses in drier areas. Many grassland plants, called forbs, have beautiful floral displays in the spring. No birds are endemic to this ecoregion alone, but some are endemic to grassland habitat, such as dickcissel and Harris' sparrow. You might also see one of the many reptiles that call this ecoregion home: yellow mud turtles, eastern collared lizards, northern prairie lizards, and central plains milk snakes. Birds use the area as a migratory stopover, particularly the wetlands in the ecoregion. For example, black-capped vireos spend summers here and winter in Mexico.

Cause for Concern

Only about 5 percent of the ecoregion's habitat is intact today, most having been converted to croplands or pasture. This area was part of the dustbowl in the 1930s, when tons of soil were lost from drought combined with poor farming practices. The bit of remaining habitat is still unprotected and threatened by future conversion to cropland. The suppression of fires in the area also creates unnatural habitat, which changes the mix of species that are able to grow here.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.