Sandhills (Nebraska)

The Sandhills, sometimes written or called Sandhills Nebraska Sand Hills are an existing exclusively of sand dunes prairie region in the U.S. state of Nebraska. Unusually in these sand dunes is that they are almost completely stabilized by low vegetation. The Sand Hills are the largest contiguous area of such sand dunes in the Western Hemisphere and make almost a quarter of the area of Nebraska. Since 1984 they belong to the National Natural Landmarks of the United States.

The Sandhills were given special attention, because the original route of the Keystone XL pipeline from the year 2005 by the Canadian oil sands areas to the U.S. oil hub Cushing, Oklahoma was planned by the Sandhills. A new application with a modified route from the year 2013 avoids the Sandhills.

Features

The area of ​​the Sandhills is distinguished from individual institutions differ from the adjacent prairie regions. Depending on the definition used include the Sandhills 59 760 or 61 100 square kilometers. The dunes reach a height of up to 100 meters and the altitude ranges from 550 meters above sea level in the east to 1100 meters over sea level. in the West. The predominantly north- westerly winds have contributed to the dunes and valleys are generally oriented southwest to northeast. The individual dune crests reach a length of up to 32 kilometers.

The Sandhills are above the huge Ogallala Aquifer and have no barrier layers between the surface and the groundwater. Therefore, lie between the individual dunes marches, lakes and swamps, although the rainfall in this region are not very high. Due to this feature, the Sandhills are a stopover on their train in the wintering areas for many bird species. Parts of the area belong to the catchment area of ​​the Loup River and the Niobrara River. One of the characteristic breeding birds of this region is accordingly a need of wetlands type, namely the rust curlew.

Same time, these permeability of the soil makes the Ogallala aquifer with its invaluable role in agriculture throughout the Great Plains in the Sandhills particularly vulnerable. The route of the Keystone XL pipeline originally foresaw a crossing of the Sandhills and therefore also drew massive protests from environmentalists up.

The World Wide Fund for Nature assigns the Sandhills as a an ecoregion that is distinctly different from other regions of the Great Plains. 85 % of the region are considered to be more original habitat. This is mainly due to the fact that most of the Sandhills has never been used for agriculture. At the Sandhills borders the Niobrara Valley Preserve, another nature reserve at.