Editing Great Plains (section)

==Extent==
[[File:On the Great Plains, Kansas, 294 miles west of Missouri River. (redo 2016).jpg|thumb|The Great Plains near a farming community in central Kansas]]
The region is about {{cvt|500|mi}} east to west and {{cvt|2000|mi}} north to south. Much of the region was home to [[American bison]] herds until they were hunted to near extinction during the mid/late-19th century. It has an area of approximately {{cvt|1300000|km2|order=flip}}. Current thinking regarding the geographic boundaries of the Great Plains is shown by this [https://plains.unl.edu/about-us/ map] at the Center for Great Plains Studies, [[University of Nebraska–Lincoln]].<ref name=Encyclopedia/> This definition, however, is primarily ecological, not physiographic. The [[Boreal Plains]] of Western Canada are physiographically the same, but differentiated by their tundra and forest (rather than grassland) appearance.

The term "Great Plains", for the region west of about the [[96th meridian west]] and east of the [[Rocky Mountains]], was not generally used before the early 20th century. [[Nevin M. Fenneman|Nevin Fenneman's]] 1916 study ''Physiographic Subdivision of the United States''<ref>{{cite journal |last=Fenneman |first=Nevin M. |date=January 1917 |title=Physiographic Subdivision of the United States |journal=[[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America]] |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=17–22 |pmc=1091163 |oclc=43473694 |pmid=16586678 |doi=10.1073/pnas.3.1.17 |bibcode=1917PNAS....3...17F |doi-access=free}}</ref> brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Before that the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, in contrast to the lower Prairie Plains of the [[Midwestern United States|Midwestern states]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Brown |first=Ralph Hall |title=Historical Geography of the United States |url=https://archive.org/details/historicalgeogra00brow |url-access=registration |year=1948 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace & Co |location=New York |oclc=186331193 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historicalgeogra00brow/page/373 373–374]}}</ref> Today the term "[[High Plains (United States)|High Plains]]" is used for a subregion of the Great Plains.<ref>{{Cite web |title=High Plains {{!}} region, United States |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/High-Plains |access-date=May 9, 2021 |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |language=en |archive-date=May 13, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210513135615/https://www.britannica.com/place/High-Plains |url-status=live }}</ref> The term still remains little-used in Canada compared to the more common "prairie".