Book Description
In concise, readable prose, "From Grassland to Glacier" guides the nature lover through the natural world of the Southern Rocky Mountains—from the hot, dry plains and plateaus, through the moist forests of pine and spruce, to the windswept tundra above the trees. Self-guided tours and easy-to-use keys simplify the identification of natural communities through personal experience. The standard work in the field for years, "From Grassland to Glacier" has been completely revised to take advantage of scientific advances. It includes an entirely new section on the wetlands ecosystem and has been expanded to include portions of the Southern Rockies in the surrounding states of Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
Book Description
The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook is a hands-on manual that provides a detailed account of what has been learned about the art and science of prairie restoration and the application of that knowledge to restoration projects throughout the world.
Chapters provide guidance on all aspects of the restoration process, from conceptualization and planning to execution and monitoring. Appendixes present hard-to-find data on plants and animals of the prairies, seed collection dates, propagation methods, sources of seeds and equipment, and more. Also included is a key to restoration options that provides detailed instructions for specific types of projects and a comprehensive glossary of restoration terms.
Written by those whose primary work is actually the making of prairies, The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook explores a myriad of restoration philosophies and techniques and is an essential resource for anyone working to nurture our oncevibrant native landscapes back to a state of health.
Customer Reviews:
Just a reprint of 1997 edition.......2006-09-26
If you don't already have the original 1997 edition, then this is definitely a 5 star title. However, if you DO have the original, don't bother to buy this one. Despite the various developments mentioned in the preface to this 2005 edition -- advances in no-till planting techniques, restoration strategies for woodland wildflowers, methods for integrating native biodiversity into agriculture, and exploding Internet resources -- none are dealt with here. There is no updated information about weed problems and herbicides, despite the ongoing advance of invasives and development of new products. Lots has happened in the field in the decade since the prior edition was written, but you learn none of it here. This is just a reprint of the original -- and this is quite disappointing.
That said, what is covered is truly excellent. It just could have been far better with a thorough rewrite.
The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook : For Prairies, Savannas,.......2001-07-30
Let me just say that it is nice that someone wrote more than just what plants to use. It is fairly easy to find prairie journals and books that describe everything except how to implement your prairie project. Packard had the good sense to know that seeding rates and implementation techniques are necessary information.
Amazing.............2001-01-05
This is a top rate restoration hand book. Amazing amount of information from people who are out doing the work. It is a collection of essays/chapters written by the front-runners in the field. Everything you wanted to know from site selction to seed collection to fire management. Since it is written by actual prairie restorationists, not theorists it is practical and easy to understand. I will recomend it to everyone who is interested in the field.
The prairie restoration and management bible........1999-08-18
As a prairie biologist, I refer to this seminal volume frequently. It is the very best compendium of prairie restoration and management information.
Anyone who has been taken by the ecological romance of the tallgrass prairie, and hopes either to know in detail the ecology of these biomes, or to plant or manage one, needs to have this in the personal library. It's mostly technical, but wonderfully engaging for the "prairieophile." One doesn't really know the prairie until having read this book.
Book Description
The four million windswept acres of wildflowers and grass in the twenty national grasslands in the United States are scattered across a region extending from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern edge of North Dakota. Although all were once seas of grass teeming with wildlife, they now exhibit striking differences, and range from a small lake recreation area in Texas to the enormous Little Missouri National Grasslands in North Dakota.
An essential guide to the American grasslands and the Grasslands National Park of Canada, The National Grasslands presents a history of the region, that traces the establishment of the national grasslands as an important part of the New Deal’s social revolution. The guide also provides a concise summary of the debates surrounding preservation and use, with special focus on the Buffalo Commons controversy. Each national grassland receives individual attention, including overviews of flora and fauna, clear descriptions of terrain and noteworthy natural features, and vital information on grasslands’ history, visitor centers, and ranger stations. All the articles in this first full-length book on the history of the national grasslands are richly illustrated with maps and exquisite photographs by the noted Great Plains photographer Georg Joutras.
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Life At An African Pool: Wait-Rain
John Struthers
Manufacturer: Voyageur Press
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ASIN: 0896582302 |
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Grasslands of the World (Fao Plant Production and Protection)
Manufacturer: Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN (FA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 9251053375 |
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- Prairie books in short supply
- Great illustrations of prairie
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A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet (Bur Oak Book)
Claudia McGehee
Manufacturer: University Of Iowa Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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A Woodland Counting Book (Bur Oak Book)
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A Prairie Alphabet
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If You're Not from the Prairie
ASIN: 0877458979 |
Book Description
Stalks of grass towering over one's head. Patches of yellow and purple wildflowers as far as the eye can see. Thousands of butterflies fluttering across an ocean of grass. Herds of bison plowing through deep snow. Scenes like this were familiar on the tallgrass prairie that once stretched across America's heartland. Today, although most of the original prairie has disappeared, hints of its beauty still remain.
Illustrator Claudia McGehee brings the glory of the prairie back to life in A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet. From the yellow stargrass that welcomes springtime to the butterfly weed that attracts summer's favorite winged visitors, from the horned lark that soars in the fall to the little bluestem that fights its way above the snow—each season unfolds in the vibrant color and vivid details of McGehee's scratchboard illustrations.
Old friends like white-tailed deer and the short-eared owl, as well as the endangered species like the greater prairie-chicken, are all depicted living in harmony within their native habitat. For those wanting to learn more about the wonders of this rich environment, McGehee provides the common and scientific names of all the plants and animals she illustrates.
Anyone who has ever seen remnants of the tallgrass prairie—from child to teacher to tourist to prairie enthusiast—will appreciate the passion and warmth that leap from the pages of this beautifully illustrated alphabet book.
Customer Reviews:
Prairie books in short supply.......2007-04-04
In presenting a program for young children on prairies I realized that there aren't alot of books out there. This book was one of the few I could find. The illustrations were wonderful and the alphabet examples were good. I do wish, though, that there had been more text. It made for a somewhat boring read for the kids.
Great illustrations of prairie.......2005-10-26
This is a great learning tool for teachers or anyone involved in educating young people about the tall grass prairie. It has wonderful illustrations of plants and animals of the prairie. Good book for young and old.
Book Description
A comprehensive field guide, fully illustrated with color photographs, to the trees, wildflowers, grasses, insects, birds, and other natural wonders of North America's prairies, fields, and meadows.
Customer Reviews:
Good for what it covers; unfortunately, doesn't cover much.......2006-05-30
I considered a three-star rating, but just can't do it. A National Geographic or Peterson guide will do you better.
I mean, how can you omit the entire Heron genus from the book?
Plus, due to a printing problem which I didn't realize until a couple of days after I bought this book in a National Park, it was missing several pages of color plates.
Very good.......2001-08-06
This is a very good introduction to American grasslands. If it has any flaws, it's that it tries to do too much with the result that it doesn't do enough. In other words, from a scientific point of view, there may be many similarities between the grasslands east and west of the continental divide. But from a visitors point of view, the short, mixed, and tall grass prairie east of the divide stands alone.
Therefore, this guide would have been more useful to me if it had concentrated on one side of the divide or the other, and devoted more text to the grasses on that side.
Still, as far as I know, there is no other guide of this kind, so I'm glad to have it.
great reference !.......2000-06-17
This is an excellent resource -- great photo sections for mammals, trees, flowers, etc found in grasslands. Easy to cross-reference and find information quickly.
Customer Reviews:
Natural Allies: Conservationists and Ranchers .......2007-08-08
I've long held to the common environmentalist's view that cattle and sheep grazing in the arid west was an environmental disaster, destroying vegetation, habitat, and displacing wild animals. New research and books like this have changed my opinion. Sayre, a well know dry-land ecologist, profiles six ranches in Arizona and New Mexico and describes how ranchers have enhanced their grazing land with environmentally-sound techniques. This sounds like dry stuff, but this attractive book and a not-too-technical text make the subject interesting.
Traditionally, ranchers and environmentalists were sworn enemies with nothing but contempt for each other. This was silly. The threat to the open land of the West now is 2-acre "ranchettes" and galloping suburbanization. Preserving the big ranches from "development" is the best means we have to ensure that the lone prairies remain for future generations. What we now see, with books like this one, is science rather than emotion being used to evaluate how ranch land can be improved and preserved -- or at least damage minimized -- through better techniques of grazing cattle.
The New Ranch Handbook is large-format; the cover features dramatic before and after color photos of good and bad grazing; and 100 good black and white photos are scattered among 100 pages of text. It's an excellent book for the dry-land rancher, the environmentalist, or people like me who just like to know what we're looking at as we explore the great American Southwest.
Smallchief
Amazon.com
In an exploration of the grasslands of North America that is both sweeping and intimate, Manning makes interesting connections between economics, botany, farming, and democracy. His discussion of the impact of romantic ideals of landscapes upon this biome is insightful, and his travels with botanists, biologists, buffalo and a visit to Ted Turner's ranch put faces and feet on the story. The message: by a careful reading of nature's design, we can more successfully inhabit this and all landscapes. Recommended.
Customer Reviews:
Audacious, Quirky Proposal - Warrants Serious Consideration.......2005-09-10
I have encountered few books like Richard Manning's Grassland. Manning's manifesto - reserved for the final chapters - is audacious, even quirky. Grassland's subtitle, The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie, suggests a reasoned, broad-based analysis, and that is what Richard Manning provides. Nonetheless, his conclusions are breath-taking in their originality. My initial skepticism remains, but Manning does have me thinking about his proposal. Maybe, just maybe, he is on the right track.
The mountain wildernesses with their "charismatic megafauna", deserts, wild rivers, forests, seashores, and wetlands have little difficulty attracting environmental advocates, but how do the grasslands, the largest single biome in North America, fit into this picture?
Manning is slow to unfold his unorthodox proposals, preferring first to educate his readers. Thankfully, Manning's style is more narrative and anecdotal than pedagogical. His topics are wide ranging: Indian cultures, exotic weeds, Pleistocene extinctions, Jefferson's agrarian theory, disappearing aquifers, buffalo hunting, and industrialized farming.
Manning has definite opinions, but he is surprisingly fair; he clearly outlines and explains contrary ideas. I questioned some of his interpretations and occasionally even his facts, but all in all Manning's thesis appears credible.
I had some qualms about revealing Manning's manifesto in absence of his preparatory discussions. Even in context, his proposals are unexpectedly original. With caution, I proceed:
Richard Manning advocates eliminating large scale, industrialized farming and cattle ranching on America's extensive arid and semi-arid grasslands. Intensive single crop farming, largely wheat and corn production, is replaced by lower impact, multi-crop farming restricted to areas requiring less irrigation. Extensive irrigation stops. Intense fertilization stops. Land management concepts change. Free roaming bison replace cattle in the food chain. Non-native grasses that have largely displaced native species are eliminated.
Grassland is an exceptionally interesting book. As an earlier reviewer noted, Grassland will change the way we think.
Absolutely incredible piece of work.......2005-07-10
This is just a wonderful book on a part of our country that is "foreign" to many.I have recently been preparing a program on photograghy of the Great Plains and it"s as though the information in Grasslands is an answer to my prayer.It is literally packed with so much material so well presented that it should be required reading for all of our children and POLICY MAKERS IN GOVERNMENTS {particularly our current administration!!}.
Very interesting, a lot of information, can be slow reading.......2005-06-15
Part autobiographical (Manning writing about his travels around the nation learning about prarie restoration efforts), part biology textbook (telling about the types of flora & fauna that developed on the praries over time- and what has become of them),and part history ( the story of human involvement with the ecosystem).
Mr. Manning writes about the effects humans have had on the grasslands over the centuries, most of the really bad part coming since the railroad days and what is being done to remedy the effects of agricultural and other practices not really suited to the Plains. There is quite a bit of science in his writing, but it isn't too complicated, and a lot of opinion too. Manning does favor the use, in some cases, of chemicals to battle foreign plant species. He doesn't have much use for modern grain farming (not suited to the normal moisture patterns or maybe even the terrain) and considers beef cattle far too destructive for the land (he describes some of the effects the herds have had on the land- and what the buffalo(he favors hunting them but not to extinction) were like). He mentioned that while the old free range cattle ranching was harder on the environment that the buffalo herds (I think he advocated returning them) at least it was better than the current fenced in, likely to overgraze system.
I especially appreciated the details of how the buffalo herds were hunted down in the 19th century.
If the science is even half right (I feel that it probably is) something needs to be done to restore things in the Plains. I know that I've read in agricultural magazines that the west is experiencing a severe, and growing, groundwater shortage. You won't get the country to admit it ( he writes about the special interests) but so much of the land out there isn't suited for anything past what nature was doing with it we need to work with nature, not against it.
Anyone interested in the western grasslands and/ or the buffalo should consider getting a copy of this book.
Despite minor flaws, this book will change the way you think.......2005-03-17
First and most important, this book will change the way you think about the American prairie. I live here at the edge of the prairie near Indianapolis, and there are a few spots maintained as native prairie. Manning isn't talking about these little islands but about a huge, free ecosystem and the horrors that we have inflicted upon it and its fauna and flora. I confess that the image of grizzlies chasing elk calves across the grassland is beguiling, and illustrates what we are missing. He makes a persuasive case that we need lots and lots and lots of grassland, maintained as such. Manning has a good story-telling sense, and a good eye for explaining the grassland. You will not look at the prairie in the same way again.
There are some nicely provocative bits. His vision of the prairie rests on bison ranching, with the animals eating native grasses without irrigation, fertilizer, or other capitalist agriculture. As if that's not controversial enough, he makes a serious case that a meat-and-leather prairie economy rests easier on the land than food crops such as wheat or corn. These crops have destroyed the prairie and harm the broader environment because of the extensive irrigation and fertilization required. Obviously, this strategy of making our agriculture conform to the land instead of forcing the land to conform to our agriculture would be a major change for Americans and others around the world..
Manning is not afraid to take the next logical step, and he makes a principled argument against vegetarianism. Eating free-range bison raised on natural grasslands, he argues, would sit more lightly on the ground and would probably use less (petroleum-based) energy. This is not your conventional environmentalist, to say the least.
Despite those strengths, the book is weakened by a modest number of trivial errors of fact. These come in sidebar comments about irrelevant matters and have nothing to do with grassland, so I'd rather not list them here. They did make me question the accuracy of his reporting on grassland, though. I wouldn't rely on this book as your sole source of facts, but Manning's vision and wonderful writing make it an invaluable book nonetheless.
Excellent, unassuming, deftly woven.......2004-03-11
I picked up this book on a whim from The Book Thing of Baltimore, where I work as a volunteer shelving donated books so our patrons can find what they want (we give away books for free). Its cover caught my eye. I am so glad I did, because what I found was a fascinating and gripping book on something I never had really given two thoughts to: America's grasslands.
At first I wondered how on earth you could write an entire book about grassland. Now I wonder how he managed to fit so much information in such an easy to digest book. Manning is not just passionate about conservation (and the right kind of conservation), he's a tremendously writer as well, and he weaves the story of middle America's lands into an amazing tapestry. You can tell his point of view on all of the subjects, but he doesn't let it interfere with the quality of the work -- he does not demonize "the bad guys," but portrays them as normal humans struggling to survive. Somehow he starts off with very early ecological history, the beginnings of human civilizations in northern America, and ends up with modern day efforts to bring back the grasslands and all the while keeping the story lively and the reader interested.
I highly recommend this book. It will open your eyes.
Average customer rating:
- Simply the best grass book
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Grasses of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Areas
A. Michael Powell
Manufacturer: Univ of Texas Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Grasses
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ASIN: 0292765533 |
Customer Reviews:
Simply the best grass book.......2002-01-07
Don't be misled by the title which indicates the central area of research. This book will be useful throughout the remaining grasslands in Texas and neighboring states. For someone who lives in central Texas and who has been looking for an accurate guidebook to native grasses, this book has been a godsend. Dr. Powell and his illustrator, Patricia Manning, have made a book which is scholarly, reliable, attractive, readable and detailed without being overwhelming. Grasses are hard to identify. What better than to know that if I go to "6 mi. below Redford...NW slopes of Wildhorse Mts.... Dog Canyon Flats... Pecos River crossing on Pandale Road" I'll find what I'm looking for. Lots of experts seem to find it hard to communicate with the bungling amateur. Dr. Powell and his collaborator, in contrast, are helpful and clear. Highly recommended.
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- Hole's Human Anatomy & Physiology with OLC Bind-In Card
- Human Development
- In Search of Dark Matter (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration)
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