People who live and lived on the Great Plains of the United States and Prairies of Canada have adjusted to one of the most variable environments in North America. At the same time that their cultures have adapted to the environment, so too has their presence affected the environment.

Goals

• the presence or absence of water,
• natural resources procurement,
• hunting and game management, and
• competition for resources.

The idea behind this web site is that students need to understand that the environmental factors that affected the first peoples on the Great Plains still have profound impacts on the inhabitants of the Great Plains today. How prehistoric peoples handled these factors may provide us with clues about how we might deal with the same issues, or at least it might provide us with warnings about how failure to deal with problems might affect us.

The core of this project for students is a series of traveling "suitcase" exhibits, but with lesson plans for K-12 use. At the same time, many students now have access to technologies that allow greater interactivity and allow far more access to informati on sources than single schools or teachers can provide. We hope this web site will provide access to a wide range of materials and will engage you and your students in thinking about human interaction with the land, on both the Plains and in other areas of the world. We will add to the teacher source materials below as we identify them. We would also appreciate teacher and student input about the project. If you have constructive comments or ideas, please contact us. You may e-mail us at archlab@sundance.usd.edu.

Lesson Plans

Additional Source Materials on the World Wide Web

Presentations:

PrairiNet
PrairiNet has an attractive homepage dedicated to prairies. At the moment there is a presentation of information about the National Grasslands, but announces production of a set of exhibits about tallgrass prairies for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's new visitor's center in Prairie City, Iowa.

A Way of Life: Great Plains Citizens Talk About Ecosystems
A Great Plains Partnership report dealing with how Plains people view the land they live on. Includes a Native American perspective.

Organizations:

Center for Great Plains Studies
At Emporia State University, Kansas, the Center for Great Plains Studies offers a range of information on academic programs, public service activities, and research projects intended to inform, interest and promote appreciation of the sprawling mid-continental grasslands.

Great Plains Partnership
The Great Plains Partnership is built on the idea that through cooperation rather than conflict, economic and environmental interests can be compatible. Their focus is to strengthen and improve biological diversity and ecosystem health, in ways that also strengthen and improve the economic, social and cultural foundations of the region. The web site links to several projects that provide a wealth of sources for teachers. Some of their information has been used to in our web site.

The Great Plains Regional Center
The Great Plains Regional Center is part of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change. Located in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources' Department of Meteorology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, GPRC encourages global change research focusing on semi-arid grassland ecosystems such as those found in the North American Great Plains. Fifteen project reports provide a range of information. Teachers should be warned that much of the material is complex, scientific data, but the projects are well summarized. One especially interesting project is Climate Change in the Mid-Continent of North America which analyzes climate change during the past 200-to-300 years along a north-south transect extending from southern Manitoba to Texas in the mid-continent of North America.

Full Text Articles

Back to the Buffalo
By Frank and Deborah Popper. This article proposes the Buffalo Commons, a predecessor to a later book that calls for restoring large chunks of Plains land to t heir pre-white condition; to recover the commons the settlers found in the 19th century. In short, the plan calls for deprivatizing much of the Plains: fences would come down, domestic animals would be removed and game animals stocked. They call their idea the Buffalo Commons. At the end of this article is another by Bruce Adams entitled "The United States Economy Depends on the Great Plains." Both are an interesting read, understandable to high school students. They could make a topic for heated discu ssion.

Missouri River Threats: Dams, Flood Control Midwest, Great Plains
An opinion piece critical of US Army Corps of Engineers activities along the Missouri River.

Specific Project Information

Water Conservation in the Great Plains Region
A US Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation web site outlining water conservation projects in Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, and Montana, as well as multistate projects.

History of Desertification on the Great Plains
A report of a project designed to identify regions that are vulnerable to desertification, and characterize past climates that have affected the stability and distribution of surface soils and sediments in the Great Plains region. Additional objectives include constructing predictive models of dune reactivation and dust storm production in response to likely climate change scenarios.

Linking the Economy and the Environment Preserving and Restoring Native Prairie Habitats
By Craig Johnson and Elizabeth O. Jones. In an actual example from Eden Prairie, MN, a coalition of private industry, agencies of federal, state, and local government, community members, and high school biology students restored an abandoned scenic overlook and preserved unique native prairie habitat on a seventy acre site.

Other Plains/Prairie Sources:

Additional Links Environmental Education Sites

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