• Theme 1: Drought-driven grassland dynamics—disturbance, degradation, and recovery trajectories shaped by the 1930s drought and subsequent stabilization efforts, across the Midwest and Great Plains [1], [5], [6], [11].

• Theme 2: Regional grassland typologies and baseline vegetation mapping as scaffolds for land-use planning—systematic inventories and classification of major grassland types across North Dakota, Oklahoma, Indiana, and the broader Great Plains [2], [3], [8], [9].

• Theme 3: Human-driven management and utilization paradigms—range improvement, agrarian change, and land-use principles guiding vegetation trajectories and resource stewardship [3], [7], [20].

• Theme 4: Landscape-scale and historical geography approaches—integrating vegetation history, ecological geography, and spatial analysis to understand long-term grassland dynamics and their relation to land use [13], [15], [18], [19], [20].