Hello, friend of the KU Field Station!

With the busy field season behind us, our focus is shifting from fieldwork, class visits, and programs to catching up on long-neglected computer tasks and projects pushed aside during the warmer months. October brought a full schedule of fieldwork, student visits, education programs, and preparing for prescribed burns. We love the energy of the growing season, but we also appreciate the (slightly) slower pace that cooler months bring. We still have plenty to keep us busy, like cleaning and repairing equipment, writing grant reports, and organizing data. The work doesn’t stop, but it settles into a calmer, nine-to-five rhythm.

November brings the final Science Sundays of 2025 before the holidays and icy roads are upon us and we break for the winter season. With a snowy winter possibly on the way, our next Science Sundays won’t be scheduled until February or March, depending on road conditions.

Stay warm,
Wendy

Sunday, November 9 | 1–3 p.m. | Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve

Join us for a mushroom walk at the Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve! Ben Sikes, senior scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, will lead the way as we search for mushrooms of all shapes and sizes. An avid fungal enthusiast and co-author of A New Guide to Kansas Mushrooms, Ben will share tips on where to look, how to identify your finds, and why fungi are so important to ecosystems, both above and below ground.

We will follow the mushrooms wherever they grow, off-trail and across uneven ground. There is no single “right” way to explore, and whether you meander 20 feet or wander 2,000, the closer you look, the more you will discover. Bring your curiosity and keen eyes and step into the forest ready to experience the world of mushrooms!

Where: Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve

What to bring: sturdy, closed-toe shoes, water bottle, long pants. 

To register: email Wendy (wendyholman@ku.edu). Registration is limited.

Outdoor programs depend on the weather and may be cancelled or rescheduled if it’s too windy or rainy. A day or two before the event, we will email registrants with all the details, including the exact location, parking information, and a confirmation or cancellation based on the forecast.

Sunday, November 16 | 2:00 p.m. | Lumberyard Arts Center, Baldwin City, KS

November Topic: Stories from Rice Woodland: How a Fire Became a Trail and Turned into an Exhibition

The Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve, part of the KU Field Station, protects one of the oldest and most beautiful eastern deciduous forest stands in Kansas, and it’s right here in Douglas County. The Rice Woodland, an 80-acre section of the preserve, has come alive with renewed activity in recent years, including the addition of a public trail that will open in April 2026.

Join KU Field Station manager Sheena Parsons for an inside look at the stories of Rice Woodland. She will share history and tales of the land and the people who have helped shape and preserve it, and recent stories about the reintroduction of fire, making way for the public trail, and celebrating the Rice Woodland in an upcoming art exhibition. You will leave with a deeper appreciation of this special woodland and the collaborations that keep it thriving.

(Missed the cedar milling field day in October? If you are interested in creating something of your own, we will have more milled pieces of Eastern redcedar available to take home after the talk. Learn more about participating in An Ode to Eastern Redcedar in our Facebook event.)

Where: Lumberyard Arts Center, 718 High St, Baldwin City, KS 66006 (not at the KU Field Station!)

What to bring: A mug for tea/coffee to help us reduce waste.

Please RSVP to Wendy (wendyholman@ku.edu) as space is limited. It also helps us plan for seating and snacks!

Science Sundays is a monthly series of talks covering a variety of science topics, including research happening at the KU Field Station. These free talks are open to everyone but may not interest younger audiences. You don't have to be a scientist to attend, just curious about the natural world!

We lucked out with a gorgeous fall day for our Cedar Milling Field Day at the new Rice Woodland trailhead. Two sawmills and 100 participants gathered on-site while Dave Bruton (Kansas Forest Service) and Steve Gurysh (KU Department of Visual Art) walked participants through the milling process step by step.

The trees that were milled came from a dense stand of eastern redcedars that was cleared to make room for the new parking area. Clearing areas like this comes with options. Instead of simply burning, chipping or discarded the trees (although we did some of that too), these cedars gained a second life as lumber. Sheena and Dave also traveled to the Kansas Forestry Association field day to share milled lumber with their group. Participants at these events left with 162 freshly sawn pieces of lumber, 32 log sections, and plenty of sawdust, totaling 1,535 linear feet and 263,679+ cubic inches of repurposed eastern redcedar. Some of the wood is already destined for artworks in the upcoming juried exhibition An Ode to Eastern Redcedar at the Lumberyard Arts Center. Other pieces will become bookshelves, garden beds, aromatic sachets, and more.

Thank you to everyone who joined us and helped make this day possible. It felt like stewardship, creativity, collaboration, and community all coming together in one place in the best possible way.

If you missed the field day but are interested in some lumber for projects, we will have more available after Science Sundays on November 16 at the Lumberyard Arts Center.

In December 2022, a TC Energy pipeline ruptured and released an estimated 588,000 gallons of crude oil onto land and into Mill Creek near Washington, Kansas. Intensive recovery efforts began immediately, with crews working 24/7 for nearly two months. Oil removal continued until May 2023, when the effort shifted into the restoration phase.

A research team from the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research, including staff from the KU Field Station, is now monitoring how the oil spill affected Mill Creek’s aquatic life. At several sites upstream and downstream of the pipeline, they are surveying freshwater mussels, fish, and aquatic invertebrates, while also documenting presence of reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Over the next several years, the team will continue monitoring and measuring contaminants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), mercury, and metals. The resulting data will help assess the recovery of Mill Creek’s aquatic community and inform future restoration and spill-response efforts.

The aftermath of an oil spill is a serious topic, but the fieldwork is a lot of fun. Grubbing along the creek bottom for mussels, netting fish of all sizes, and searching for aquatic invertebrates is muddy, rewarding and a welcome break from computer work. Nothing beats a day in the creek!

We spent a beautiful afternoon immersed in a sea of grasses with a local Girl Scout troop. These golden fall days are such a highlight, literally and figuratively, as the sunlight filters through the tall grasses and makes the prairie glow. With grasses towering over even the tallest adults, we all had the chance to feel small for a moment and appreciate just how special these prairies are.

We wandered the Forest Legacy Reserve within the Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve with the Johnson County Master Naturalists just before the wet weather arrived. The sun was shining and the temperatures were perfect, and even though the birds were quiet and the dry fall left the leaves crisp and brown instead of shades of orange and red, it was still a lovely day to be in the woods.

While we were disappointed to cancel the Baldwin Woods Fall Tour last weekend due to wet conditions, we are grateful for this long, slow soak of rain. The woods need it!

Special thanks to Shannon Stewart for helping us sharpen our senses before the walk, and to Brad Williamson for sharing his love of mosses along the way. 

For our last stargazing night of the year, we were joined by a big crowd of people, cozy in chairs and stretched out on blankets under a moon bright enough to cast shadows.

We can’t say thank you enough to the Astronomy Associates of Lawrence for sharing their knowledge and telescopes with us, helping us appreciate the vastness of the universe by showing us planets, stars, and distant galaxies. We are already looking forward to more nights under the stars together in the spring.

Not on social media? No problem.

Here are a few of our favorites from the past month. 

🌿💧 How do aquatic plants growing in the shallow edges of lakes and ponds influence the global carbon cycle? The GasLit Project is an international effort to answer that question! 🌎📊

Lakes and ponds play an important role in the carbon cycle, but research often overlooks the shallow, plant-filled edges (littoral zones). These areas are full of life and influence how carbon dioxide and methane move between the water, sediments, and atmosphere. The GasLit Project, based at Uppsala University in Sweden, is creating the first global database of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations and fluxes from vegetated littoral zones. Collaborators from around the world, from Austria to Argentina, are helping reveal how these dynamic shoreline habitats shape local and global carbon budgets.

At the KU Field Station, a team led by undergrad Emily Foster are collecting data from five sites to contribute to this global dataset. They are sampling GHG emissions and dissolved concentrations in surface waters and using bubble traps to capture ebullition (bubbling release of gases like methane from bottom sediments to the atmosphere).

We stopped by Arrowhead Pond and Cross Reservoir as researchers Thomas Coole and Christine Cornish were collecting their final samples of the season!

Just a jumping spider living the dream.

Cozy home, good view, and a snack for later. 🕷️✨

Her little face! 🥹

Kids get it. Do not cill terdls. 🐢💚

This is the monthly newsletter for the University of Kansas Field Station community. Each month, we share details about upcoming public programs, volunteer opportunities, and highlights from the month before. 

To read previous issues, please visit our newsletter archives.

If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to Wendy at wendyholman@ku.edu.

University of Kansas Field Station Mission: 

   To foster scholarly research, environmental education and science-based stewardship of natural resources.

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