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UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS FIELD STATION
Kansas Biological Survey &
Center for Ecological Research
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This is the monthly newsletter for the University of Kansas Field Station community.
Each month, we will share details about upcoming public programs, volunteer opportunities, and highlights from the month before.
Newsletter archives can be found at https://biosurvey.ku.edu/ku-field-station-newsletter.
Please email wendyholman@ku.edu if you have questions or would like more information.
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August 11: Night Sounds (summer edition)
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Come join us and listen to the night wake up around you! Bring a lawn chair or a thick blanket to sit on, a travel mug for tea or hot chocolate, and warm layers. Even though it's summer, you can get surprisingly chilly when sitting still for an extended period. Bug spray is recommended for chiggers.
When: Friday, August 11th - Ages 12 years old and up.
- Agenda:
- 7:45pm: Meet in the Armitage Education Center for a quick presentation on common night sounds.
- 8:10pm: Move to the prairie behind the building, near the ponds. We will have lots of space to spread out to ensure an experience focused on natural sounds. Sunset is at 8:21pm.
- 9:00pm: Quietly leave as you please any time after 9:00pm, but you are welcome to stay until 9:30pm.
- 9:30pm: Last call and program end.
Where: KU Field Station, Armitage Education Center, 350 Wild Horse Road, Lawrence, Kansas 66044
What to bring: Lawn chair or thick blanket, travel mug, warm layers, bug spray.
Please RSVP to Wendy (wendyholman@ku.edu) as space is limited.
*Please note that the program is weather-dependent and may be canceled or rescheduled in case of wind or rain. Wendy will send an email on Thursday, August 10th, to all registered participants to confirm or announce any changes to the program schedule.
**Have kids under 12 years old? Send Wendy an e-mail to talk about setting up another Night Sounds program where you can bring your younger children without worrying that they may disturb others with occasional kid noises. |
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August 20: Science Sundays
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Science Sundays talks cover a variety of science topics, including research happening at the Field Station. Talks are free and open to everyone, but may not interest younger audiences. These talks are intended for members of the general public who want to learn more about science. You do not have to be a scientist to attend! Please RSVP to Wendy Holman (wendyholman@ku.edu) as registration will be capped at 40 each month. It also helps us plan for seating and snacks!
August Topic: Afield: Art and Learning in Nature
The emphasis of field stations is often on scientific research, but the natural spaces also offer unique opportunities to study the arts. Through the lens of nature, people can explore new dimensions of creativity and expression, accessing a wealth of knowledge and inspiration that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Kirsten Taylor is a multimedia artist based in the tallgrass prairie ecoregion. Her work investigates relationships between humans and nature and questions the traditionally Western distinction between man and the natural world. During her Master of Fine Arts program at KU, Taylor immersed herself in the landscape of the KU Field Station. The result was an intimate portrayal of the Field Station through mixed media sculptures that explore our connection to place and nature. Join Kirsten as she talks about her studies at the KU Field Station and the intersection between art and science.
When: 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 20, 2023
Where: KU Field Station, Armitage Education Center, 350 Wild Horse Road, Lawrence, Kansas 66044
What to bring: A mug for tea/coffee to help us reduce waste.
Please RSVP to Wendy (wendyholman@ku.edu) as space is limited.
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August 30: Tree Trek with EJ Jamison
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Discover the world of trees on a guided tree identification walk at the Fitch Natural History Reservation, led by Northeast District Forester EJ Jamison from the Kansas Forest Service. During this approximately 2-mile walk on uneven trails, EJ will teach you the skills needed to identify trees, using features like their leaf patterns and bark textures. You will encounter a variety of native tree species and be introduced to their ecological significance and historical importance. Whether you are a curious novice or a seasoned nature enthusiast, this trek offers a chance to unplug, appreciate the beauty of the forest, and grow a deeper connection with the world around you.
When: 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Where: 2055 E 1600 Road, Lawrence, KS, 66044
*Parking is located at the Suzanne Ecke McColl Nature Reserve, across from the entrance to Fitch.
What to bring: sturdy, closed-toed shoes, long pants treated for ticks, water bottle.
Please RSVP to Wendy (wendyholman@ku.edu) as space is limited.
*Please note that the program is weather-dependent and may be canceled or rescheduled in case of wind or rain. Wendy will send an email on Tuesday, August 29th, to all registered participants to confirm or announce any changes to the program schedule.
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- September 17th - Science Sundays: Seeds of Change
- September 9th - Local Landscapes and Plants mini course; Dr. Helen Alexander; Day 1
- September 23rd - Local Landscapes and Plants mini course; Dr. Helen Alexander; Day 2
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The summer weather this month kept us on our toes. We had to cancel or reschedule several programs due to heat advisories and rain. Field crews tried their best to avoid the scorching daytime heat, but it was quite a challenge to escape it!
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For the second year in a row, we had the opportunity to collaborate with students from ECO Career Camp, a program by Green Works in Kansas City. Green Works aims to bridge the gap between urban youth and nature, and this camp specifically introduces middle school students to various STEM careers centered around water quality and conservation, climate change, and resiliency. Throughout the day, we engaged in activities together where the students gained insights into careers in aquatic ecology, environmental education, and herpetology while also getting their hands dirty!
Students rowed boats onto Cross Reservoir to learn about lake ecosystems while helping aquatic researchers from the Lake Assessment Lab collect data on water quality, algae, and zooplankton. Cross Reservoir is 12m deep and has distinct temperature layers, so students got to see, feel, and smell(!!) the differences in water collected at different depths. Using Secchi disks, seeing phantom midge larvae, and smelling water low in oxygen are always fun! The students came primed with great questions to ask adults they met, including "What is an example of day-to-day problem solving you use in your career?" As a boat full of laughing kids paddled in circles and in the opposite direction they needed to go, they got a great lesson in problem solving, teamwork, and the importance of not giving up when the going gets tough!
We took a break from the heat and visited the herpetology collection at the KU Natural History Museum, where students got to learn about the importance of museum collections and see some of our native reptile and amphibian species. Ana Motta, herpetology collections manager, gave students an unforgettable hands-on experience as she taught them about her career. Students got to handle preserved specimens recently collected from sites around Kansas, giving them a greater appreciation of the diversity of animals in our state. We ended the day with a quick visit to Baker University Wetlands and Discovery Center before retreating back into the air conditioning as a heat advisory came into effect!
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We held a second volunteer stewardship day at the Anderson County Prairie Preserve, 1,143 acres owned by The Nature Conservancy and managed by the KU Field Station.
Volunteers clipped and removed sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata), a noxious invasive plant, from research plots containing Mead's Milkweed, a federally threatened species. Volunteers made a huge dent on the sericea in these plots, opening the native plants to sun and water for the rest of the summer. We are so grateful for their help!
Jennifer Delisle leads this Mead's Milkweed monitoring project (est. 2013) with colleagues from the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research. Sericea is managed in these plots using only prescribed fire and mechanical removal. No chemical herbicide is used to eliminate the risk of herbicide exposure to the sensitive Mead's Milkweeds.
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We participated in National Moth Week, a global community science effort to study and record populations of moths, and are so happy that we did! We ran light traps (bright lights + white sheets) on two Saturday nights and invited all who were curious to join entomologists to observe and document the diversity of moths (and other night flying invertebrates!) that were attracted to the lights.
It was a lot of fun to watch the progression of species at the lights throughout the evenings. The first tiny creatures showed up around 9:00pm, and larger species started showing up just after 10:00pm. Our lights attracted lots of moths, including an Imperial Moth, White-lined Sphinx Moths, and Osage Sphinx Moths. We were also visited by cicadas, wolf spiders who came to feast on the insects, owlflies, mayflies, a large female dobsonfly and a mole cricket! On the second night, the Starlink satellite train raced across the sky above us as we watched transfixed.
Thank you so much to all of the entomologists, from near and far, who came and shared their knowledge with participants. We were lucky to be able to learn from entomologists from KU, Haskell Indian Nations University, the Kansas Forest Service, and the National University of San Marcos in Peru!
We are already looking forward to participating next year!
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The KU Field Station has one of North America's largest arrays of experimental ponds, including 100 ponds, a 3-acre reservoir, and 80 mesocosm tanks, making it a fantastic place to study aquatic ecology. Students enrolled in Aquatic Ecology with Dr. Bob Hagen spent part of July immersed, quite literally, in these ponds learning through hands-on practice.
A number of the experimental ponds serve as a temporary home for a population of Topeka Shiners, an endangered minnow protected under the Endangered Species Act. Equipped with seine nets and minnow traps, students sampled the ponds to assess the health and abundance of the fish living in them. We were all excited to find larger numbers of fish than observed in recent years, and were especially lucky to see males exhibiting their bright orange breeding colors.
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Not on social media? No problem.
Here are a few of our favorite photos from the past month.
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 We are back in Anderson County Prairie Preserve removing invasive sericea lespedeza from Mead’s Milkweed plots (check out those seed pods!!) with The Nature Conservancy in Kansas and a fantastic group of volunteers, including Reb Bryant.
Reb is a PhD candidate in the Bever/Schultz lab studying how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi impacts prairie restoration, ranging from individual plant species and their relationship with other plant species, all the way up to plant community composition and dynamics. One of their dissertation chapters is building off the research of Dr. Theo Michaels studying the prairie monoliths in Anderson County Prairie Preserve. The monoliths are 1.7m diameter cones removed from remnant prairies before they were destroyed by the expansion of highway 169 in 2017, and transplanted into a protected research area. Monoliths were transplanted into three different areas - a prairie restoration, a freshly disked field, and an older post-agriculture field. Reb is looking at how variables effect the expansion of prairie plant species and microbes from the monoliths into the surrounding areas. Researchers have already learned that the size of these monoliths is large enough for the species in the monolith to spread, instead of being degraded by less desirable plant species from the surrounding area.
Grassland ecosystems are imperiled across the entire world, but with less than 4% remaining, our tallgrass prairies are one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet. Research like this helps us to better understand how to reconstruct this important ecosystem in areas where it has been lost and return tallgrass prairies to the places where they once were.
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 The native plant demonstration gardens installed by Field Botany students last month have had a bit of time to grow-up and glow-up.
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Remember when Vic was getting the mesocosms ready for an experiment to test how aquatic macrophytes might help control harmful algal blooms? The algal blooms have spent the last six weeks growing, and the team has just introduced the three species of native water-loving plants!
Vic Secondine (Haskell Indian Nations University) and Adeline Kelly (KU) are two of the student researchers on this project, which is led by Drs. Ted Harris and Jennifer Moody from the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research. We're excited to see what effect the macrophytes have on mitigating the algal blooms in the coming weeks!
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 Happy "Milkweed for Monarchs" Monday!
Featuring: Sullivant's milkweed and a tiny little monarch caterpillar.
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💡 We had the most fun light trapping for National Moth Week last weekend! Come join us and a group of entomologists for another round this Saturday! 💡
The lights got busy around 10pm with all sorts of creatures showing up. Highlights included an imperial moth, a very personable mantis, and a wolf spider who hunted bugs on the sheet!
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Featuring: Compass plant
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Keep in touch with the KU Field Station!
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University of Kansas Field Station Mission:
To foster scholarly research, environmental education and science-based stewardship of natural resources.
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