Under a sky of brilliant blue, students in GEG105 Physical Geography: Earth System Science braved the cold this morning to walk through the lovely Gustavus Coneflower Prairie, a representation of the grassland biome which once stretched like a vast ocean of grasses from Saint Peter west to the Rocky Mountains. When asked if it was too cold for an outdoor lab, one student responded that “learning keeps us warm.” 🙂
Distribution of midlatitude grasslands in the U.S. Great Plains. The dark green represents tallgrass prairie, the lightest green represents shortgrass prairie, with a mixed grass prairie in between. (Data from Brigham Young University’s Bean Museum via Wikipedia.)