Research Projects and Stewardship of Wolter Woods and Prairies Impacted by Grant

SHERRILL, Iowa - The University of Dubuque's Wolter Woods and Prairies Environmental Stewardship and Retreat Center received a $60,000 grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust that will advance undergraduate research and experiential learning across multiple disciplines while fostering long-term stewardship of the property as a vibrant living laboratory.

For many students, Wolter Woods and Prairies' 146 acres becomes the place where curiosity turns into a calling. The property is managed according to a comprehensive stewardship plan that reflects the Wolter family's legacy of conservation, enhances student education, develops a region-wide research hub focused on biodiversity and climate monitoring, expands student and community access to nature, and fosters a broad culture of conservation throughout the region.

Support from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust will allow UD to purchase and install a research-grade weather station, portable climate monitoring towers, and field equipment such as rangefinders, GPS units, field laptops, and more that will impact a variety of research projects.

"This grant represents a pivotal investment in the infrastructure, equipment, and student support necessary to strengthen Wolter Woods and Prairies as a living laboratory where undergraduate students engage directly in meaningful, faculty-mentored research while contributing to long-term ecological understanding," said Gerald Zuercher, PhD, director of Wolter Woods and Prairies and professor of vertebrate ecology.

STUDENT RESEARCH PROJECTS IMPACTED BY THE $60,000 ROY J. CARVER CHARITABLE TRUST GRANT:

Long-Term Climate Monitoring at Wolter Woods and Prairies

The establishment of a research-grade weather station to inform research, surveys, and monitoring efforts at Wolter Woods and Prairies is the central umbrella project funded by the grant. Kaycie Lawson, PhD, assistant professor of environmental science, will oversee the weather station and guide students as they collect real, place-based environmental data.

The weather station will be aligned to regional and national mesonet standards and will consist of a 10-meter tower suitable for a long-term installation. The tower will have a mounted set of instruments that automatically measure and record atmospheric and environmental conditions, including temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture, and wind speed and direction. The information gathered will help understand ecological responses to short-term weather variations and long-term climate change.

"What I hope to learn from the weather station in collaboration with Department of Natural and Applied Sciences undergraduate students and faculty colleagues is how local weather patterns drive ecological processes at Wolter Woods and Prairies," Lawson said. "Over time, the data can reveal seasonal trends, extreme weather events, and year-to-year variability. That information can help us understand things like how drought or heavy rainfall affects prairie plants, when certain species respond to temperature changes, or how climate variability influences restoration efforts."

In the classroom setting, students will be able to analyze temperature trends, graph rainfall patterns, study wind data, and compare conditions across seasons. In the research setting, students will have the opportunity to investigate relationships between weather and plant phenology, pollinator activity, soil moisture, and habitat conditions.

"Having a weather station at Wolter Woods and Prairies is important because weather and climate strongly influence everything happening in those ecosystems, and variability over small spatial scales impacts ecosystem response," Lawson said. "By collecting weather data directly from the site, we can connect what we observe at the site, such as flowering times, insect activity, or changes in vegetation, to the environmental conditions driving those patterns. It gives us a much clearer picture of how ecosystems function."

The weather station is anticipated to be installed over the summer.

Monitoring Forests for Species and Age-Structured Biodiversity

Led by David Koch, PhD, assistant director of Wolter Woods and Prairies and associate professor of environmental science, this student research project will assess whether forest improvement management practices at Wolter Woods and Prairies has led to an increasing abundance of oak species on the property.

A variety of data will be gathered, from tree species to ground cover to canopy density collected with a densiometer, from 30 sites within the 16 forest management units at Wolter Woods and Prairies.

Assessing Bat Responses to Weather and Climate Variation

This project will assess phenological and activity responses of Iowa's nine bat species to short-term weather variation and long-term climate change. It's one of three projects at Wolter Woods and Prairies that will use AudioMoths, devices that record audible and ultrasonic frequencies, and Kaleidoscope Pro, software that allows users to sort, label, and identify bat identifications, bird songs, and frog calls.

Professor Zuercher and his students will utilize AudioMoths to record the vocalizations of bats at Wolter Woods and Prairies as well as similar sites in eastern Iowa. Recordings will begin at dusk and continue through dawn. They will be analyzed through Kaleidoscope Pro and modeled with local weather data for within-season assessment of bat responses to variation in conditions and for long-term responses to shifts in climate.

Measuring Bird Communities in Fragmented Landscapes

Guided by Professor Zuercher, this student research will assess the temporal and spatial variation of birds in response to fragmented forest and prairie habitats by comparing phenology and composition of the bird community at Wolter Woods and Prairies with bird communities from similar sites in eastern Iowa.

AudioMoths will record birds during the day and night, and Kaleidoscope Pro will analyze the recordings. Results will be modeled with forest fragment size, tree density, and canopy cover to evaluate the role of forest metrics on bird communities.

Detecting Phenological Shifts in Frog Calling Through Acoustic Monitoring

This project will investigate whether the onset of frog chorusing has shifted over recent years and whether those shifts correlate with local climate data that will be collected from the weather station.

Nolan Bielinski, PhD, assistant professor of biology, and his students will use AudioMoths throughout the day and night to capture frog chorusing and Kaleidoscope Pro to identify species and quantify call intensity. The project will produce immediate ecological insights and a longitudinal baseline for tracking future climate-linked shifts. It will also establish long-term amphibian soundscape monitoring programs in Iowa's Driftless Area.

Longitudinal Assessment of Prairie Soil Microbial Resilience to Prescribed Fire at Wolter Woods and Prairies

Adam Kleinschmit, PhD, associate professor of biology, will mentor students in prairie conservation and land management through traditional field and microbial ecology at Wolter Woods and Prairies. The project will also develop longitudinal research to investigate how the frequency of prescribed low-intensity fire influences composition, diversity, and resiliency of soil bacterial communities in reconstructed tallgrass prairies of Wolter Woods and Prairies to guide prairie management decisions.

Research will be conducted at Memorial Prairie on the site, a mesic tallgrass native prairie reconstructed from former row-cropped land in 2010. The site is managed as five distinct parcels under a long-term prescribed burn regime. Each parcel includes a non-burn subplot for comparisons to fire intervention within the plot. During prescribed fires, high-temperature probes will be deployed in non-burned and burned subplots to quantitively assess burn intensity. Point-in-time measurements will be obtained from soil cores taken at pre-burn, seven days post-burn, and 60-days post-burn samples to assess how fire influences the chemical and physical properties of soil.