Prairie Directory of North America

Rating:
Summary: Look up a given prairie's location or basic facts quickly
Review: Collaboratively written by Charlotte Adelman and Bernard L. Schwartz, Prairie Directory Of North America is an information packed, accessible, reader friendly, straightforward, ecological reference book filled cover to cover with the names, one-paragraph descriptions, and geographical locations of prairies found throughout the United States and Canada. The prairie listings are organized first by state (or Canadian province), then by county for easy reference. Telephone numbers for each prairie area's associated conservation board or similar organization are included. The Prairie Directory Of North America is an excellent, indispensable, highly recommended desktop reference for academicians, professionals, environmental activists, and non-specialist general readers needing to look up a given prairie's location or basic facts quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Makes me want to take a long road trip
Review: Not sure how it is that I was sent this book, but I found it in my mailbox on a dreary Seattle afternoon. Instantly I was flooded with memories of dewy summer mornings that promise to become hot sticky days; the smell of earth and sweet grasses rising with the humidity; the sounds of grasshoppers hopping, crickets chirping, skippers fluttering, big blue stem, bur oak, gamma grass all rustling from a breeze that seems to tug at me to follow it to the horizon.
Having grown up in Illinois where 99% of the original prairie landscapes are gone, it is a THRILL to see a 352 page directory of North American prairies. I found myself scanning this book's pages for restoration sites I did volunteer work on years ago and places I've visited. It's encouraging to see how many have been designated as nature reserves and parks. Of course many of the entries are also for very small, inevitably threatened rements of prairies. Perhaps this text will help to validate the existence of these small treaures and promote human awareness and stewardship.
This directory is nicely organized by U.S. States and Canadian Providences. Introductions for each state provide varying amounts of backround information, such as the types of prairies, geological history, current environmental/restoration/preservation concerns, and key plant and animal species. A few states are included, which aren't really prairie states, such as Oregon. The all too brief justification for including this state and it's two listings are that these sites look like prairies. That's good enough for me, but then I have to ask why my current home state of Washington was not included with it's steppes, plateaus and mima mounds. Oh well. Entries for each state are then provide within alphabetical county listings. One improvement might be to include each site by name in the index. I spent a long time trying to find individual prairies I knew by name, but couldn't recall the county they are in.
There is one map of central North America, a lack luster, black and white, bare-basic outline of states and providences, on which, author, Bernard Schwartz, appears to have colored in the "pre-settlement prairie bio-regions" with dark and light crayon. A far better map, perhaps with color/texture coded sub-regions, would have been a nice addition and not too hard to come by. However, on the facing page is one of my favorite prairie related illustrations, a diagram of prairie plants and their root systems. Other illustrations are black and white sketches of prairie flora, drawn by author Charlette Adelman. Like her husband's map they are a bit more abstract and amateurish than botanical, but I like them anyway, being recognizable representations of key species and having a 'heartland' essence of earthiness, simplicity, and beauty.
One problem of restoration is the long term management and monitoring of human activities on on prairie sites. Since the book serves as a guide to visit these natural areas, I would have liked it to have a introductory chapter on appropriate human usage and negative impacts (eg. harvesting seeds, herbs, disturbing/feeding wild life, pets, off-road vehicles, staying on trails, littering, etc., etc). Additional emphasis on invasive weed species and land- use threats with perhaps an apendix of references for state and federal weed/rare plant directories and protection agencies might enhance future additions.
A great reference for birders, botanists, conservationists, scientists, travelers, and anyone who believes that America is, first and foremost, a beautiful chunk of land.

Rating:
Summary: Makes me want to take a long road trip
Review: Not sure how it is that I was sent this book, but I found it in my mailbox on a dreary Seattle afternoon. Instantly I was flooded with memories of dewy summer mornings that promise to become hot sticky days; the smell of earth and sweet grasses rising with the humidity; the sounds of grasshoppers hopping, crickets chirping, skippers fluttering, big blue stem, bur oak, gamma grass all rustling from a breeze that seems to tug at me to follow it to the horizon.
Having grown up in Illinois where 99% of the original prairie landscapes are gone, it is a THRILL to see a 352 page directory of North American prairies. I found myself scanning this book's pages for restoration sites I did volunteer work on years ago and places I've visited. It's encouraging to see how many have been designated as nature reserves and parks. Of course many of the entries are also for very small, inevitably threatened rements of prairies. Perhaps this text will help to validate the existence of these small treaures and promote human awareness and stewardship.
This directory is nicely organized by U.S. States and Canadian Providences. Introductions for each state provide varying amounts of backround information, such as the types of prairies, geological history, current environmental/restoration/preservation concerns, and key plant and animal species. A few states are included, which aren't really prairie states, such as Oregon. The all too brief justification for including this state and it's two listings are that these sites look like prairies. That's good enough for me, but then I have to ask why my current home state of Washington was not included with it's steppes, plateaus and mima mounds. Oh well. Entries for each state are then provide within alphabetical county listings. One improvement might be to include each site by name in the index. I spent a long time trying to find individual prairies I knew by name, but couldn't recall the county they are in.
There is one map of central North America, a lack luster, black and white, bare-basic outline of states and providences, on which, author, Bernard Schwartz, appears to have colored in the "pre-settlement prairie bio-regions" with dark and light crayon. A far better map, perhaps with color/texture coded sub-regions, would have been a nice addition and not too hard to come by. However, on the facing page is one of my favorite prairie related illustrations, a diagram of prairie plants and their root systems. Other illustrations are black and white sketches of prairie flora, drawn by author Charlette Adelman. Like her husband's map they are a bit more abstract and amateurish than botanical, but I like them anyway, being recognizable representations of key species and having a 'heartland' essence of earthiness, simplicity, and beauty.
One problem of restoration is the long term management and monitoring of human activities on on prairie sites. Since the book serves as a guide to visit these natural areas, I would have liked it to have a introductory chapter on appropriate human usage and negative impacts (eg. harvesting seeds, herbs, disturbing/feeding wild life, pets, off-road vehicles, staying on trails, littering, etc., etc). Additional emphasis on invasive weed species and land- use threats with perhaps an apendix of references for state and federal weed/rare plant directories and protection agencies might enhance future additions.
A great reference for birders, botanists, conservationists, scientists, travelers, and anyone who believes that America is, first and foremost, a beautiful chunk of land.