Osage Plains

[2] The Osage Plains, covering west-central Missouri, the southeastern third of Kansas, most of central Oklahoma, and extending into north-central Texas, is the southernmost of three tallgrass prairie physiographic areas.

This large remnant core of native tallgrass prairie is a rocky rolling terrain that runs from north to south across Kansas and extends into Oklahoma.

The area now is managed almost exclusively for beef production with annual burns and intensive grazing practices that provide little of the habitat structure required to support many priority bird species.

Historically, fire, drought, and plains bison were dominant ecological forces and had great influences on the vegetation from local to landscape scales.

The Osage Plains and Flint Hills were dominated historically by tallgrass prairie with scattered groves of blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica) in the uplands and along drainages.

Large expanses of tallgrass prairie remain in the Flint Hills, where relief is greater than in the Osage Plains subregion and the land less suitable for cropping.