What Is a Prairie? | Wonderopolis. What kind of area do you live in? Maybe you live in the mountains. Perhaps your home is near the coastline of a large lake or an ocean. Many people live in deserts. Millions of people live in areas called prairies. If you’re a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, you’re probably familiar with the Little House on the Prairie series of books, television shows, and movies. But did you ever stop to WONDER exactly what a prairie is? When early explorers first pushed westward past the Appalachian Mountains, they encountered a landscape that was different from the mountainous and forested areas they were used to. Explorers called these areas “prairies,” borrowing a word from the French that meant “meadow.” Prairies are mainly found in the interior lowland areas of North America. Prairies cover almost 1.5 million square miles of land in the U.S. The climate of prairies is influenced greatly by their central location. Over the course of history, large grassland fires often consumed prairies.
USDA Forest Service National Grasslands. These wind-swept seas of grass and wildflowers - four million acres in all - have witnessed the pageant of the frontier, the Dust Bowl, and the dramatic recovery into a great national treasure. Come visit the 20 publicly-owned National Grasslands administered by the USDA Forest Service. Windmills on the National Grasslands To some, a windmill may be seen as a machine, but for those that live on the open plains a windmill is seen as a life tool. A windmill converts the energy of the wind to rotational motion that pumps fresh water from underground.
They are recognized as a sign of settlement and livestock production. Across the grasslands, windmills are a mark of historical and cultural significance. This exhibit is on display at the National Grasslands Visitor Center, Wall, South Dakota. Enjoy the exhibit online » Ecosystem Services from National Grasslands Read more » National Grasslands Resources We provide information about National Grasslands policies, guidelines, and publications. Snapshot Serengeti. Over the last 45 years, the University of Minnesota Lion Project has discovered a lot about lions – everything from why they have manes to why they live in groups.
Now we’re turning our sights to understanding how an entire community of large animals interacts. We currently monitor 24 lion prides in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, using radio-tracking. To collect information about other species, we’ve set out a grid of 225 camera traps. With photographs from these cameras, we’re able to study how over 30 species are distributed across the landscape – and how they interact with lions and one another. Our scientific questions Understanding how competing species coexist is a fundamental theme in ecology, with important implications for food webs, biodiversity, and the sustainability of life on Earth. Carnivore Coexistence: Carnivores eat meat. Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The Serengeti Lion Project What we do. Discover America's heartland, the Great Plains.
12 Years of Lesson Plans About the Animal Kingdom. Gary Meszaros/Photo ResearchersThe star-nosed mole, to humans, “is disturbing because it looks like the animal has no face,” a neuroscientist says. Go to a related article » The Learning Network has been publishing weekly science lessons since September 1998, and over the years we’ve done animal-related lessons on everything from investigating migratory patterns to creating imaginary deep sea creatures to debating animal rights. Today we’re inspired by Natalie Angier’s article “A Masterpiece of Nature? Yuck!” , from which the photo above is taken, to collect all those lessons for you here, along with a few related crosswords and fill-ins. But before you browse, make sure to take a look at both The Times’s “ugly animals” slide show and the reader-submitted photos of sphinx cats, vultures and batfish.
General Nature’s Call Drawing inspiration from “Avatar” to study and create organisms Love Them or Leave Them? Wolphins, and Ligers, and Zorses, Oh My! What’s All the Buzz About? Mammals Birds. Gould League - Foodwebs. Survival of the Fastest: Predators and Prey on the African Savannah | Nature. 1. Assign each student to a computer and ask them to log on to the “Toki’s Survival Challenge” game (If insufficient computers are available for each student to have his or her own, break the class into as many groups as there are available computers and allow each student to play the game once.) Explain that in this game, each student will be playing “Toki”—a cheetah hunting for impalas while avoiding predators on the African savannah—and that they should keep track of their “score” of successfully hunted impalas.
After giving students a minute to orient themselves to the game’s controls (the keyboard arrow keys control Toki’s movements) have the class commence playing. (Each player is allowed only ONE game—no restarting allowed!) 2. 3. Strengths: Weaknesses: A small head means relatively small, weak jaws.Only capable of short bursts of speed (400-600 yards) before it is exhaustedRequires a half hour to recuperate between hunting, during which time it is vulnerable to predators. 4. 1. Cheetahs on the Edge--Director's Cut.