2023 Midwest Book Awards in Nonfiction - Nature, winnerIn the last 200 years, Iowa s prairies and other wildlands have been transformed into vast agricultural fields. This massive conversion has provided us with food, fiber, and fuel in abundance. But it has also robbed Iowa s land of its native resilience and created the environmental problems that today challenge our everyday lives: polluted waters, increasing floods, loss and degradation of rich prairie topsoil, compromised natural systems, and now climate change.In a straightforward, friendly style, Iowa s premier scientists and experts consider what has happened to our land and outline viable solutions that benefit agriculture as well as the state s human and wild residents.