Kansas Biological SurveyUnderstanding our environment

Annual Report 2020

Native flowering plants peak in June at one of the long-term prairie restoration experimental sites at the KU Field Station, which is managed by the Kansas Biological Survey.

MISSION: To serve Kansas and the global environment through world-class ecological research, education and outreach.

VISION: To lead scientific discovery that fosters appreciationof the vital interactions between humans and the environment.

KU Marketing Communications photographers captured this still image from June 2020 drone videography of the same long-term prairie restoration experimental site shown on the previous page. The site is overseen by Bryan Foster, Survey senior scientist, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and KU Field Station director.

From the director | 2020

The pandemic presented many challenges to us all this past year, personally and professionally. In March, our campus work spaces closed. Bio Survey laboratory research came to a quick halt, many projects were postponed, some grants were never awarded, graduate students became isolated, and parents had to perform multiple jobs at home. The Bio Survey community was shattered by precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but we rose. We rose in pursuit of understanding our environment.

Despite the difficult circumstances of 2020, the Bio Survey managed a productive year. How did we do it? Survey scientists devised careful plans to operate labs with decreased human capacity. Researchers traveled to field sites in separate vehicles; they worked and trained new students at safe distances, wearing masks — even in the peak Kansas heat. Some researchers took the opportunity of isolation to write. Others pivoted from collecting data to analyzing historical datasets, participating in synthesis activities, and writing articles on undergraduate research and diversity, equity and inclusion. Remote conferences enabled participation when travel would have been cost-prohibitive. Distance and monetary barriers to meeting colleagues and forming new collaborations disintegrated as virtual communication became commonplace and convincingly effective. Many stories about Bio Survey researchers’ perseverance during the pandemic remain to be told. I look forward to hearing them — in person, as the world opens and we gather again in the hallways of Higuchi Hall and Smissman Research Laboratories.

The Bio Survey’s future is bright, and our community will be restored. With more than $16 million in active research awards — $3.5 million received during this pandemicyear — we can assure the broader community that our scientists and students will be working at full speed to achieve our mission to serve Kansas and the global environment through world-class ecological research, education and outreach. We look forward being open, seeing you and serving you.

Sara Baer, DirectorKansas Biological Survey

Research support | 2020

Other sources12%

Funding sources

This year, Kansas Biological Survey researchers brought 20 new awards to the Bio Survey totaling nearly $3 million. Another 52 continuing awards totaled more than $13 million, bringing total funding administered by the Bio Survey in 2020 to more than $16 million.

Survey researchers serving as principal investigators (PIs) or co-investigators (co-PIs) also brought more than $3 million in grant funding to other units at KU. These awards, along with continuing Survey scientist-affiliated projects from previous years, totaled more than $6 million. As a whole, Survey researchers were PIs or co-PIs on more than $22 million in grant funding at KU in 2020. Of special note, Survey scientists continued to manage and lead numerous projects associated with the multi-year NSF EPSCoR Track-1 $20 million award to KU’s Office of Research.

The National Science Foundation is consistently our largest grantor, providing 78 percent of the $16 million total award funding to the Bio Survey this year. Funding from the State is used to inform many issues about water quality and quantity in reservoirs, the role of land use in recharging the High Plains aquifer, and mapping and quantifying habitats across Kansas. Other notable funding sources include for-profit industries and not-for-profit foundations.

Total active awards: 72 | Total PI funding: $16 millionAdditional funding to KU: $6 million

For the Harris Lab in May 2020, work at the Field Station’s Cross Reservoir meant using separate boats, wearing masks and using a phone’s zoom-in function for photos. Ted Harris, assistant scientist/assistant research professor, used a bbe FluoroProbe to identify different types of algae based on the fluorescence of their pigments.

Research highlights | 2020

While the Kansas Biological Survey may be most often associated with research related to grasslands, the range of topics in fact extends far beyond this ecosystem, involves collaborators from many other institutions, and is in some cases focused on vast datasets. Survey research falls under three broad, often intersecting categories: terrestrial, aquatic and GIS/analytical studies.

• Terrestrial studies range from the tallgrass prairie to the southern pine savannahs to northern boreal forests and Asian river systems. Several researchers study soil microbiomes, including microscopic fungi, and their effect on plant communities. Native plants, restoration, the effect of fire, wildlife studies, pollinators and post-agricultural ecosystems are among the range of subjects.

• Aquatic studies cover such subjects as stream and reservoir water quality, aquatic food webs, and the effect of development on river systems.

• GIS/analytical studies and products range from the analysis of large datasets to the complex interactive maps produced by scientists in the Survey’s Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) program.

The following pages highlight a few of the projects active in 2020.

Jude Kastens, associate scientist/associate research professor, developed maps showing the massive areas of Oregon and northern California burned during 2020 wildfires, as detectable in the latest satellite NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetative Index) “greenness” imagery.

Research highlights | 2020

Maggie Wagner, assistant scientist/assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, along with colleagues at the University of Nottingham in the UK, was awarded a three-year, $720,000 NSF grant to investigate interactions between crop plants and the microbes on which they depend. In work that could inform agricultural practices around the world, the team will focus on how the relationship between plants and microbes responds to drought conditions. KU News published a story about the research.

Sharon Billings, senior scientist/Dean’s Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, along with collaborators from four other universities, was awarded a five-year NSF grant of $4.2 million for the project titled “Collaborative research: Network Cluster: Geomicrobiology and biogeochemistry in the Critical Zone.”

An analytical study led by Dan Reuman, senior scientist/professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, together with Andrew Rypel of U.C. Davis, examined the synchrony of movement among native fish in California’s Central Valley. With $750,000 in funding from the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, the study is aimed at informing adaptive water management in that region. Reuman’slab also continued work on a $450,000 project funded by a James S. McConnell Foundation grant, “Spatio-temporal climate impacts on complex ecosystems.”

A multi-institutional project led by Jim Thorp, senior scientist/professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is the broadest-ever study of large river macrosystems. The goal of the $4.2 million, NSF-funded project is to predict the effect of future climate change on U.S. rivers — and future development on more pristine Mongolian rivers, including the Delgermörön (“wide river”), left. The study includes nine universities in the U.S. and Mongolia; it was granted an extension year in 2020.

Research highlights | 2020

Ted Harris, Survey assistant scientist/assistant research professor, and Debbie Baker, associate researcher, worked with a five partner groups on a pilot project funded by the City of Lawrence: “Monitoring Clinton Lake, Kansas, with high-frequency water quality data loggers.” The project had two goals: create an authentic learning experience for high school students; and help the city answer real-world questions related to water quality degradation in Clinton Lake. NSF EPSCoR MAPS Outreach funding helped purchase temperature loggers.

Sharon Billings and Sara Baer, Bio Survey director, contributed to the creation of a new database, “SoDaH: the Soils Data Harmonization database, an open-source synthesis of soil data from research networks, version 1.0.” Thirty researchers from more than 20 institutions built the database, which has been published on the EDI Data Portal.

Liz Koziol, postdoctoral researcher in the Bever/Schultz Lab, was awarded a two-year, $250,000 NSF Partnerships for Innovation grant, a program that supports entrepreneurs. Her previous work has shown that reintroduction of native prairie arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) improves the establishment and growth of high-value prairie plant species. She has initiated a business that produces and makes native AMF available to prairie restoration practitioners, and agricultural producers also are interested in her product.

The award will support her in conducting research that extends her tests of native prairie AMF in restoration and also tests potential benefits in organic agriculture. She will collaborate with Juniper Hill Farms in Douglas County in these tests.

Tom McKenna, Bio Survey assistant research professor, checks seed heads of the perennial grain Kernza, a trademarked intermediate wheatgrass, in experimental plots at the Perennial Agriculture Project Field Station just northwest of Lawrence. Several Bio Survey scientists conduct various studies at the field station focused on ecological intensification and perennial agriculture systems. McKenna’s work receives support from a $101,000 grant from the Perennial Agriculture Project, a joint venture between the Malone Family Land Preservation Foundation and The Land Institute.

Service to Kansas | 2020

The Biological Survey, which holds dual status as a KU research unit and a nonregulatory state agency, has longstanding partnerships with other state agencies, working closely with the Kansas Water Office, the Kansas Geological Survey and other entities to address issues of concern to the State and to Kansas communities. A sample of current projects follows.

The Bio Survey is providing mapping and analysis support to the Kansas Dept. of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP), as well as 10 other midwestern states, in a multi-year effort to identify priority areas for conserving and restoring tallgrass and mixed-grass prairies. The project uses the greater prairie-chicken and the plains sharp-tailed grouse as indicator species for intact prairie ecosystems.

With a grant of $200,000 from KDWP, plus a one-year extension with additional funding, Mike Houts, associate researcher,leads a group of Bio Survey scientists in analyzing datasets related to species locations, landcover, landscape impacts,

energy development and existing conservation areas to identify areas to target conservation and restoration activities and to help the State use its limited resources to preserve these critical habitats that support many grassland and migratory bird species, as well as the iconic monarch butterfly.

The tallgrass and mixed-grass ecosystems of the central U.S. are often referred to as the most endangered ecosystems on the planet, with the fraction of grassland habitat not already converted to cropland being impacted by grazing and energy development.

The Harris Research Group focuses on harmful algal blooms (HABs), which affected 38 reservoirs in the state in 2019, on and ongoing basis. Survey researchers led by assistant scientist/assistant research professor Ted Harris collected samples from Marion Lake, which has annual HABs, to better understand the formation of HABs.

Service to Kansas | 2020

The Kansas Natural Heritage Inventory maintains the state’s most comprehensive databases documenting the status and locations of rare and declining species and their habitats. As part of the NatureServe network of natural heritage programs and conservation data centers, the program provides data for conservation planning, natural resource management, environmental review, and biological research in Kansas and throughout the Western Hemisphere. Jennifer Delisle, associate researcher, is information manager.

Dana Peterson, assistant research professor, leads the KansasView program, part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s ongoing AmericaView program, a national consortium of scientists who use Landsat and other satellite data to promote remote sensing education and outreach. Each state’s goals and activities are different, with KansasView currently focused on developing web mapping applications to showcase geospatial databases for Kansas.

During record flooding of May 2019, the state’s wettest month on record, Jude Kastens, associate scientist/associate research professor, worked with the Kansas Water Office (KWO) and the Kansas Division of Emergency Management (KDEM) to provide current and predicted flood extent and depth maps for hundreds of river miles as events unfolded. Recognizing the value these data provided for improving situational awareness in support of emergency response efforts, KWO and KDEM jointly provided $75,000 of funding to Kastens in 2020 to develop a web mapping application that would automatically implement this technology.

The flood mapping tool, which has since garnered follow-on funding from KWO, integrates Kastens’ uniquely developed, LiDAR-based inundation libraries with stream gauge data and National Weather Service river stage forecasts, among other datasets, to estimate flooded area.

Several Bio Survey researchers, along with the Kansas Geological Survey and other partners, are involved in a two-year study of the interaction between playas — depressions that create temporary wetlands — and agriculture. The goal of the study, funded by a $270,000 award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Kansas Water Office, is to improve understanding of how farming playas affects the rate of aquifer recharge and associated issues.

Publications | 2020

In 2020, Survey researchers published 71 articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as five new reports for the Kansas Biological Survey’s own publication series (now totaling more than 200) summarizing specific field research projects on environmental issues of concern in Kansas, such as water quantity and quality. Three book projects also were under way: • Sahnish (Arikara) Ethnobotany, is the fourth book by Kelly Kindscher, senior scientist/professor in KU’s Environmental Studies Program; it has three expert co-authors. The publisher, the Society for Ethnobiology, provided a grant for copies of the book for Arikara youth. • A new edition of the Flora of North America North of Mexico, a 30-volume reference work, is being published in individual volumes by Oxford University Press; Craig Freeman, senior scientist/senior curator at KU’s McGregor Herbarium, is a member of the editorial committee and taxon editor. • Volume V, Keys to Neotropical and Antarctic Fauna, of Thorp & Covich’sFreshwater Invertebrates, was published by Elsevier. Jim Thorp, senior scientist/professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Christopher Rogers, associate research professor, are editors.

Published in Ecology, “A nucleation framework for transition between alternate states: Short-circuiting barriers to ecosystem recovery,” develops a conceptual framework for describing and analyzing spatial spread in plant community restoration. Lead author Theo Michaels, KU doctoral student, applied this framework at her research sites at the KU Field Station’s Anderson County Prairie Preserve (a Nature Conservancy site). Her study involves interplanting different configurations of tree spade-sized samples (“monoliths”) of intact prairie — doomed by forthcoming highway expansion — into oldfieldsites. Senior scientist/Foundation Distinguished Professor Jim Bever is co-author.

Teaching, mentoring & student support | 2020

As a research center, the Bio Survey conducts daily research activity in both the lab and the field, and students are involved in virtually every grant funded. Survey scientists and staff engage students through:• classes taught on campus by Survey scientists holding faculty positions;• field courses and field work led by scientists or graduate students at the Field Station or other sites;• opportunities to assist with faculty research in Survey labs or at the KU Field Station through fellowships or grant funding;• mentorship of students doing their own research;• assistance to students in obtaining grants for research;• assistance to students in developing posters and presentations for conferences;• paid employment in Survey offices and at the KU Field Station.

The Bio Survey also supports students through its annual KU Field Station Student Research Awards; the six 2020 recipients and their advisors were: Haley Burrill, doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) (Jim Bever); Zoe Chan, sophomore in biochemistry (Ben Sikes); Kayla Clouse, graduate student in EEB (Maggie Wagner); Camille Delavaux, doctoral student in EEB (Jim Bever); Soudeh Ghasemian, doctoral student in EEB (Sharon Billings); Kaci Zarek, sophomore in environmental studies (Amy Burgin). Awardees present their work at a Bio Survey Friday Ecology Seminar.

Kaci Zarek, sophomore in environmental studies, received a 2020 KU Field Station Student Research Award for her project, “Bioavailability and complexity of dissolved organic carbon in Kansas streams.” She presented her research at a spring 2021 Friday Ecology Seminar via Zoom. Zarek’smentor is Amy Burgin, associate scientist/associate professor of EEB.

Teaching, mentoring & student support cont. | 2020

Survey scientists holding joint faculty positions take turns team-teaching KU’s Principles of Ecology course, which enrolled nearly 100 students in fall 2020, as well as its Field & Lab Methods component. They also teach courses in their specialty areas under titles such as “Forest ecology” or “Microbes making food.” And they create new courses, such as the Biology 701 course, “Microbiomes: Data to Insight.” Maggie Wagner, assistant scientist/assistant professor of EEB, conceived and developed the course, based on direct input from graduate students, to fill gaps in knowledge and skills of research studies involving microbiomes.

These joint faculty members chaired 27 master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation committees in 2020; they and other Bio Survey scientists also served as committee members for other students. In addition, this year 13 postdoctoral fellows worked in Survey labs, and 38 undergrads or post-baccalaureate students received mentoring or worked in the labs.

Three of 10 students receiving KU 2020 Undergraduate Research Awards were mentored by Dan Reuman, senior scientist/professor of EEB and Ben Sikes, associate scientist/associate professor of EEB. Jim Bever, senior scientist/Foundation Distinguished Professor, was named John C. Wright/Byron Alexander Outstanding Graduate Mentor by CLAS.

Emma Hauser, doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology, studies carbon cycling by plants growing in soils with varying nutrient profiles at the KU Field Station greenhouse complex. Her research is funded by a KU Graduate Research Fellowship and an NSF grant. Her advisor is Sharon Billings, senior scientist/Dean’s Professor of EEB.

Solitary field work in 2020 sometimes brought unusual rewards. Vaughn Salisbury, Field Station program manager, snapped this photo in late May. He emailed: “I was patrolling for musk thistle and saw something out of the corner of my eye. When I backed up, there was Bambi. Never moved but breathing very heavily at my presence. I slowly got my phone out and then eased away.”

Outreach | 2020

In a typical year, the Bio Survey engages in several broad categories of educational outreach activity, working in Lawrence and Douglas County and throughout the state. In 2020, one core activity — conducting surveys of land and water bodies for specific species of plants and animals for individuals, private companies, municipalities and agencies — continued.

But this year, with all group tours and other in-person public events canceled, and several KU staff retreats scheduled at the Field Station’s Armitage center postponed, Survey scientists and staff shifted to two main areas of focus. First, we kept open the Field Station’s public trail system, turning off drinking fountains and closing restrooms but making it widely known that the public could come here for safe outdoor activity during the pandemic. Field Station staff reported visibly increased use of the trails. The Native Medicinal Plant Garden also was kept open.

Second, we took several activities online, including the Survey’s Friday Ecology Seminars, which were opened to the public through Zoom. Visitors signed up via a webform to receive notifications about the seminars. We took the opportunity broaden our outreach going forward by creating a YouTube channel, where the seminar recordings, science lessons for K-3, and many other videos are available.

KU doctoral student Claudia Nuñez-Penichet introduces an episode of the “Ecosystems of Kansas/Ecosistemas de Kansas” dual-language series of K-3 ecology lessons created by Peggy Schultz, of the Bio Survey and the Environmental Studies Program, and her team. The lessons are an outreach component of the NSF-funded $20 million MAPS (Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soil Systems) project involving five Kansas universities.

Diversity, equity & inclusion | 2020

Much of the Bio Survey’s DEI work has quietly taken place for years in individual labs committed to creating safe spaces to share ideas. Several Bio Survey faculty scientists are members of the DEI Committee in KU’s Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and several have longstanding relationships with Haskell Indian Nations University, providing internships and other opportunities. Some other specific efforts by Bio Survey scientists included:• Participation in Critical Zone Coordination Networking activities focused on making environmental sciences accessible to people historically disenfranchised by the scientific establishment (Sharon Billings).• Multiple scheduled discussions of DEI within laboratories during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 (Jim Thorp). • Mentorship of postdocs and students on application for funding, and a commitment in the (Ted) Harris Lab to raise student pay to $15/hour by 2022.• Accommodation for two employees with medical conditions that prevented them from doing work on-site during the pandemic.• Recruitment of a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar (Ben Sikes and Amy Burgin). This program supports undergrads from underrepresented groups.• Securing NSF funding to translate the KU Museum of Natural History’s “Microbes on the Move” mobile exhibit into Spanish and take it to rural Latinx communities in southwestern Kansas (Maggie Wagner).• Application for funding for a “DEI in the Field” workshop (Maggie Wagner).

Bonnie McGill, postdoc in the Burgin and LoeckeLabs, led lab members, including students, in writing a guide — published in Ecology and Evolution — on creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture in the ecological research community by addressing key concerns for the undergraduate research experience: “You are welcome here: A practical guide to diversity, equity, and inclusion for undergraduates embarking on an ecological research experience” (Fig. 2, left).

Outdoor work, spring 2020: Bill Busby (left), Craig Freeman (right) and Caleb Morse spent two days cutting and stacking red-cedars in the glade above the cliff at the Field Station’s Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve. One of the management goals there is to open the canopy to allow persistent prairie vegetation in the understory to increase and spread, and to accumulate sufficient fuel so that fire eventually can be used to help manage the glade. Busby is director emeritus of the preserve; Freeman is senior scientist and senior curator at KU’s R.L. McGregor Herbarium; Morse, who took the photo, is collection manager at the herbarium.

KU Field Station | 2020

The number of active research projects at the Field Station varies annually and includes many long-term studies, some requiring extensive infrastructure; this year 38 projects were active. In addition, a team of research technicians from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), of which the Field Station is part, continued regular visits to monitor species and atmospheric conditions.

Maintaining research continuity was the core goal this year. The only research disruptions resulted from out-of-state travel restrictions by the home institutions of external researchers, whose work typically represents a significant number of projects. Outdoor field work and strict COVID-19 mitigation measures led to zero known transmission cases at the Field Station. Restrictions on indoor campus work offered a chance for KU Marketing Communications photographers to do extensive shooting at the Field Station and led to the development of a new video now posted on KU’s YouTube channel.

Bio Survey researchers were awarded a $571,375 NSF grant for a new research support facility at the Field Station. It will include a new building, renovation of the existing aquatic lab, and other features to integrate these structures with the rest of the facilities complex around the Armitage Education Center.

Patti Beedles, assistant researcher, works with KU students to record data at a long-term prairie restoration experimental site of Bryan Foster’s, senior scientist/professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. The Bio Survey manages the KU Field Station, and a permanent staff of four oversees maintenance of 3,700 acres across three sites, provides orientation and assistance to all researchers, maintains records and works with visitors, including public school teachers and students.

People | 2020

Faculty and staff principal investigatorsSara Baer, Sr. Scientist, Prof.Debbie Baker, Assoc. ResearcherJim Bever, Sr. Scientist, Foundation

Distinguished Prof.Sharon Billings, Sr. Scientist, Dean’s Prof.Amy Burgin, Assoc. Scientist, Assoc. Prof.Jennifer Delisle, Assoc. ResearcherBryan Foster, Sr. Scientist, Prof.Craig Freeman, Sr. Scientist, R.L.

McGregor Herbarium Sr. CuratorTed Harris, Asst. Scientist, Asst. Research Prof.Mike Houts, Assoc. ResearcherDon Huggins, Sr. ScientistJude Kastens, Assoc. Scientist,

Assoc. Research Prof.Kelly Kindscher, Sr. Scientist, Prof.Terry Loecke, Assoc. Scientist, Assoc. Prof.Tom McKenna, Asst. Research Prof.Jennifer Moody, Assoc. ResearcherDana Peterson, Asst. Research Prof.Dan Reuman, Sr. Scientist, Prof.D. Christopher Rogers, Assoc. Research Prof.Peggy Schultz, Assoc. SpecialistBen Sikes, Assoc. Scientist, Assoc. Prof.Orley “Chip” Taylor, Professor EmeritusJim Thorp, Sr. Scientist, Prof.Maggie Wagner, Asst. Scientist, Asst. Prof.David Weekley, Assoc. Researcher

Postdoctoral researchers (lab)Shyamolina Ghosh (Reuman)Nichole Ginnan (Wagner)Matthew Kolp (Wagner)Liz Koziol (Bever/Schultz)Terra Lubin (Bever/Schultz)Susan Magnoli (Bever/Schultz)Rondy Malik (Bever/Schultz)Bonnie McGill (Burgin)

Postdoctoral researchers cont.Caleb Robbins (Thorp)Tatiana Semenova-Nelsen (Sikes)Lawrence Sheppard (Reuman)Guangzhou Wang (Bever/Schultz)Xi Zhang (Billings)

Research staffLeeAnn Bennett, Sr. Research Asst.Chris Bishop, Asst. ResearcherDana Carpenter, Research TechnicianW. Dean Kettle, Field Station Research

Programs Director EmeritusJohn Lomas, Research AnalystKristen Mecke, Research TechnicianBri Richards, Sr. Research TechnicianAoesta Rudick, Research Project ManagerSamantha Thomas, Data Manager

KU Field Station staffPatti Beedles, Asst. ResearcherBruce A. Johanning, Operations ManagerSheena Parsons, Station ManagerVaughn Salisbury, Program Manager

Monarch Watch staffAngela Babbit, Communications Coord.Jim Lovett, Research Asst.Dena Podrebarac, Research Project SpecialistAnn Ryan, Research Asst.

Administrative staffSara Baer, DirectorKirsten Bosnak, CommunicationsScott Campbell, FacilitiesBrandy Hildreth Baranski, Business Mgr.Paula Szuwalski, Asst. Director for Admin.Jerry Whistler, Assoc. Researcher & IT

Above: In October 2020, earth movers prepared for the widening of Highway 169, which bisects an area of intact native prairie at the Field Station’s Anderson County Prairie Preserve, a Nature Conservancy site. The project brings about the loss of some prairie lands. Bio Survey scientists, hoping to learn lessons from the doomed prairie, are using some of thesoil in new experiments exploring the prairie microbiome and the prairie’s potential for rebuilding itself post-disturbance. Such studies would not be undertaken except in such a case of inevitable loss.

Cover: KU senior Hayden Hawkes works at the Field Station’s Dimensions in Biodiversity site. The NSF-funded study carried out by the Bever/Schultz Lab uses rainfall manipulations in experimental plantings to test the effect of soil microorganisms, particularly plant pathogens, on grassland biodiversity and resilience. This study incorporates the Anderson County Prairie soils from doomed areas.

This report was compiled, edited and designed by Kirsten Bosnak. Cover and photos pages 2, 3,15,16, 21 by KU Marketing Communications. Other photos by Survey and lab staff.

2020 by the numbersActive grant funding: $16 million

Additional grant funding to KU with Survey scientists as principal or co-investigators: $6 million

Active grants and contracts: 72

Number of active research projects at the KU Field Station: 38

Articles in peer-reviewed publications: 71

Faculty and staff scientists: 25

Administrative, research and KU Field Station staff: 23

Postdoctoral fellows: 13

KU thesis/dissertation committees chaired by Survey scientists: 27

KU undergrads and post-baccalaureate students mentored or working in Bio Survey research labs: 38

Geospatial data portal products and mapping tools maintained by the Survey’s Kansas Applied Remote Sensing program: 16

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