6.13.25

What grows when the forest goes?

Area of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, a few years after a fire.

The activities are as follows:

The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, or Andrews for short, is a long-term ecological research site in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The forest is a temperate old-growth rainforest. It is known for its lush and green understory of flowering plants, ferns, mosses and a towering canopy of Douglas fir, Western hemlock, Red cedar, and other trees. Scientists have spent decades studying how plants, animals, land use, and climate are all connected in this ecosystem.

Matt is a biology teacher who has spent two summers in the field working with scientists at the Andrews. These experiences have been valuable ways to bring real data and research back to his students! Matt works closely with Joe, a scientist who studies the impact of disturbances on plants, such as fires.

Historically, large, severe fires have been a part of the ecology of forests in Oregon. They typically occur every 200-500 years. Many of the plants at the Andrews Forest are those that can deal with fire. Fires clear out dead plants, return nutrients to the soil, and promote new growth of understory and canopy plants. With climate change impacting temperature and rainfall across the globe, forests in Oregon are increasingly experiencing longer periods of dry and hot weather. These changes are causing an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires.  

On Matt’s last day at the Andrews in 2023, a lightning strike started a wildfire in a far corner of the forest. With hundreds of firefighters on the ground and several helicopters in the air, the “Lookout Fire” burned for several months, consuming about 70% of the Andrews forest! 

Plots in 2023 being surveyed for native and invasive plants to calculate the proportion that are invasive after a burn.

When Matt returned in the summer of 2024, it looked nothing like the forest he had left. The fire completely changed the course of his research experience. When he saw the scorched forest, he began to wonder how it would recover. He also observed that the fire had not burned at the same intensity throughout the forest. Some areas of Andrews were burned more, and in some spots, the fire had been less intense.  

Matt thought that some plants may do better after a severe burn, while other species might do worse. Specifically, Matt wanted to see whether native and invasive plants would show differences after a fire. Plants that have historically grown in an area without human interference are called native plants. These plants have a long history of adapting to the specific conditions in an area. When a plant species is moved by humans to a new area and grows outside of its natural range, it is called an invasive plant. Invasives often grow large and fast, taking over habitats, and pushing out native species. Invasive plants tend to be the ones that can grow fast and handle disturbances, so the team expected that invasive species would recover more quickly than native plants after high severity fires.  

It was still too early to re-enter the areas burned by the Lookout Fire, so Matt and Joe chose another recent fire. They used data collected from a section of the forest that had burned in 2020. In 2021, a year after the fire, scientists put out 80 plots that were 1m2 in size to collect data on the understory plants. 

Each section was given a burn severity value based on the amount the canopy trees had burned directly over the plot. Scientists would look up at the tree canopy and see how much was missing, and the more that was gone, they knew the burn severity had been higher. Scientists then identified every species of plant in the plots and counted the number of individual plants of each species. This was repeated every year after 2021 to observe changes over time. Matt and Joe decided to analyze data from 2023, which Matt helped collect when he visited. To answer their question, they calculated the proportion of invasive plants in each plot. 

Featured scientists: Joe LaManna (he/him) from Marquette University and
Matt Retterath (he/him) from Fridley Public Schools.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 4.3

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

There are two blog posts written about the Andrews LTER research featured in this activity.

  • https://lternet.edu/stories/fire-brings-new-perspectives-on-disturbance-at-h-j-andrews-experimental-forest/
  • https://lternet.edu/stories/burned-forest-bleached-reef-lter-sites-adapt-to-learn-from-disturbance/

5.30.25

CO2 and trees, too much of a good thing?

The activities are as follows:

Kristina conducting the tree survey, measuring the size of a tree, which will later be used to calculate the mass of carbon in that tree.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has steadily increased since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. This extra CO2 traps heat like a blanket, causing the global climate to warm. The resulting climate change effect is known and widely accepted in science. While scientists are certain that climate change is happening, they still have many questions about its impacts.

For example, scientists today are exploring whether climate change will help or hurt trees and forests. Many scientists think that elevated CO2 in the atmosphere can actually help trees. We can see why in the formula for photosynthesis:

6𝐶𝑂2+6𝐻2𝑂+𝐸𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦→𝐶6𝐻12𝑂6 +6𝑂2

Carbon Dioxide + Water + Energy (sunlight) → Glucose + Oxygen

If you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, trees will have more resources for photosynthesis and can make more glucose. Glucose is food for the trees. Trees can use their glucose for growth, using it to make wood. However, trees sometimes have to put glucose towards other things. Just like us, plants break down glucose for energy through cellular respiration:

C6𝐻12𝑂6 +62→ 6𝐶𝑂2+6𝐻2𝑂+𝐸𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦
Glucose + Oxygen → Carbon Dioxide + Water + Energy (ATP)

Two large trees stand in the experimental plot after a survey. The tree to the right has been banded to measure its growth.

Trees need energy for everyday functioning, or to respond to stress. Under climate change, trees might experience more stress. Stress for trees might increase if summer temperatures get too hot, or they don’t have enough water. More stress means more respiration and less growth. Or, even worse, the trees could die. Dead trees can’t photosynthesize, and they also decompose, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere
as microbes break down wood and other materials.

Kristina and Luca are scientists looking at the effects of climate change on trees. They wanted to test whether climate change was benefitting or hurting trees. They set out to find some data that would allow them to test these alternative hypotheses.

A dead ash tree stands in the experimental plot after a survey. The carbon in this tree
will return to the atmosphere through decomposition.

Kristina runs a tree census in a forest at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Center in Virginia. Since 2008, she and many other scientists have surveyed every tree in their 26-hectare plot. Every five years, they count up how many trees are alive, how much they’ve grown, and how many have died. Luca joined Kristina’s lab in 2022. He and Kristina worked together with many other scientists to collect and process data on tree growth and mortality in 2023.

They used this growth and mortality data for individual trees to calculate levels of carbon gained and lost by the whole forest. The amount of carbon used for growth across the whole forest was measured as the mass of carbon gained. They also calculated the weight of the trees that died, which was measured as the mass of carbon lost. Both of these measurements were calculated in megagrams (Mg, that’s one million grams) of carbon (C) per hectare (ha) of forest per year (yr), or (MgC/ha/yr). The difference between these
two values is the change in carbon. This value gives the balance between carbon gained and lost. A positive value means there is more carbon being taken in by the forest than lost, and a negative value means that more carbon is being lost back to the atmosphere.

Featured scientists: Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira (she/her) & Luca Morreale (he/him) at Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. Written by Ryan Helcoski

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.8

1.20.25

Microbes facing tough times

Jennifer sampling soil before the shelters were set up. Here you can see the control (left) and carbon addition (right) plots.

The activities are as follows:

As the climate changes, Michigan is expected to experience more drought. Droughts are periods of low rainfall when water becomes limiting to organisms. This is a challenge for our agricultural food system. Farmers in Michigan will be planting crops into conditions that make it harder for corn, soybean, and wheat to grow and survive.

Scientists are looking into how crop interactions with other organisms may help. Microbes are microscopic organisms that live in soils everywhere. Some microbes can help crops get through time times. These beneficial microbes are called mutualists. They give plants nutrients and water in exchange for carbon from the plant. Microbes use the carbon they get from plants as food. If plants are stressed and don’t have any carbon to give, microbes get carbon from dead plant material in the soil.

Jennifer is a biologist studying the role of microbes in agriculture. She has always been interested in a career that would help people. As a student, Jennifer thought she would have a career in politics. Along the way, she learned that a career in science is a great way to study questions that may lead to solutions for the challenges we are facing today. Jennifer was drawn to the Kellogg Biological Station, where she joined a team of scientists studying the impacts of climate change and drought on agriculture.

Jennifer and other scientists set out to test ways that we can give mutualists in the soil a boost. She thought, perhaps if we were to give microbes more food, they would be less stressed during a drought and would be able to help out crops growing in these stressful conditions.

To test this idea, Jennifer needed to test how well microbes were doing under different carbon and drought conditions. First, she set up treatments in soybean fields to manipulate the amount of carbon in the soil. She set up control plots where she left the soil alone. She also set up carbon treatment plots where dead plant litter was added to the soil to increase the carbon available to microbes.

Next, Jennifer manipulated the availability of water in her plots to test the microbes under stress. To do this, she set up her plots under shelters that kept out rain. The shelters had sprinklers, which were automated to add specific amounts of water to the plots. This design allowed Jennifer to control the watering schedule for each plot. One shelter treatment was a control, where water was added to the plots every week. This is similar to the schedules of local farmers who add water through irrigation. The other shelter treatment was drought, where plots received no water for six weeks. This experiment was replicated 4 times, meaning there were 4 shelters on the control watering schedule and 4 shelters that were under drought conditions.

A view of one of the shelters used in Jennifer’s experiment.

Finally, Jennifer had to measure how the microbes were doing in each treatment. She did this by measuring their enzyme activity. Enzyme activity is a measure of how active the microbes are. The higher the enzyme activity, the happier the microbes are. To measure this, Jennifer collected soil samples from each plot throughout the growing season and took them to the lab to measure enzyme levels in the soil samples. These enzymes are made by microbes when they are active. She then calculated the mean of all her samples for each treatment combination.

Jennifer predicted two things. First, if drought is harmful to microbes, then she would expect to see lower enzyme activity in the drought treatment compared to the irrigated treatment. Second, if adding carbon to the soil is a way to help microbes overcome the challenge of drought, she expected higher enzyme activity in the plots with plant litter added compared to the control treatment. Both of these taken together would indicate that drought is stressful for microbes, but we can help them out by adding resources like plant litter to soils.

Featured scientist: Jennifer Jones (she/her) from the Kellogg Biological Station Long Term Ecological Research Site. Written with Melissa Frost and Liz Schultheis.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

To introduce this Data Nuggets activity, students can watch a talk by Jennifer when she made a classroom visit to share her background and research interests. This video is a great way to introduce students to scientist role models and learn more about what a career in science looks like, as well as get an introduction to the themes in the research.

There is also a video of Jennifer and her scientist colleague, Grant Falvo, out in the field talking about their research under the rainout shelters.

For more information about the rainout shelter experiment, students can watch this short video featuring Jennifer Jones and another scientist on the team, Grant Falvo:

These data are part of the Kellogg Biological Station Long Term Ecological Research Program (KBS LTER). To learn more about the KBS LTER, visit their website.

6.7.24

Seagrass survival in a super salty lagoon

A researcher in the Dunton Lab measures seagrasses underwater using a mask, snorkel, and a white PVC quadrat.

The activities are as follows:

Seagrasses are a group of plants that can live completely submerged underwater. They grow in the salty waters along coastal areas. Seagrasses are important because they provide a lot of benefits for other species. Like land plants, seagrasses use sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow and produce oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. The oxygen is then used by other organisms, such as animals, for respiration. Other organisms use seagrasses for food and habitat. Seagrass roots hold sediments in place, creating a more stable ocean bottom. In addition, the presence of seagrasses in coastal areas slows down waves and absorbs some of the energy, protecting shorelines.

Unfortunately, seagrasses are disappearing worldwide. Some reasons include damage from boats, disease, environmental changes, and storms. Seagrasses are sensitive to changes in their environment because they have particular conditions that they prefer. Temperature and light levels control how fast the plants can grow while salinity levels can limit their growth. Therefore, it is important to understand how these conditions are changing so that we can predict how seagrass communities might change as well.

Ken is a plant ecologist who has been monitoring seagrasses in southern Texas for over 30 years! Because of his long-term monitoring of the seagrasses in this area, Ken noticed that some seagrass species seemed to be in decline. Kyle started working with Ken during graduate school and wanted to understand more about what environmental conditions might have caused these changes. 

Manatee grass (Syringodium filiforme) located within the Upper Laguna Madre.

Texas has more seagrasses than almost any other state, and most of these plants are found in a place called Laguna Madre. During his yearly seagrass monitoring, Ken noticed that from 2012 – 2014 one of the common seagrasses, called manatee grass, died at many locations across Laguna Madre. Since then, the seagrass has grown back in some places, but not others. Kyle thought this would be an opportunity to look back at the long-term dataset that Ken has been collecting to see if there are any trends in environmental conditions in years with seagrass declines.

Each year, Ken, Kyle, and other scientists follow the same research protocols to collect data to monitor Laguna Madre meadows. Seagrass sampling takes place 2 – 4 times a year, even in winter! To find the manatee grass density, scientists dig out a 78.5 cm2 circular section (10 cm diameter) of the seagrass bed while snorkeling. They then bring samples back to the lab and count the number of seagrasses. While they are in the field, they also measure environmental conditions, like water temperature and salinity. A sensor is left in the meadow that continuously measures the amount of light that reaches the depth of the seagrass.

Kyle used data from this long-term monitoring to investigate his question about how environmental conditions may have impacted manatee grass. For each variable, he calculated the average across the sampling dates to obtain one value for that year. He wanted to compare manatee grass density with salinity, water temperature, and light levels that reach manatee grass. He thought there could be trends in environmental conditions in the years that manatee grass had low or high densities.

Featured scientists: Kyle Capistrant-Fossa (he/him) & Ken Dunton (he/him) from the U-Texas at Austin

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level 9.8

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

There is another Data Nugget that looks at these seagrass meadows! Follow Megan and Kevin as they look at how photosynthesis can be monitored through the sound of bubbles and the acoustic data they produce.

Follow this link for more information on the Texas Seagrass Monitoring Program, including additional datasets to examine with students.

There are articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals related to this research, including:

National Park Service information about the Gulf Coast Inventory and Monitoring.

Texas Parks and Wildlife information on seagrass:

11.17.23

The prairie burns with desire

Stuart showing an Echinacea flower setting seed.

The activities are as follows:

Fire plays a crucial role for prairie habitats across North America. Native Americans have long observed that lush and green pastures grow after a wildfire. In many areas, it is part of current and historical native culture to imitate this natural process by deliberately burning the prairie in a controlled way. This land management practice has many benefits, such as helping native grasses form seeds, thinning out plants, and enhancing habitat for prairie animals. By using controlled fires to cultivate these areas, Native Americans increase the availability of food and connect to the environment and their cultural traditions.

Some land management agencies plan prescribed burns to increase the health of prairie ecosystems. However, fire is still suppressed in many North American prairies due to the possible damage to human development. In these areas, scientists have observed that fire suppression contributes to local plant species extinctions, but we do not know why.

Stuart is a scientist interested in how fire can help prairie plants. In the late 1990s, Stuart was in central Minnesota searching for prairie plants in the Echinacea genus. The prairie was ablaze with flowers, so he had no difficulty finding plenty of plants. He tagged each plant so that he could study them again in the future. However, when he returned the following year, the field had almost no flowers! He kept returning to this same field. A few years later he found the site was again filled with flowers. That year there had been a prairie fire. Visually seeing the impacts of fire on the landscape is a memory he will not forget.

Stuart became interested in learning more about how fire affects the reproduction of native prairie plants. He knew that Echinacea plants grow in many places, but they have a hard time making seeds. This genus cannot self-pollinate, meaning they must be fertilized with pollen from a genetically different plant. Echinacea plants are also dependent on insects, such as bees, to pollinate them.

Echinacea flower

In 1996, a research team started collecting data on Echinacea plants in a large research site in Minnesota. This prairie site had a schedule for prescribed burns, or controlled fires that are started by experts to manage the land. These burns would happen every 4-6 years during the spring.

The team established a set of plot locations that they visited each summer. They searched for and mapped the location of all flowering Echinacea plants within these plots. They took measurements on each Echinacea plant – whether it was flowering, and the distance to its second closest Echinacea neighbor.

Stuart decided to take a new look at this long-term dataset. He had two ideas for how fire might be helping Echinacea plants. First, fire might help all the plants get on the same schedule and make flowers at the same time. This synchrony, or flowering at the same time, could help pollen get from one flower to another. Second, fire might remove competing plants from the area, opening up bare ground for new seeds to establish. This would allow Echinacea plants to be closer to one another, again making it easier for pollen to move between flowers.

With these data, Stuart could compare years with and without prescribed burns to see whether fire helped Echinacea flowering. To look at whether fire decreased the space between blooming Echinacea plants, he looked at the distance between a focal plant and its second-closest neighbor. To see whether fire increased the synchrony of flowering, Stuart used the data to calculate the proportion of Echinacea plants that were in bloom during the summer sampling period.

Featured scientist: Stuart Wagenius from the Chicago Botanic Gardens Written by: Harrison Aakre

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.6

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

More information about the Echinacea project, based in Minnesota. There are additional datasets to explore, blog posts from the field, identification guides, and pictures of the experiments.

Article to learn about cultural perspectives that are traditionally not represented in textbooks. Native Americans have, and continue to incorporate ecology, observations, and making sense of patterns for millennia.

For more information about indigenous knowledges, or traditional ecological knowledge, check out the following websites:

Published journal article about this research. Wagenius, S. et al. 2020. Fire synchronizes flowering and boosts reproduction in a widespread but declining prairie species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

9.15.23

A difficult drought

A field of switchgrass studied by biofuels researchers.

The activities are as follows:

Most people use fossil fuels like natural gas, coal, and oil daily. We use them to generate much of the energy that gets us from place to place, power our homes, and more. Fossil fuels are very efficient at producing energy, but they also come with negative consequences. For example, when burned, they release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. The right balance of greenhouse gasses is needed to keep our planet warm enough to live on. However, because we have burned so many fossil fuels, the earth has gotten too hot too fast, resulting in climate change. Scientists are looking for other ways to fuel our lives with less damage to our environment.

Substituting fossil fuels with biofuels is one of these options. Biofuels are fuels made from plants. Unlike fossil fuels, which take millions of years to form, biofuels are renewable. They are made from plants grown and harvested every few years. Using biofuels instead of fossil fuels can be better for our environment because they do not release ancient carbon like burning fossil fuels does. In addition, the plants made into biofuels take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.

To become biofuels, plants need to go through a series of chemical and physical processes. The sugar stored in plant cells must undergo fermentation. In this process, microorganisms, like yeast, transform the sugars into ethanol that can be used for fuels. Trey is a scientist at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Center. He is interested in seeing how yeast’s ability to transform sugar into fuel is affected by environmental conditions in fields, such as temperature and rainfall.

When there was a major drought in 2012, Trey used the opportunity to study the impacts of drought. The growing season had very high temperatures and very low rainfall. These conditions make it more difficult for plants to grow, including switchgrass, a prairie grass being studied as a potential biofuel source.

Trey knew that drought affects the amount and quality of switchgrass that can be harvested. He wanted to find out if drought also had effects on the ability of yeast to transform the plants’ sugars into ethanol. Stress from droughts is known to cause a build-up of compounds in plant cells that help them survive during drought. Trey thought that these extra compounds might harm the yeast or make it difficult for the yeast to break down the sugars during the fermentation process. Trey and his team predicted that if they fed yeast a sample of switchgrass grown during the 2012 drought, the yeast would struggle to ferment its sugars and produce fewer biofuels as a result.  

To test their idea, the team studied two different sets of switchgrass samples that were grown and collected in Wisconsin. One set of switchgrass was grown in 2010 under normal conditions. The other set was grown during the 2012 drought. The team introduced the two samples to yeast in a controlled setting and performed four fermentation tests for each set of switchgrass. They recorded the amount of ethanol produced during each test.

Featured scientists: Trey Sato from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Written by Marina Kerekes.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.2

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

There are other Data Nuggets that share biofuels research. Search this table for “GLBRC” to find more! Some of the popular activities include:

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) has many biofuel-related resources available to K16 educators on their webpage.

For activities related specifically to this Data Nugget, see:

6.1.23

Collaborative cropping: Can plants help each other grow?

The activities are as follows:

Alfalfa (middle) planted in a Kernza® field.

Most of the crops grown on farms in the United States are annual plants, like corn, soybeans, and wheat. Annual plants die every year after harvest and must be replanted the following year. Preparing farm fields for replanting every year can erode soils and hurt important bacteria and fungi living in the soil.

One way to change how we produce food is to grow more perennial crops. Perennial plants live for many years and don’t need to be replanted. Perennials stay in the ground all year and start growing right away in the spring before annual crops are even planted. This early growth also gives perennial crops a “head-start” in competing with annual weed species that emerge later in the season.

While there are potential benefits of perennial crops, they are not commonly planted because they tend to make lower profits for farmers than annual crops. Crop scientists are still examining potential options to make perennial crops work at a large scale for farmers. For twenty years, researchers at The Land Institute in Kansas and at the University of Minnesota have been looking at a new perennial grain, called Kernza®, that could be used as an alternative to wheat and rye annual crops. Kernza® comes from the seeds of a plant called intermediate wheatgrass. Because Kernza® is such a new crop, scientists still have a lot to learn about it. Before it can be widely used by farmers, they want to know what field conditions help the plants grow to ensure the crop makes money for farmers.

Dr. Jake Jungers taking a soil core in a Kernza® field.

One strategy to improve field conditions for perennial crops is to plant legumes in the field alongside them. Legumes can make nitrogen, a nutrient that plants need to grow, more available to the plants around them. Additionally, farmers can select legume species that typically don’t compete with the crop but may outcompete weeds.

Jake is an ecologist who uses his knowledge about plants to make agriculture more sustainable. Jake wanted to do some research into alfalfa, a type of perennial legume that might work well with Kernza®. Jake thought that growing alfalfa alongside Kernza® would lead to increased profit and yield for two reasons. One, because it would add nitrogen to the soil to boost crop growth. Two, because alfalfa would compete with agricultural weed species, making valuable resources available for the crop plants.

To test this idea, Jake set up an experiment with his team. Alfalfa was grown with Kernza® at three different locations in Minnesota in 2019. The study was replicated four times at each site, with the same amount of alfalfa and Kernza® planted into each field. At the end of the growing season, the fields were harvested, and the plants were sorted into three categories: Kernza®, alfalfa, and weed species. He further sorted Kernza® by grain, which can be used for food, and straw, which can be used for animal feed. Jake wanted to compare yield, or plant growth per unit area, across the plant categories. To do this, he weighed all the plants in each category to get the biomass and then divided by the area of the field.

Featured scientist: Jake Jungers (he/him) from the University of Minnesota

Written by Claire Wineman (she/her)

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.5

3.19.23

Mowing for Monarchs – Extension Activities

Gabe Knowles has developed and piloted several data activities to accompany these Data Nuggets activities. For the first activity, Gabe developed an extension to bring his data into elementary classrooms. Using beautiful art created by Corinn Rutkoski, the following are materials to print and use the activity in your classroom:

This activity was first piloted at Michigan Science Teachers Association Annual Meeting in 2023.
11.14.22

Does more rain make healthy bison babies?

A bison mom and her calf.
A bison mom and her calf.

The activities are as follows:

The North American Bison is an important species for the prairie ecosystem. They are a keystone species, which means their presence in the ecosystem affects many other species around them. For example, they roll on the ground, creating wallows. Those wallows can fill up with water and create a mini marsh ecosystem, complete with aquatic plants and animals. They also eat certain kinds of food – especially prairie grasses. What bison don’t eat are wildflowers, so where bison graze there will be more flowers present than in the areas avoided by bison. This affects many insects, especially the pollinators that are attracted to the prairie wildflowers that are abundant in in the bison area. 

Not only do bison affect their environment, but they are also affected by it. Because bison eat grass, they often move around because the tastiest meals might be scattered in different areas of the prairie. Also, as bison graze down the grass in one area they will leave it in search of a new place to find food. The amount of food available is largely dependent upon the amount of rain the area has received. The prairie ecosystem is a large complex puzzle with rain and bison being the main factors affecting life there. 

The Konza Prairie Biological Station in central Kansas has a herd of 300 bison. Scientists study how the bison affect the prairie, and how the prairie affects the bison. Jeff started at Konza as a student, and today he is the bison herd manager. As herd manager, if is Jeff’s duty to track the health of the herd, as well as the prairie. 

One of the main environmental factors that affect the prairie’s health is rainfall. The more rain that falls, the more plants that grow on the prairie. This also means that in wetter years there is more food for bison to eat. Heavier bison survive winters better, and then may have more energy saved up to have babies in the following spring. Jeff wanted to know if a wet summer would actually lead to healthier bison babies, called calves, the following year.

Jeff and other scientists collect data on the bison herd every year, including the bison calves. Every October, all the bison in the Konza Prairie herd are rounded up and weighed. Since most of the bison calves are born in April or May, they are about 6 months old by the time are weighed. The older and the healthier the calf is, the more it weighs. Very young calves, including those born late in the year, may be small and light, and because of this they may have a difficult time surviving the winter. 

Jeff also collects data on how much rain and snow, called precipitation, the prairie receives every year. Precipitation is measured daily at the biological station and then averaged for each year. Precipitation is important because it plays a direct role in how well the plants grow. 

Jeff and a herd of bison on the Konza prairie.
Jeff and a herd of bison on the Konza prairie.
Konza LTER logo

Featured scientist: Jeff Taylor from the Konza Prairie Biological Station

Written by: Jill Haukos, Seton Bachle, and Jen Spearie

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.7

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget include:

  • The full dataset for bison herd data is available online! The purpose of this study is to monitor long-term changes in individual animal weight. The datasets include an annual summary of the bison herd structure, end-of-season weights of individual animals, and maternal parentage of individual bison. The data in this activity came from the bison weight dataset (CBH012).
  • For more information on calf weight, check out the LTER Book Series book, The Autumn Calf, by Jill Haukos.
9.6.22

Changing climates in the Rocky Mountains

Lower elevation site in the Rocky Mountains: Temperate conifer forest. Photo Credit: Alice Stears.

The activities are as follows:

Each type of plant needs specific conditions to grow and thrive. If conditions change, such as temperature or the amount of precipitation, plant communities may change as well. For example, as the climate warms, plant species might start to shift to higher latitudes to follow the conditions where they grow best. But what if a species does well in cold climates found at the tops of mountains? Because they have nowhere to go, warming puts that plant species at risk.  

To figure out if species are moving, we need to know where they’ve lived in the past, and if climates are changing. One way that we can study both things is to use the Global Vegetation Project. The goal of this project is to curate a global database of plant photos that can be used by educators and students around the world. Any individual can upload photos and identify plant species. The project then connects each photo to information on the location’s biome, ecoregion, and climate, including data tracking precipitation and temperature over time. The platform can also be used to explore how the climates of different regions are changing and use that information to predict how plant communities may change. 

Daniel is a scientist who is interested in sharing the Global Vegetation Project data with students. Daniel became interested in plants and vegetation when he learned in college that you can simply walk through the woods and prairie, collect wild seeds, germinate the plants, and grow them to restore degraded landscapes. Plants set the backdrop for virtually every landscape that we see. He thinks plants deserve our undivided attention.

Daniel and his team wanted to create a resource where students can look deeper into plant communities and their climates. Much of the inspiration for the Global Vegetation Project came from the limitations to undergraduate field research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students in ecology and botany classes, who would normally observe and study plants in the field, were prevented from having these opportunities. By building an online database with photos of plants, students can explore local plants without having to go into the field and can even see plants from faraway places. 

Daniel’s lab is based in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, where the plants are a showcase in both biodiversity and beauty. These communities deal with harsh conditions: cold, windy and snowy winters, hot and dry summers, and unpredictable weather during spring and fall. The plants rely on winter snow slowly melting over spring and into summer, providing moisture that can help them survive the dry summers. 

The Rocky Mountains are currently facing many changes due to climate change, including drought, increased summer temperatures, wildfires, and more. This creates additional challenges for the plants of the Rockies. Drought reduces the amount of precipitation, decreasing the amount of water available to plants. In addition, warmer temperatures in winter and spring shift more precipitation to rain instead of snow and melts snow more quickly. Rain and melted snow rapidly move through the landscape, becoming less available to plants in need. On top of all this, hotter, drier summers further decrease the amount of water available, stressing plants in an already harsh environment. If these trends continue, there could be significant impact on the types of plants that are able to grow in the Rocky Mountains. These changes will have an impact on the landscape, organisms that rely on plants, and humans as well.

Daniel and his colleagues pulled climate data from a Historic period (1961-2009) and Current period (2010-2018). They selected two locations in Wyoming to focus on: a lower elevation montane forest and a higher elevation site. To study climate, they focused on temperature and precipitation because they are important for plants. They wanted to study how temperature and precipitation patterns changed overall and how they changed in different seasons. They predicated temperatures would be higher in the Current period compared to the Historic period in both locations. For precipitation, they predicted there would be drier summers and wetter springs.

Featured scientist: Daniel Laughlin from The University of Wyoming. Written by: Matt Bisk.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.5

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