Iowa: Agriculture and the Tallgrass Prairie

<p><span data-teams="true">"At first the Euroamerican settlers could not fathom the tallgrass prairie.<br /> Stepping into it from cropland-speckled woodlands to the east, they entered<br /> a land of sky and horizon, wind and light, flower and scent, a surging sea of<br /> grasses that staggered the imagination. The prairie grasslands seemed to<br /> stretch on forever, a landscape that promised no enclosure, only intensity<br /> and exposure…"</span></p> <p><span data-teams="true"><br /> So writes Cornelia (Connie) Mutel in her book, The Emerald Horizon: The<br /> History of Nature in Iowa, a modern classic of natural history. Mutel has spent<br /> her life chronicling the fantastic and beleaguered landscape of her home<br /> state, and the place that she knows and loves like no other. Her life's work-<br /> seven books written or edited, all on different aspects of Iowa's natural<br /> history- could be viewed as a requiem: only 0.1% of the native tallgrass<br /> prairies remain in ...