Research for the long haul

Konza Prairie is part of a network of two dozen ecosystems that was established in 1980 by the U.S. National Science Foundation to promote long-term environmental research. (As we’ll see in another section of the AboutBiodiversity Web site, the collection of information over an extended time is at the heart of serious scientific research.)

The network, known as the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, allows researchers to conduct experiments over long periods of time. LTER projects are found everywhere from the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica (where Diana Wall studies nematodes) to the Georgia coastal ecosystems to the ecosystem of a bustling city, Baltimore, Maryland. Usually they are in areas that are protected from change by agriculture or development.

Konza Prairie, in eastern Kansas, is an ideal place for long-term ecological research on soil biodiversity. (Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory)

Konza is part of the tallgrass prairie whose ecology is shaped by cattle and buffalo grazing; a climate that can vary greatly from dry to wet, cold to hot; and fire. Because of its steep topography and rocky soils, Konza has never been plowed for crops. The result is an excellent place for scientific research. Researchers use fences and periodic fires to produce a patchwork of test sites with which to compare the differing effects of land management. NREL and its sister institution, Kansas State University, burn grasses in test plots at 2-, 4-, and 10-year intervals and use the fences to permit or prohibit cattle grazing in the individual plots, all the time measuring the responses of the ecosystem and its soils and keeping detailed records of what is found.

You can learn more about the Long Term Ecological Research Network on the Web at http://www.lternet.edu/. There’s more about Konza at http://www.lternet.edu/sites/knz/. Colorado State University has extensive information about its neighboring LTER, the Shortgrass Steppe LTER, at http://sgs.cnr.colostate.edu/.

The Shortgrass Steppe lies to the east of Fort Collins, where Colorado State and its Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory are situated. In the other direction, at a greatly higher elevation in the Colorado Rockies, is a neat LTER called Niwot Ridge. Go to http://tundracam.colorado.edu/ to see a live Webcam view from the meteorological station on the ridge. It’s 3,743 meters above sea level, and it looks very cold. The site lets you sweep the camera view across the mountaintops.