prairie | 台北市立動物園資訊網

2011年5月10日—Prairiesareenormousstretchesofflatgrasslandwithmoderatetemperatures,moderaterainfall,andfewtrees.Whenpeopletalkaboutthe ...

Prairies are enormous stretches of flat grassland with moderate temperatures, moderate rainfall, and few trees.

When people talk about the prairie, they are usually referring to the golden, wheat-covered land in the middle of North America. The Great Plains, in the United States and Canada, has some of the worlds most valuable prairies, which grow some of the world’s most important crops. The U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan make up the Great Plains.

The prairies in North America formed as the Rocky Mountains grew taller and taller. They grew taller and taller because of plate tectonics, the process where a small number of plates on the Earth’s crust interact with each other. Once the mountains got tall enough, they blocked significant amounts of rain from falling on the east side of the mountains, creating what is cal...