About Prairie World

Piedmont grasslands are an iconic touchstone of the southeastern landscape. They foster biodiversity, filter stormwater, and store large amounts of carbon in their deep roots and surrounding soil. In many instances, piedmont grasslands sequester more carbon than forests. As North Carolina rapidly develops, stewarding piedmont grasslands through restoration and conservation alongside development is an essential part of the Triangle’s future sustainability. Grasslands help with both climate mitigation—through the capture and storage of atmospheric carbon—and climate adaptation, by cooling the surrounding landscape, filtering stormwater, and providing a home for plants, pollinators, and animals with millennia long relationships to place. Nature based solutions can sequester 37% of emissions necessary to reach Paris-aligned goals if installed in the next decade and are an important transition strategy.

As the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative describes:

“Most Americans are unaware that cities such as Charlotte, Chattanooga, Durham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Nashville, Raleigh, Richmond, Tallahassee, among others, are as much “grassland cities” as Austin, Fort Worth, and Tulsa. These southern cities were colonized early because the native grasslands, prairies, and savannas were hospitable environments, often with deep, fertile soils, so they were gone before the camera was invented…before they could be described. Much of the original landscape—so important to indigenous people and the earliest [European] settlers—has been lost. But not entirely lost!”

(You can read more about the Southeastern Grassland Initiative’s work here.)

If you are standing in the southeastern Piedmont, you are still in Prairie World! All you have to do is look for the signs. Fostering future abundant piedmont prairies are an essential part of a climate-resilient future and part of the unique visual splendor of the southeast region.

At Prairie World, we hope to take you on some tour of some of the wonderous parts of the southeastern prairie landscape.