Latest Prairie Stories
In the interest of better serving their customers, Minimizer fenders made an impactful showing at the 2011 CONEXPO in Las Vegas. The goal of the company was to expand their knowledge of new markets and increase employee awareness of the ever-changing demands of their distributors. Blooming Prairie, Minnesota (Vocus/PRWEB) April 01, 2011 Minimizer consistently strives to pursue new markets. The ideal market has trucks going from off-road to on-road because these trucks need Minimizer...
Fire, cattle and even prairie dogs all could play a role in sustaining the biodiversity of the western Great Plains, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researcher.As large grazers, cattle now perform the historical role of buffalo on the Great Plains. Ecologist David Augustine and his colleagues-in collaboration with state, federal, and university researchers-have results from several studies over the past 13 years showing that fire, cattle and prairie dogs together maintain...
Minimizer proudly sponsored the Distributor of the Year (DOTY) Awards at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week '11 in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was held January 17 to January 20, 2011. Blooming Prairie, MN (Vocus/PRWEB) February 02, 2011 Minimizer proudly sponsored the Distributor of the Year (DOTY) Awards at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week '11 in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was held January 17 to January 20, 2011. The finalists for the coveted DOTY awards included Wheelco, Cook Brothers, Drive Train...
Developing biofuel from native perennials instead of corn in the Midwest's rolling grasslands would better protect threatened bird populations, Michigan State University research suggests.Federal mandates and market forces both are expected to promote rising biofuel production, MSU biologist Bruce Robertson says, but the environmental consequences of turning more acreage over to row crops for fuel are a serious concern.Ethanol in America is chiefly made from corn, but research is focusing on...
MARISSA, Ill., July 23 /PRNewswire/ -- To help keep energy costs low for millions of customers, Prairie State Generating Company, LLC and Bechtel Power Corporation today finalized a revised engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) agreement that will provide a fixed price for the total cost of constructing the power plant at the Prairie State Energy Campus. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100723/CG40064) (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100723/CG40064)...
The scramble to find sufficient land for biofuel production has experts eyeing marginal croplands that have been placed in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Now a study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists indicates that plant species diversity and composition are key factors in potential energy yield per acre from biomass harvested from CRP land.Agronomist Paul Adler, who works at the ARS Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit in University Park, Pa., led...
WEST CHESTER, Ohio, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AK Steel's (NYSE: AKS) Coshocton, Ohio Works has received "Wildlife at Work" certification from the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC), a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and enhancing wildlife habitat. The certification recognizes the company for its ongoing environmental restoration efforts at the plant. "Congratulations to AK Steel for their commitment to a healthy, natural world and connected communities," said...
Using prairie plants to produce bio-energy would help bird populations threatened by the conversion of grasslands to corn, scientists in Michigan said. There are ways to grow biofuel that are more benign, David Flaspohler, an environmental scientist at Michigan Tech, said in the journal BioScience. The demand for ethanol from corn is converting land on a scale not seen since virgin prairies were plowed and huge swaths of the nation's forests were first cut to grow food crops, Flaspohler said...
Careful planning, together with the use of feedstocks from perennial-dominated prairie, could minimize the adverse effects of expanding bioenergy use on wildlifeA study described in the October issue of BioScience identifies diverse native prairie as holding promise for yielding bioenergy feedstocks while minimizing harm to wildlife. Harvesting diverse prairie, which is dominated by perennial plants, could avoid adverse environmental effects associated with expanding cultivation of corn for...
Prairie dogs may seem like harmless little creatures, but they can inflict serious injury on plants simply by snacking on them. Plants cannot flee from their furry predators, so how do they avoid becoming a prairie dog's lunch?Dr. John Freeman and colleagues explore the role of metal hyperaccumulation in plant defense in the June 2009 issue of the American Journal of Botany. Certain plants species growing on soils with high metal content (such as arsenic, copper, selenium, and lead)...
Latest Prairie Reference Libraries
The Central tall grasslands are a prairie ecoregion of the Midwestern United States, a portion of the North American Great Plains. It covers a large region of southern Minnesota, most of Iowa, and a small portion of eastern South Dakota and a narrow strip going through eastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas. The rainfall here is 1,000 millimeters per year, which is higher than most of the Great Plains. The Northern tall grasslands are located to the north and have fewer and different...
The Central forest-grasslands transition are a prairie ecoregion of the central United States, a portion of the North American Great Plains. This is a great area that covers 157,000 square miles from central Illinois through the majority of Missouri, eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and into Texas. This region was conventionally a mixture of woodland and tall grass prairie, which as the soil is made up of highly fertile mollisols; most of the region has been transformed to farmland. The rainfall...
Aspen parkland is a reference to a very large area of transitional biome between prairie and boreal forest in two sections; the Peace River Country of northwestern Alberta that crosses the border into British Columbia, and a much larger area stretching from central Alberta, all across central Saskatchewan to south-central Manitoba near the US border. Aspen parkland is made up of groves of aspen poplars and spruce interspersed with areas of prairie grasslands, also intersected by large stream...
The black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) is native to the United States, occurring in the Great Plains to both the border of Canada and Mexico. Its range includes areas in Mexico, but no longer includes Arizona. This species was one of two prairie dog species to be described by Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition. It prefers a habitat within grasslands, but their habitat choices do depend on soil type, rainfall, slope angles, and vegetation cover. The black-tailed prairie...
The prairie dog (Cynomys) is a small, burrowing rodent native to the grasslands of North America. This stout-bodied rodent will grow to be between 12 and 16 inches (30 and 40 cm) long, including its short tail. They are found throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In the United States, prairie dogs are primarily found west of the Mississippi River. They have also been introduced into a few eastern locales. Biology and behavior The highly social prairie dogs live in large...
