The 26th Annual Konza Prairie LTER Workshop

The 26th annual Konza Prairie LTER workshop was held on May 31, 2017 at Prairie Biological Station in the Cortelyou Lecture Hall. Over 65 participants attended the workshop. The day was filled with informative talks and a poster session consisting of 19 posters.

  1. John Blair (KSU) – Welcome and overview/status of the Konza Prairie LTER program                      
  2. Tony Joern (KSU) – Fire/grazers and landscape heterogeneity
  3. Jesse Nippert (KSU) – Ecology of woody plant encroachment
  4. Melinda Smith (CSU) – Experiments to assess grassland responses to climate change
  5. Walter Dodds (KSU) – Ecology of aquatic systems
  6. Lydia Zeglin (KSU) – Belowground studies
  7. Sara Baer (CIS) – Research on grassland restoration
  8. Kim La Pierre (SI) – Trajectories of plant community change with chronic nitrogen manipulation: Lessons learned from nutrient experiments at Konza
  9. Kevin Wilcox (OU) – Nitrogen addition and plant community structure alter grassland sensitivity to precipitation
  10. Andrew Hope (KSU) – Mammal-parasite community dynamics across burn treatments
  11. Keith Gido (KSU) – The use of intermittent reaches by prairie stream fishes
  12. Nate Brunsell (KU) – Stability of tree-grass interactions under woody encroachment
  13. Eduardo Santos (KSU) – Applying stable isotopes of CO2 to study the carbon cycle at the ecosystem scale
  14. Lindsey Bruckerhoff, Kent Connell and James Guinnip (KSU) – Integrating response among plant and animal communities to variation in climate and land management on Konza Prairie
  15. Jill Haukos (KSU) – Konza Prairie education and outreach activities
  16. John Briggs (KSU) – Responses to the fire reversal experiment
  17. Gwen Macpherson (KU) – Groundwater and groundwater solutes: abiotic and/or biotic influences and interactions, a summary of progress
  18. Pam Sullivan (KU) – Developing Biome-RT-Flux-PIHM to examine feedbacks between land cover change and subsurface hydrology, C and nutrients fluxes
  • List Posters:
  1. Ava Hoffman (CSU) – Genetic diversity leads to threshold response, flowering, and metabolic differences under drought
  2. Bryan Frenette (KSU) – Differences in performance and physiological response of prairie stream fishes along a stream-size temperature gradient
  3. Christine Carson (KSU) – Grassland soil microbial community turnover in response to long-term nitrogen management
  4. Drew Scott (SIU) – Partial support for the ‘Environmental Heterogeneity Hypothesis’ in tallgrass prairie restorations
  5. Frances Andrea Chaves Rodriguez (CSU) – Constraints in a tallgrass prairie plant community recovery after loss of a dominant plant species
  6. George Manning (SIU) - Processes influencing community assembly during tallgrass prairie restoration
  7. Janaye Hanschu (KSU) – Belowground C cycling responses to contrasting historical fire management and N fertilization
  8. Jesse Gray (CSU) – Climate change impacts on population dynamics in tallgrass prairie: Implications for species codominance
  9. Juliet Fitzgibbon (SIU) – Effects of deer browse on plant diversity and productivity in restored
  10. Laura Mino (KSU) – Exploiting an opportunity: preliminary glimpse to soil responses after cessation of 26-year fire suppression
  11. Lauren Baur (CSU) - Differential sensitivity of plant community response to extreme drought
  12. Monica Shaffer (KSU) and Sammi Grieger (KSU) – Bison grazing lawns as hotspots of floristic diversity on tallgrass prairie
  13. Priscilla Moley (KSU) – Grassland burning and grazing affects soil microbial diversity and heterogeneity
  14. Rory O’Connor (KSU) – Browsing and fire: tools for woody plant removal
  15. Sarah Black (SIU) – Effects of insect herbivory on restored tallgrass prairie plant communities
  16. Sarah Koerner (USF) – Ghost Fire: Understanding mechanisms behind fire driven community differences
  17. Seton Bachle (KSU) – Physiological and morphological trait plasticity in C4 grass species
  18. Sophia Bonjour (SIU) – Fish influence on summer insect emergence in perennial refugia
  19. Sophie Higgs (KSU) – Characterizing the transformation of specific dissolved organic carbon components in prairie streams