Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Climate and Bison Adaptations on the Great Plains

Abstract

The preceding chapter summarized the modern pattern of climatic variation on the Plains and assessed the effects of this variation on regional patterns of forage production. Much of this variation is linked to the physiography of the area and is therefore likely to have been relatively constant over time. A north-to-south increase in temperature (although not the specific temperatures recorded in the twentieth century, of course), for example, can reasonably be assumed for all periods of human occupation. However, some evidence suggests that there may have been important differences between the climate of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that of the present. This chapter discusses these differences, predicts the effects on bison adaptations of variability in the Plains grasslands, and considers modern and historic evidence to test these predictions.