Today, much of the Osage Plains Natural Division is used for agriculture. Much of the area is pastureland with row cropland dominating in only a few areas. The upper reaches of Truman Reservoir provide some wetland habitat for breeding birds at the Schell-Osage, Four Rivers and Montrose conservation areas. The highest quality prairie habitat remaining in the Osage Plains is on public prairies, including those on the Taberville and Paint Brush Prairie conservation areas and at Prairie State Park. The Big Rivers Natural Division, comprising about 5 percent of the state, includes the floodplains and terraces of the largest rivers, primarily the Missouri and Mississippi, but also the lower Grand and the lower Des Moines rivers.
Soils are mostly alluvial, deep and productive.
Pre-settlement natural features included mesic to wet prairie, bottomland and upland forests, marshes, sloughs, islands, sandbars, mud flats, oxbow ponds and rivers. In pre-settlement times, and until extensive channel modification began in the early 1900s, the Missouri River was a braided stream with many chutes, sloughs, islands and seasonal wetlands. Between 1879 and 1972, about 50 percent of the original surface area of the Missouri River was lost, backwater habitat was eliminated and the main channel was deepened and narrowed. Most of the original natural communities are no longer present. The Mississippi River, although less changed than the Missouri, has been modified and the addition of locks and dams has converted portions of the Mississippi into a series of large pools.