In regards to the
trees vs prairie debate, the question I have is what are your trees for?
Are they trees that you want to eat from? I don't imagine you need 10 acres of tree crops for your family. So you could keep the food trees in one area, like around the house for shade and a windbreak, and the rest could be grassland. Grazing smaller alien animals could emulate grazing bison in terms of the health of the ecosystem until there's
enough contiguous prairie to bring back bison. Or you could plant
perennial grain grasses rather than native grasses, and emulate the native ecosystem with different but similar species, and harvest grain and
straw for your own use instead of grazing.
Are they for habitat? I suspect the native fauna of your area are suited to grassland.
Are they for
firewood? How much firewood do you need? Would the prunings from your fruit & nut trees and maybe a couple of fast-growing coppices suffice?
Are they for
carbon sequestration and climate change amelioration? If that's the goal, grassland might be better.
Perennial grasses put their carbon
underground, where it's less succeptible to fire than trees are. Grasses also build up turf, providing deeper soil sooner than trees do. And soil acts as a carbon sink also, in the form largely of fungi and other life forms, so it's not just the grass
roots that hold carbon underground.
https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/grasslands-more-reliable-carbon-sink-than-trees
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08636-w
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