Texas blackland prairies
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The Texas Blackland Prairies are an ecoregion located in Texas that runs roughly from the Red River in North Texas to San Antonio in the south. It consists of a main belt of 43,000 km² and two islands of tallgrass prairie grasslands southeast of the main blackland prairie belt.
The main belt consists of oaklands and savannas and runs north, eastern and northwest Texas. The first island is the Fayette Prairie, encompassing 17,000 km², and the second is the San Antonio Prairie of 7,000 km². The two islands are separated from the mainbelt by the oak woodlands of the East Central Texas forests.
Because of the soil and climate, this ecoregion is ideally suited to crop agriculture. This has led to most of the Blackland Prairie ecosystem being converted to crop production, leaving less than one percent remaining (and some groups estimate less than 0.5% to less than 0.1% remaining) and making the tallgrass prairies the most-endangered large ecosystem in North America.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Native Prairies Association of Texas (NPAT)
- NPAT protected prairies
- The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
- Clymer Meadow Preserve
- Texas Parks and Wildlife
- Texas blackland prairie (World Wildlife Fund)
- Connemara Conservancy
- Soil Physics at Oklahoma State
- Weeds of the Blackland Prairie