The northern area, like those area to the north were once mostly covered with tall grass prairie, now over 80 percent of the Central Low Plains (also known as the Western Corn Belt Plains) is now used for cropland agriculture and much of the remainder is in forage for livestock.

A combination of nearly level to gently rolling glaciated till plains and hilly loess plains, with an average annual precipitation of 26 to 37 inches, occurring mainly in the growing season, together with fertile, warm, moist soils make this on of the most productive areas of corn and soybeans in the world.

The much large southern area has a mix of land use and the area is topographically more irregular than the plains to the north, where most of the land is in crops. This southern area, however, is less irregular and less forest covered than the ecoregions in other states directly to the south and east. The potential natural vegetation of this southern area is a grassland and forest mosaic with wider forested strips along the streams compared to the mostly crop lands to the north.

The mix of land use activities in the ecoregion includes mining operations of high-sulfur bituminous coal. Interesting, the disturbance of these coal strata in southern Iowa and northern Missouri has degraded water quality and affected aquatic biota.