In the last 200 years, Iowa's prairies and other wildlands have been
transformed into vast agricultural fields. This massive conversion has
provided us with food, fiber, and fuel in abundance. But it has also
robbed Iowa's land of its native resilience and created the
environmental problems that today challenge our everyday lives: polluted
waters, increasing floods, loss and degradation of rich prairie topsoil,
compromised natural systems, and now climate change.
In a straightforward, friendly style, Iowa's premier scientists and
experts consider what has happened to our land and outline viable
solutions that benefit agriculture as well as the state's human and wild
residents.