Just a note: the Canadian portion of this region is never called "the Great Plains" in Canada. It's always referred to as "the Prairies". It's kind of like saying that the Serengeti extends into Kenya - in lots of ways it would be correct, but once capitalized names are used, it doesn't quite work.
@duckling there's a delay between featuring the quiz and QM emailing about it, Hines was just insanely quick in spotting this one, so I didn't see it at first.
The landscape of eastern Kansas is indistinguishable from that of western Missouri. Drawing the boundary of the Great Plains along man-made state lines is lazy geography.
I think that's unfair to Stewart, his map seems to closely correspond to the one on Wikipedia's page about the region. The only places I see it really following State borders are where those borders follow rivers, which are hardly man-made.
I didn't actually use Wikipedia's map, since it didn't have state borders on it (making it more difficult to work out what's going on). I used this image as reference, which I believe to be very close / identical to the Wikipedia one. (It's uploaded on Wikimedia itself anyway).
But thank you for your support plattitude! :) (Although I don't think cpg aimed his comment at me, but at the Great Plains themselves)
I don't know whose map that is, but as a native of Iowa, I can firmly say nearly the whole state is quite flat, was once prairie, and is nearly all farmland currently. There's really no difference between Iowa and Nebraska. Western Missouri above the Ozarks is also quite flat, and southwestern Minnesota at least as well.
Stewart was just going off of the source material. Take it up with Wikipedia. I'd agree that parts of MN, IA, and other states would be effectively part of the great plains.
Actually it is not part of the Great Plains, Iowa, Minnesota Illinois etc are part of the Central Plains. Even the far eastern parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas are part of the central plains, the Great Plains historically is not the Missouri River but the 100 degree meridian. The Great Plains has one key distinction the Central Plains do not have which is less than 20 inches of rain a year. The Great Plains are far more arid than the Central Plains. The Central Plains were name long before the Great Plains because until the Louisiana Purchase, the Great Plains were not owned by the US yet. Technically cities like Souix Falls, Omaha, Lincoln, Wichita, Ft. Worth, Kansas City and Dallas are part of the Central Plains not the Great Plains because they lie east of the 100 meridian and have more than 20 inches of rain a year.
I can take 5 minutes to find a precipitation map off of google, and everything I'm seeing shows up to 50 inches of rain within the area on this map. That, and a meridian is an arbitrary line for an ecosystem. Also, looking at maps detailing the Great Plains: They either 1. Combine both the Central and Great Plains, with some maps stretching as far as the Mississippi (Which is going too far, since the eastern part of Iowa gets hilly and wooded), or 2. The Great Plains is separate, but further west and more irregularly shaped.
Wikipedia is a weird one. The map on the Great Plains article is identical to the one in the quiz as far as I can tell, but the second paragraph of that same article mentions Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri as Great Plains states.
I was surprised to see that a map was included. I would also have enjoyed the challenge of doing the quiz without a map. I probably wouldn't have gotten New Mexico without a map. After doing some research I learned that prairies and plains aren't exactly the same. It seems that all prairies are plains, but not all plains are prairies, and so some prairie states are not included in the "Great Plains" of the US. Many of those are considered by some to be part of the central grasslands rather than great plains, while other sites listed them as northern plains. A couple of sites included small portions of them as part of the Great Plains. It's all clear as mud. (Still enjoyed the quiz, however. Any quiz which promotes a stroll through the internet is a good one.)
Great quiz. It might have been more challenging if you imposed the highlighted area over a map of North America and had to guess the states and provinces without the state/national borders. I certainly wouldn't have gotten the correct 13 without an incorrect guess or three.
While pretty accurate for the most part I also feel the map is pretty rough. Definitely feel like western Iowa, the Northwestern corner of Missouri, and southwestern corner of Minnesota could also very easily be included in and classified as the Great Plains as well.
Actually no, even parts of Eastern Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas are part of the Central Plains and not the Great Plains. The Great Plains actually start at the 100 degree meridian not the Missouri River. The distinction difference you can make easily between the Great Plains and the Central Plains is the historic yearly rainfall amounts the two plains have. The Great Plains are more arid and have historic less than 20 inches of rain. The Central Plains include cities like Omaha, Lincoln, Souix Falls, Kansas City, Wichita, Ft Worth and Dallas to name a few even though the wiki map says they are part of the Great Plains. But each of those cities are east of the 100 meridian and part of the Central Plains. The Central Plains were named long before the Great Plains because until the Louisiana Purchase, the Great Plains were not US territory yet. So Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois are part of the Central Plains not the Great Plains.
But thank you for your support plattitude! :) (Although I don't think cpg aimed his comment at me, but at the Great Plains themselves)