The University of Kansas is awarded a grant to improve facilities at the University of Kansas Field Station (KUFS). The station provides opportunities for research and public education along the ecotone between the eastern deciduous forest and the tallgrass prairie biomes. Construction of the facilities under this award is part of a larger vision of the KUFS to be fulfilled incrementally, in which the station will attract a greater diversity of students and faculty members from around the globe to world-class facilities inspired by environmentally sound principles. The funds will be used to construct an experimental greenhouse-mesocosm-common garden facility that will support classical mesocosm research, using experimental test systems representing an intermediate step between small laboratory systems and the natural world, serve general ecology workspace needs, and provide the capacity for year-round plant care and propagation that does not currently exist at KUFS. In addition, storm shelters will be constructed for the growing community of site users, an important safety feature given the weather conditions found at KUFS. Enhancement of the facilities at KUFS will help satisfy four critical long-term objectives. First, it will improve the setting where individual-investigator research can explore ecological questions at multiple spatial scales and multiple levels of experimental control. Second, it will further facilitate multi-investigator, interdisciplinary research projects. Third, it will lay the groundwork for future expansions to incorporate significant energy efficiency and sustainability concepts. Fourth, it will augment KUFS? contributions to large-scale networks such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (http://neoninc.org) and the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/index.jsp).
KUFS activities encompass a broad array of teaching, public outreach, and research programs, targeting populations ranging from university students to school children, as well as the general public. Research at KUFS has provided a broad base of knowledge about ecotonal ecosystems in the region, and has fostered the development of scores of students and researchers. The proposed facilities will aid in the development of the KUFS mission by 1) improving research infrastructure in a way that promotes linkages between ecological levels of organization (i.e. communities, populations, and ecosystems) and bridges spatial scales (i.e. laboratory, mesocosm, and field studies); and 2) providing an enhanced platform on which to base undergraduate and graduate education. Importantly, improved facilities will help KUFS serve as a link between regional and national-scale science and education. For more information about the station, please visit the website at www.kufs.ku.edu/.
(KUFS), a research and teaching facility of the University of Kansas. The greenhouse will house mesocosm studies: those studies too large to fit into traditional, indoor laboratories but requiring more experimental control than can be afforded outdoors. As such, the facility will support experiments that help investigators understand the mechanisms influencing ecological patterns observed in the field in more realistic settings than can be employed in traditional laboratories. For example, if a plant community ecologist observes a certain mix of plants differing in one location compared to another and suspects soil chemistry might be driving those differences, researchers can set up experiments containing mesocosm-scale plant communities and manipulate soil chemical features to investigate their ideas. Such experimentation cannot feasibly be done in laboratories on campus. Further, the greenhouse facility supports research in all seasons. Storm shelters provide a degree of safety not previously provided at the KUFS, for researchers and students alike. The facilities at the KUFS support research and teaching efforts, serving hundreds of University students and professors, as well as K-12 class groups annually. In addition, the public is periodically invited to the KUFS through continuing educational programming, and enjoys the recreational hiking trails outfitted with ecologically oriented signage year round. The infrastructure funded by this grant allows the KUFS to continue in this tradition, providing educational opportunities to the public in multiple capacities.
