South Dakota South Dakota South Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who compose a large portion of the population and historically dominated the territory. South Dakota is the seventeenth largest by area, but the fifth smallest by population and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States. As the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with North Dakota. Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population
South Dakota State University Science. The GSCE focuses on basic and applied research in terrestrial remote sensing. SDSU was recognized in 2017 by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy as the 7th most productive university in the US (and 27th globally) for remote sensing research for the period 2011–2015. The university operates the South Dakota state agricultural research stations around the state, such as the Antelope Range and Livestock Research Station near Buffalo. The Great Plains Writers Conference is a venue for significant regional authors or writers interested in the Great Plains. It was instituted at SDSU in 1976 for writing scholarship. Alumni from the university's research community