The Great Plains
America’s Breadbasket
Physiographic Regions of the USA
North American
Interior Plains
Formation of the Central Lowlands
• During the Pleistocene Epoch or Great Ice
Age, huge glaciers formed in Canada and
advanced southward into the great, central,
low-lying Interior Plains of the United States.
These glaciers and their deposits modified
the surface of the land they covered, mostly
between the Missouri and the Ohio Rivers;
they smoothed the contours and gave the
land a more subdued aspect than it had
before they came. This glacially smoothed
and modified land is called the Central
Lowland.
The Great Plains
• The Great Plains are the westernmost portion
of the vast North American Interior Plains,
which extend east to the Appalachian
Plateau. The United States Geological Survey
divides the Great Plains in the United States
into ten physiographic subdivisions:
Pre-Columbian Times
• Before it was broken by the plow, most of the
Great Plains from the Texas panhandle northward
was treeless grassland. Trees grew only along the
floodplains of streams and on the few mountain
masses of the northern Great Plains. These lush
prairies once were the grazing ground for
immense herds of bison, and the land provided a
bountiful life for those Indians who followed the
herds. South of the grasslands, in Texas, shrubs
mixed with the grasses: creosote bush along the
valley of the Pecos River; mesquite, oak, and
juniper to the east.
Native Grasses of the Great Plains
Other Native Plants
Native Trees & Shrubs
USGS delineates 10
physiographic regions
The Black Hills
Western Saskatchewan
High Plains
High Plains
Nebraska Sand Hills
Missouri Plateau (glaciated)
Missouri Plateau (unglaciated)
Missouri Plateau (the Badlands) –
(unglaciated)
Colorado Piedmont
Edwards Plateau, Texas
Edwards
Plateau
Raton Sub-region
Pecos Valley
Central Texas Uplift
PLAINS BORDER (KANSAS)
GREAT PLAINS AGRICULTURE
Winter Wheat Around Kansas
Spring Wheat in the North
Livestock