mountain research station

Students may learn ecology (and much else) in the wild

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 19:31:08 +0000

Students may learn ecology (and much else) in the wild Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/28/2024 - 12:31

Blake Puscher

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s Mountain Research Station is offering six field courses this summer, giving students the opportunity to study a wide range of disciplines in nature

This summer, some University of Colorado Boulder students will study topics ranging from field ornithology to bioinformatics in one of the most beautiful classrooms in the state.

The ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Mountain Research Station (MRS) is offering field courses including the Art and Environment Field School, Field Methods in Vegetation Ecology, Field Ornithology, Forest and Fire Ecology, Lake and Stream Ecology, and Bioinformatics in the Mountains.

In addition to a selection of classes, the MRS is also piloting a scholarship program for undergraduate field courses, in the hope of making them more accessible to students.

Scott Taylor, a ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is director of the Mountain Research Station.

The value of field experience

Scott Taylor, the station director, notes that most of the research station’s classes offer students the chance to build practical skills such as sample collection, field work and data analysis. For those who know what they want to do after graduation, this is a way to gain experience and employability, Taylor says, adding that it may clarify others’ interests and ambitions.

Because of its venue high in the Rocky Mountains, the MRS allows students to learn in ways that would not otherwise be possible, Taylor says. For example, the Art and Environment Field School helps students create art by exposing them to the natural beauty of the Front Range, and field ornithology allows them to observe bird activity in nature. Classes at the MRS give students access to what they are studying in its natural context.

“Not every university has its own field station that is just 45 minutes away,” Taylor says, adding that many students’ remote-learning experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the value of field studies.

Inspiring the next generation

A goal of the research station is to “inspire the next generation to care about and study the mountains, so we want to expand the number of ways people can engage with that—and that’s why there’s everything from art and the environment to bioinformatics to more classic ecological courses,” Taylor explains.

This further highlights an unusual aspect of MRS field courses, Taylor says: While all good classes impart students with knowledge and skills, many are limited by the constraints of the classroom. Field courses, however, are active learning experiences that are immersive and engaging, Taylor notes. The field courses offered at the MRS this summer bridge the gap between students and the inspiration of nature.

Students at the Mountain Research Station can study topics ranging from field ornithology to bioinformatics in a beautiful mountain setting. (Photo: Scott Taylor)

Because students also can stay at the MRS, they are immersed in an environment dedicated to ecology. According to Taylor, “you get to know your cohort of students and colleagues really well and be part of the Mountain Research Station community, which is not just students taking field courses; it’s also researchers who are out there for the summer studying various aspects of the mountains.”

Course information

Students can register for the Mountain Research Station’s summer field courses through the regular process once enrollment begins on March 11. Most classes are listed on the CU website as sections of EBIO 4100, but the bioinformatics class is EBIO 4460-750. Course credit is transferrable to other institutions and meets the application requirement for CU’s Environmental Studies program.

Each course is limited to 15 people, and courses may vary length, subject and prerequisites; all of this information is on the MRS website. Though they have different start and finish dates, the courses are all two or three weeks. Most classes have a prerequisite of either one year of course work in general biology or environmental science, or a general ecology course.

Tuition for these courses includes lodging in shared two-person cabins and meals at the MRS dining hall. Thanks to a recent generous anonymous donation, these additional costs will be covered for all field-course participants in 2024, which means that field courses at the MRS will be similarly priced to on-campus classes offering the same number of credit hours this summer.

Top image: Students, flora and fauna at the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Mountain Research Station (Photos: Scott Taylor)

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��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s Mountain Research Station is offering six field courses this summer, giving students the opportunity to study a wide range of disciplines in nature.

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‘Classroom in the sky’ inspires generations of researchers, students

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 20:34:46 +0000

‘Classroom in the sky’ inspires generations of researchers, students Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/02/2023 - 14:34

Cay Leytham-Powell

As the Mountain Research Station celebrates turning 100, a look back on its history—and toward its future

The sky was a perfect crystal blue as 50 undergraduate students from the University of Colorado Boulder spent their Saturday atop a mountain clustered around grasshoppers.

Plastic cages scarcely taller than the swaying golden grasses lay scattered about—some excluding the insects, others preventing their escape—all to see how the creatures responded to the vegetation within.

Rather than assist with the research, which was being conducted by a postdoctoral student from the University of Oregon, these general biology students hiked up a narrow, rugged path amid dense pine and yellowing aspens to this break in the trees, called Elk Meadow, to learn about research—both its legacy and its future almost 10,000 feet above sea level.

Top of the page: Bill Bowman works with a student up on the tundra. Photo by Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado Boulder. Above: The Mountain Research Station is run by a dedicated set of staff, students and faculty who maintain equipment, gather data and work on one of the most beautiful parts of ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ's campus. (Credit: ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ)

Just north of Nederland, about 26 miles from Boulder, is ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s “classroom in the sky”—the Mountain Research Station. It is the university’s highest research facility and is home to some of the world’s longest-running alpine research, from how trees respond to increasing wildfires, to the charismatic little pikas and chickadees that call these slopes home, to the changing composition of the soil itself.

Graduate students and some undergraduates in the natural sciences find their way here. And yet general biology students have rarely had the opportunity to visit and learn about the facility—until now.

“You usually see graduate students or faculty or staff up there, but undergrads are rarer,” explains Warren Sconiers, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EBIO) at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and the trip’s organizer.

“We (EBIO professors) want them to know what opportunities there are in research, and as soon as they realize it, and as soon as they want to (participate), get them out here as a part of the research at Boulder.”

The Mountain Research Station’s legacy

The Mountain Research Station has long been a pilar of support for alpine research and education. And that legacy is clear in the make-up of the place itself—from classrooms and offices to a dining hall and living spaces to bird-nest boxes used to study hybridization hanging on pine trees.

The Mountain Research Station, originally known as Science Lodge and Science Camp, was built in 1920 on what once was federal land. It is one of the oldest alpine field research facilities in the world, and one of the best, argues Bill Bowman, the station’s former director and a professor emeritus in EBIO. Bowman says that is in large part because of the staff that make this this place run and the expert leadership of John Marr, who became the station’s director in 1950.

Marr founded many of the programs the station is now known for, like the Mountain Climate Program, and provided the scientific groundwork for the current Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and researches how mountain ecosystems are transforming in response to climate change. It is the only LTER spot focusing on alpine environments in North America and is one of the original LTERs, continuously funded since 1980.

Additionally, through the Mountain Climate Program—created to evaluate the relationship between climate and the major ecosystem types of the Front Range—the station is home to the longest continuous record of greenhouse gas measurements in the continental United States, found above timberline at around 11,500 feet, and the second-longest in the world, behind only the station on Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

The long-term data that’s been collected here is really priceless, and I think being at a place that’s contributed so much to our understanding of long-term change in climate and ecosystems is really special.”

“It’s really been one of the main places on the planet where we’ve learned about long-term changes in climate and mountain ecosystems,” says Scott Taylor, the station’s director and an associate professor in EBIO. “The long-term data that’s been collected here is really priceless, and I think being at a place that’s contributed so much to our understanding of long-term change in climate and ecosystems is really special.”

In addition to the LTER program and Mountain Climate Program, the Boulder Creek Critical Zone Program and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) also conduct research near the station.

“We wouldn’t be able to do half of what we’ve done at the Mountain Research Station if it weren’t for (Marr’s) efforts,” Bowman says.

Taylor agrees, adding that the Mountain Research Station is “really unique. . . . Lots of places have research stations, but not a lot have this kind of history.”

That history, though, extends past just data to the people who have found their way here through the decades.

Generations of care

Bowman became involved with the station in the 1970s as an undergraduate in environmental, population and organismic biology (now EBIO and integrative physiology). At the time, Bowman worked with a graduate student in the lab of Professor Emeritus Jeff Mitton, who was studying forest genetics and needed help getting pine needle samples to run genetic analyses on them. Bowman, who loved to hike and snowshoe, volunteered.

Fast-forwarding through multiple graduate degrees, Bowman found himself back in Boulder, but this time as a professor. He was invited to participate in the LTER program, which at that time was more concerned with physical-environment conditions than with biology. Through his participation, Bowman began researching plant ecology and what factors determined which plants occurred where, how communities came together to alter the diversity, and how that influences ecosystem functioning.

It was through Bowman’s lab that Katharine Suding, now the principal investigator for the LTER program and a Distinguished Professor in EBIO, became involved in the program, then as a postdoctoral researcher.

In 1990, a few years after Bowman began his alpine research, he became the station’s director and stayed there for 30 years, until his retirement in 2021.

During his tenure, many repairs were completed on the station, including upgrading infrastructure and building the Moores-Collins Family Lodge and Kiowa classroom, which is across the parking lot from the Marr Lab, where the main offices are housed. He also helped start or expand several large research programs, which provided data for something that Bowman saw firsthand for decades: the effects of climate change on the station.

“I’ve clearly seen climate change come and establish itself as being something that we recognize and we can see symptoms of,” Bowman says. “Climate change is a factor that’s going to become more and more important in how the station operates.”

Additionally, under Bowman’s leadership, the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, was established at the station. For more than 20 years, that program has brought undergraduates, including Sconiers, from across the United States and the globe to Colorado during the summers.

“It’s gratifying for the faculty who set those (REU) programs up to be able to see the investment come to fruition and see it passed on,” Bowman says. “That’s one of the most satisfying things that I’ve gotten while being director of the Mountain Research Station.”

Inspiring those to come

Sconiers was a student at the University of California, Irvine when he learned about the station. At the time, he was interested in research and graduate school but knew he needed to join a lab to do that. He began contacting faculty around campus, and one of them, Suding, then at UC Irvine, said yes—and recommended he pursue an REU.

Scott Taylor's research applies genomics and field experiments to natural hybrid zones and closely related taxa in order to investigate the architecture of reproductive isolation—the hallmark of speciation—and the genetic bases of traits relevant to speciation.

He applied and was accepted by the program at the Mountain Research Station. While there, he helped collect data detailing how the alpine landscape had been altered in response to climate change.

“The REU was critical for my career,” Sconiers says. “It was my first opportunity to devise a project from scratch, so come up with my own ideas and have it fit into a research interest, and then I got to collect all of the data, so I got to carry it through. In class, you’re just learning how this works or doing small versions of things, but this was the first chance I had to do everything.”

After graduating, Sconiers was a lab tech for Suding for a year before going on to graduate school for entomology. He eventually became a professor at the University of the Ozarks in Arkansas and stayed there for a few years.

It was about that time that he ran into Suding, who told him about an opening at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

That brought him back to the university, this time as a teaching professor and a researcher with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research—which runs the Mountain Research Station—where he studies how plant species composition affects insect diversity at high elevations.

By bringing his general biology students to the station, he hopes to introduce the next generation of scholars to its possibilities.

“The idea of the trip was so the students can talk with the faculty who do research there and potentially just be up there for research and other things, so really just to take this resource that’s unique to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and introduce it to students,” Sconiers says. “Let them know that you can have an interest, and that’s enough to get involved.”

Taylor, who hopes to use his tenure as director to make the station more visible and inclusive for everyone, is thrilled.

“There’s the scientific legacy of the station, but then also there’s one of inspiring generations to care about alpine ecosystems and mountain ecosystems,” Taylor says.

“That’s partially why I love field stations. They have such a big impact—a disproportional impact.”

As the Mountain Research Station celebrates turning 100, a look back on its history—and toward its future.

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Mountain art residency attracts participants like moths to a flame

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 22:29:27 +0000

Mountain art residency attracts participants like moths to a flame Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 08/31/2019 - 16:29

Kenna Bruner

New program aims to promote cross-disciplinary research between art and science, and to support new creative works

Aaron Treher appears in an image titled "Street Light Project: Piney Creek Site." Photo by Barbara Bosworth.

In a small, brightly lit cabin nestled in a mountain forest west of Boulder, moths and other night creatures rushed toward the mercury vapor streetlights glowing inside. After dark, hundreds of moths and insects of many varieties flew into the open door and swarmed around the lights as part of an art installation conceived by Aaron Treher, who is a contemporary artist.

Treher, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in art practices at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the first recipient of a residency program launched this summer to promote cross-disciplinary research between art and science, and to support new creative work by a selected artist-in-residence.

Treher’s project documented the interaction of bugs and streetlights in a gallery space.

The Mountain Research Station Sculpture Residency Program is a collaboration among sculpture and post-studio practice in the Department of Art and Art History at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, the Mountain Research Station (MRS) and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). The residency includes the use of two remote MRS cabins, one for the artist to stay in for two weeks and the other to use as a studio or gallery space.

“I’ve been wanting to do this project for a long time,” Treher said.

An insect alights on a street lamp in Aaron Treher's work at the Mountain Research Station.

“The point of the work was to get people to look at these older style streetlights and consider them as cultural objects while also seeing how they interact with the ecology of a place. People reacted in an excited way and MRS is a great space for that kind of work. I had some great conversations with researchers and students about the intersection between art and science.”

The point of the work was to get people to look at these older style streetlights and consider them as cultural objects while also seeing how they interact with the ecology of a place."

Treher’s art practice focuses on building, documenting and studying forms of architecture and infrastructure that serve as niche habitats for specific animal species, such as barn swallows and bats. His artworks utilize sculpture, photography, architectural design, fieldwork and ecological survey.

“We think of street lights in terms of public safety,” Treher said. “The type of streetlights I’m working with have also become a form of habitat for a specific set of animals. I’ve been trying for a long time to find a place that would allow me to document the interaction of bugs, bats and streetlights. Most gallery spaces wouldn’t be too happy about hundreds of bugs showing up in their space. This residency was a perfect opportunity for me to make that happen.”

The residency program is directed by Richard Saxton, professor in art practices at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

“The main point of the residency is to create relationships between science and art,” Saxton said. “We really believe an artist needs to be working deeper in other fields, not just art, so we’re pushing hard to produce what we think of as the next generation of artists and cultural leaders. That includes being able to understand science topics like climate change and have first-hand experience with it. We’ve dedicated ourselves to that engagement with the world.”

The concept of a sculpture is much wider than people give it credit for, Saxton said. In Treher’s piece, the sculpture involved using the entire cabin.

“When we talk about sculpture, we’re also talking about installation art, outdoor participatory art,” Saxton said.

An important aspect of this residency is interacting with the classes and researchers at the MRS and creating work that can engage audiences that include K-12 students, undergraduates and graduates, and researchers who come from around the world.

Street lamps are visible inside of a cabin at the Mountain Research Station, where Alex Treher's creation underscores the interplay between the human-built environment and indigenous creatures, in this case insects. `

The residency program is one way that the sculpture and post-studio practice area promotes cross-pollination with scientists, researchers and policy makers whose work centers on rural environments, conservation and ecology. The residency allows space for creative voices to join many important science-based conversations.

The artists-in-residence will share their work through open studio events and presentations. Immersed in the workings of a science research station, artists can create site-specific installations, ecological projects, walking and hiking projects and collaborative experiments.

The residency will be awarded annually to an alumnus or graduating Masters of Fine Arts students in the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ sculpture and post-studio practice area. Artists will spend two weeks during the summer on the MRS campus.

At 9,500 feet in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, MRS is an interdisciplinary INSTAAR research centerdevoted to the study of mountain ecosystems. Alpine ecosystems support an abundance of diverse and rare species that are being affected by climate change. For nearly 100 years, MRS has provided research and educational opportunities for scientists and students.

“We want to continue offering more than just the studio on campus,” Saxton said. “We’re really focused on site-based work. There may be some preliminary research they’ve done, but the project is going to come out of their time there.”

Grad student is first recipient of a residency program launched this summer to promote cross-disciplinary research between art and science.

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mountain research station

Students may learn ecology (and much else) in the wild

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