State guide

North Dakota Nature Guide

North Dakota is the heart of the Northern Great Plains — a cold, semi-arid land of northern mixedgrass prairie, glacial Drift Prairie pocked with the wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region, and the carved buttes and coulees of the western badlands. That sweep of grass and water makes the state the continent's single most important waterfowl breeding ground, the 'duck factory,' and the year runs from a long subzero winter through a brief, intense prairie-nesting summer to enormous spring and fall migrations of geese and cranes. USDA zones 3a to 4b set a short, hard-frost growing season under some of the darkest skies in the Lower 48.