Geography Reference Libraries

The dusky pademelon (Thylogale brunii), also known as the dusky wallaby, is a marsupial that can be found on the Kai and Aru islands, Papua New Guinea, and in the Trans Fly savanna and grasslands ecoregion in Papua Province in Indonesia. It prefers a habitat in both arid and tropical savannahs, forests, shrublands, lowlands, and grasslands. This species was named after its discoverer,...

The Central and Southern mixed grasslands are a prairie ecoregion of the central United States, a portion of the North American Great Plains. This is a vast grassland area with few trees running north to south from central Nebraska through central Kansas and western Oklahoma to north central Texas, covering about 282,000 square kilometers. This is a transition zone between the Central tall...

The Northern short grasslands is only 1 of 867 terrestrial ecoregions defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. This ecoregion includes portions of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the American Great Plains states of Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. The Northern short grasslands have a semi-arid climate, with the annual average precipitation...

The Northern tall grasslands is only 1 of 867 terrestrial ecoregions defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. This ecoregion largely follows the Red River Valley in the Canadian province of Manitoba and the American states of Minnesota and North Dakota. The grasslands have a humid continental climate with moderate precipitation, normally between 450 and 700 mm. The winters are very cold,...

The Semi-arid Pampas, alternatively known as the Dry Pampas, is a temperate grassland ecoregion located in central Argentina. The Semi-arid Pampas cover an area of 126,000 square miles, including western Buenos Aires Province, southern Cordoba and San Luis Provinces and most of La Pampa Province. The area is, in all, a home to no more than a million people, who normally enjoy some of the...

The Kazakh Steppe, alternatively called Kirghiz Steppe, ecoregion located in the Palearctic Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands Biome, is a wide region of open grassland in the northern part of Kazakhstan and adjacent portions of Russia, stretching eastwards to the Pontic steppe and to the west of the Emin Valley steppe, with which it creates part of the Eurasian steppe. The...

The Kazakh Uplands, known also as the Kazakh Hummocks, is a large peneplain formation that stretches throughout the central and eastern regions of Kazakhstan. It’s made up of low mountain oases and elevated plains, and contains large deposits of coal within the north and copper within the south. Rare species, such as the Asiatic Cheetah, may still reside in this region. Several notable...

The Mongolian-Manchurian grassland ecoregion, known also as the Mongolian-Manchurian Steppe, located in the temperate grassland Biome, is found in Mongolia, the Chinese Autonomous region of Inner Mongolia and northeastern China. The grassland covers an area of 342,600 square miles. This Palearctic temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion of the Temperate grasslands, savannas,...

The Pontic-Caspian Steppe is the massive steppeland that stretches from the northern shores of the Black Sea as far east as the Caspian Sea, from western Ukraine across the Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan, creating part of the larger Eurasian steppe, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe towards the east. It’s a portion of the Palearctic...

The Humid Pampa is an extensive region of flat, fertile grassland of loessic origin in Argentina. It has a precipitation average of 900 mm per year, compared to the Dry Pampas towards the west, which average less than 700 mm. Similar to the Pampas in general, the region's terrain is mostly hilly and of a temperate climate, though rich mollisols are more abundant here than to the west, where...