The U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan make up the Great Plains.

In the grasslands, there are hot summers and cold winters. The biome typically has between 10 and 35 inches of precipitation a year, much of which occurs during late spring and early summer. Seasonal drought and occasional fires help maintain these lands.

Grasslands are characterized as having grasses as the dominant vegetation. Trees and shrubs are very rare, if not absent, but are also producers within the biome. In the Prairie of North America, there are shortgrass areas, tallgrass areas, and mixed grass areas.

The food web consists of grass, wildflowers, shrubs and small trees being the producers, primary consumers such as bison and the pronghorn antelope are herbivores that feed on the producers, and the secondary consumers are carnivores which include rattlesnakes, coyotes, prairie dogs and black footed ferrets.

As time goes on, people come to the Prairie of North America to build farms and residential areas. As more people do this, more space is taken up and more land is used to farm. This starts to make less room for grass, which is the most abundant producer in the ecosystem.

Another threat to the prairies is the deliberate killing of wildlife by people. Many farmers find prairie dogs to be an annoyance because they dig and ruin their crops. This killing of the prairie dogs threatens the whole ecosystem because the prairie dog is a keystone species.