Emporia State University (ESU) manages eight sites (5 – 81 ha) that serve as outdoor laboratories for our students, faculty, and visiting scientists. The sites provide regional representation of major ecological communities, including tallgrass prairie, forest, streams, ponds, and wetlands. The sites have been used for decades, with the oldest site, the Ross Natural History Reservation, having been acquired in 1958. Common uses of our Natural Areas include field courses in ecology, botany, zoology, geospatial analysis, soil science, geology, and hydrology. Recent research has included investigations of hydrogeology of the Neosho and Cottonwood River basins and the effects of shrub encroachment on carbon dynamics in tallgrass prairie. The former has included long-term monitoring of rivers and groundwater at ESU's on-campus Hydrogeology Teaching and Research Station. Hydrologic conditions at a newly acquired, riverine wetland site in the Flint Hills are also currently under investigation.

Biological field stations are expected to have an increasingly important role in ecological research because of mounting environmental concerns and the growing importance of ecological research networks. Kansas has several well-known field stations that occur along an east-west precipitation gradient, but these sites are primarily located in the northern half of the state. In this paper, we describe how the sites comprising the Wichita State University Biological Field Station represent important ecoregions in the southern portion of Kansas, which could be utilized to enhance research networks in the region. For each site, we describe the relevant historical and environmental characteristics and provide some examples of the long-term research projects that are currently underway.

Cheyenne Bottoms is the premier wetland of Kansas; it consists of marshes, meadows, mud flats, channels, and pools within an oval-shaped closed depression. Cheyenne Bottoms has suffered a series of droughts and floods during the past century. During extended droughts, the bottoms may dry up completely. Conversely flooding may fill much of the basin with shallow, ephemeral lakes. Since 2002, we have conducted annual surveys during the growing season using various forms of remote sensing and ground observations. In particular, we have utilized low-height kite and blimp aerial photography to document changing conditions in The Nature Conservancy (TNC) marsh-complex environments.

During the early twenty-first century, a series of drought-flood cycles took place; dry intervals culminated in late 2006 and early 2013 and were followed soon after by major floods. Wet intervals are characterized by abundant surface water, influx of sediment and nutrients, numerous migrating shorebirds and waterfowl, expansion of emergent wetland vegetation, and abundant aquatic wildlife. During drought phases, surface water disappears, soil moisture declines, wetland vegetation dies or becomes dormant, migrating birds bypass the vicinity, and bare mud flats are subjected to wind erosion. The transformation from drought to flood conditions may take place quite abruptly. Wetland vegetation responds rapidly, invertebrate wildlife begins to recover quickly, and migrating shorebirds and waterfowl return. This scenario suggests a dynamic environment that may exhibit large short-term variations, but which is resilient and has long-term stability.

The Baker Wetlands (Douglas County, KS) is a 375 ha (927 ac) site for conservation, research, and education on wetland ecosystems. This study focused on a wetland vegetation restoration in a 49 ha (120 ac) portion of Baker Wetlands. A vegetation assessment was carried out every fifth summer from 1991 to 2011, with a final survey in 2012, to determine the wetland vegetation establishment success of the restoration at the Baker Wetlands. Successful establishment was defined as having a significant increase in percent coverage of plant species classified as obligate wetland, facultative wetland, and facultative after 10 or more years of restoration. Surveys consisted of visually estimating percent coverage of wetland vegetation within 1m2 quadrats. We found a significant increase in the percent coverage of obligate wetland and facultative wetland plants between 1991 and the following years. These results will help guide future restoration efforts at Baker Wetlands.

Kansas faces the challenge of reduced surface water storage in eastern Kansas caused by sedimentation of its reservoirs. The 24 federal reservoirs in Kansas have an average age of about 50 years and current estimates indicate that 17% of their collective storage capacity (originally 3.2M ac-ft.) has been lost to sedimentation. Six of these reservoirs are already more than 33% infilled. So basic in all ways is ecology and hydrology to the functioning of a region that changes in water storage and movement and how both may be managed must be carefully followed. Also we discuss the merits of four types of remediation for addressing reservoir infilling, recognizing that combinations of methods can be used, and that water conservation is essential. Also we describe the important role of research and monitoring facilities at research stations in Kansas where controlled experiments identifying cause and effect relationships can provide insight for reservoir management.

Topeka Shiners (Notropis topeka) representing two genetically distinct and geographically separated Kansas populations have been under continuous culture and study in 0.045-ha experimental ponds at the University of Kansas Field Station since 2002. Experiments in earthen ponds undertaken from 2002 to 2009 established that Topeka Shiners are capable of surviving and reproducing in static artificial habitats, which at the field station are akin to isolated stream pools or farm ponds typical in this part of the Great Plains. Variables included the addition of various substrate types, sizes, and their location within ponds, and also the numbers of adult Topeka Shiners stocked at the beginning of each spawning season. Behavioral and predatory associations with several other fish species, which sometimes included the addition of Orangespotted Sunfish (Lepomis humilis), Green Sunfish (L. cyanellus), and Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides), also were examined. The work demonstrated that while Topeka Shiners can be maintained and will reproduce in ponds under certain conditions, their behavior, net reproduction, and survival can be substantially influenced by the other fish species. Although formal experiments ended in 2009, both populations continue to be maintained separately in 12 ponds with only minimal care. One of the populations, taken originally from Willow Creek (Wallace County, KS), is now considered extirpated in the wild, thus its remaining members likely exist only at the field station. With respect to the state recovery plan for this species, should authorities resolve to re-introduce this relict population somewhere into its former and highly restricted range in the upper Smoky Hill River watershed, the task will be complicated by factors including severe declines in surface water flow and availability leading to loss of habitat there and in other portions of western Kansas in recent decades.

Meteorological drought in the Great Plains of the U.S. has a significant influence on the hydrology of small drainage basins. Its effect on local surface water and groundwater systems is complicated when streamflow is regulated by flood-control reservoirs. An analysis of local precipitation, discharge, and groundwater records on annual, monthly, and daily intervals in the upper Neosho River of Kansas demonstrates the importance of frequent, small-scale monitoring to resource management. Natural, drought-induced, noflow conditions prior to reservoir construction were eliminated by sustained, low-volume, reservoir outflow over five drought cycles. Temporary bank storage, caused by reservoirinduced, high-flow pulses, was observed at the Emporia State University Campus Woods field station during a prolonged recent drought. Gaining and losing stream conditions were observed in multi-year monitoring but, in drought years, losing conditions occurred only when reservoir releases generated stream flow. In drought and non-drought years, relatively low groundwater levels coincided with seasonal growing periods, reflecting the importance of transpiration by riparian vegetation on stream-aquifer exchange. An understanding of the drought response of the individual elements of a floodplain hydrologic system is important to management of the integrated resource.

The green chlorococcoid algal genus Hydrianum Rabenhorst is reported for the second time in North America since its original report in 1887 and 1909. Hydrianum crassiapex was collected in Kansas, in Douglas County from a railroad trestle pond north of Lawrence and in Michigan, in Charlevoix County from Lake Geneserath. This singlecelled alga is epiphytic on macrophytes or filamentous algae, attached by means of short, hyaline stalks. Cells are asymmetrical, spherical-ellipsoid shaped in appearance. Hydrianum is characterized by its unusual mode of sporulation: zoospores are released from an apical pore while the most morphological similar genus Characium releases zoospores through a lateral pore.