The Nature of Eastern North Dakota:
Pre-1880 Historical Ecology

by Kieth E. Severson and Carolyn Hull Sieg

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How abundant were bison on the prairies of eastern North Dakota and how did they move over the grasslands? Did prairie dogs live on this eastern edge of the Great Plains? How about wolves, elk and prairie chickens? Was the influence of Native Americans so strong that the Great Plains wilderness described by early European travelers was already far from "natural"? Were fires common before Euro-American settlement, and were Native Americans the only ones setting them? Were trees present? If so, where did they occur and how did they exist in the presence of droughts, fire and widespread grazing? How often did the flooding occur and how common were droughts? How did they compare in intensity and duration to the drought of the 1930s?

Such questions are the foundation of The Nature of Eastern North Dakota.

 
About the Authors  


Kieth Severson
Dr. Severson (Ph.D. - University of Wyoming, 1966) was a research wildlife biologist with the Rocky Mountain Station until he retired in 1994. He split his career between the northern Great Plains (including the Black Hills) and the Southwestern U.S. After retiring, he accepted a part-time position with the Department of Animal and Range Sciences, North Dakota State University, to describe the historical ecology of the Sheyenne National Grasslands, which provided the foundation for this book.


Carolyn Hull Sieg
Dr. Sieg (Ph.D. - Texas Tech University, 1991) is a research ecologist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station. She spent more than 20 years conducting research in the Great Plains before moving to Flagstaff, Arizona in 2000. Her work on the threatened western prairie fringed orchid on the Sheyenne National Grassland inspired her interest in how fires and floods once functioned in the Great Plains.

  

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