Slowly, the West Campus Pocket Prairie is becoming itself. Seeded in late winter 2024, it's showing a little color. Here, pitcher or blue sage, bee balm and silflower. The prairie is still extremely weedy and will be for several years—restoration takes time and patience.

Grad students (l-r) Marcos Gimenez Diaz, Lydia Regier and Lydia Westberg of the Baer Lab were out this week surveying plant communities at a long-term research site at @KonzaLTER. Photos by Ashley Bowman, who just defended her doctoral dissertation and graduated.

Warmer weather ~ algal blooms. Our Lake Assessment Lab folks were out last week at Marion Reservoir. Their buoy helps provide an early warning system to @KDHE and drinking water treatment plants to help them know when blooms and metal issues will affect the lake.

A lot of rain lately, and the folks from the Kansas Division of Emergency Management tell us our Kansas Flood Mapping Dashboard has been a big help. Check out this interactive app developed by the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) Program:

It's been used to monitor crops, assess damage from drought, detect changes in land use, and track vegetation recovery following a disaster. More—from KU News—on the powerful new Sentinel GreenReport Plus app.

"A powerful tool that democratizes satellite data for a wide audience, from farmers to researchers": KU researchers under the KansasView program launch new web-based geospatial app.

A handful of our researchers met at noon today to add extra plants from the West Campus greenhouse to the West Campus Pocket Prairie, which is just a year old and typically weedy—but just wait a couple of years. Thanks, Peggy, Tom, Reb, Holly and Aoesta!

What are we learning about the KU Field Station's tree species mix from aerial imagery collected there by @NEON_sci? Implications for larger scale analyses? Join researcher David Weiss this Friday, 5/2, for our final spring 2025 ecology seminar. Info:

When populations of animals or plants fluctuate together across vast distances ("spatial synchrony"), they're responding to ecological factors. This can affect farming and more right here in Kansas.

Congratulations to the recipients of our 2025 Student Research Awards: Yufan Zhou, Alexandra Coveney, Mira Rausch and Mackenzie Grover. We're excited to to help support your research that can benefit the lands, waters and animal life in Kansas and beyond.

As wetlands disappear in Kansas, wet areas along reservoir shorelines may replace part of what's lost. Join us Friday, 4/18, for our weekly ecology seminar. Researcher Debbie Baker will discuss wetland surveys at Kansas reservoirs. Info:

Gardeners and farmers buying mycorrhizae (a billion-dollar market) might not be getting what they think. The experts on these fungi? Here at our research center, where the world's largest collection is stored, studied and shared.

Bonus ecology seminar this Wed., 3/26, 3 pm: Onofrio Mazzarisi, former postdoc here, is visiting from Trieste, Italy. He'll talk about how details of population self-regulation matter for the stability of large ecological communities. Info+Zoom+parking:

Join us tomorrow for this week's (3/7) 12:15 Friday Ecology Seminar with Joel Swift, NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at KU: "Roots to shoots: Exploring eastern gamagrass diversity across the Central U.S." Info+Zoom+parking:

Join us for this week's (2/28) 12:15 Friday Ecology Seminar with Haley Burrill, KU alum and postdoc at the University of Oregon: "Relative influences of fire, climate, and vegetation types on fungal distribution." Info+Zoom+parking:

Join us for this week's (2/21) 12:15 Friday Ecology Seminar with Kelly Kindscher, a senior scientist here and prof in @kuesp: "Wild edible plants of the prairie—and names of culturally significant plants." Info+Zoom+parking:

Join us for this week's (2/14) 12:15 Friday Ecology Seminar with Nico Franz, @kunhm director, for an interactive talk on Symbiota, an open-source software for managing and mobilizing biodiversity data. Info+Zoom+parking:

What does this cross-section of an eastern gamagrass root tell us about soil health and long-term plant stressors? Join us for tomorrow's (2/7) 12:15 Friday Ecology Seminar w/ Maggie Wagner, assoc scientist here & @KU_EEB assoc prof. Info+Zoom+parking:

Could the future of farming look like this? We're working with partners at @NatureAsMeasure to go beyond planting perennial grains—by intercropping perennial grain stands with a perennial legume and exploring perennial crop interactions with soil microbial communities.

Our spring 2025 Friday Ecology Seminars begin this week (Jan. 31) with a talk about prairie turnips—arguably the most important historical food plant of the Great Plains—by researcher Lisa Castle. Come in person or join us on Zoom.