Free State Prairie Project
KU professor Dr. Helen Alexander and I presented an introduction to the Free State High School Prairie Project in Lawrence. In the fall of 2013 we were awarded grant money to establish a prairie restoration research area on an abandoned football field on the Free State High School campus. We designed an experiment with 6 replications of three treatments: native grasses, native grasses and forbs, native grasses and 2x forbs. This site provides the opportunity for several KU researchers to study changes in plant communities, soil structure, and soil microbe composition over time. Free State students, KU researchers, and KU students are developing collaborative experiments that ideally will be shared with middle and elementary schools and the Lawrence community.
Free State Prairie Project – Sept 2014 FreeStatePrairie_standards
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This was a fantastic model for collaboration between community, college, HS & lower grades! WOWZER!
I’m excited to see the data as this experiment continues!
Incredible opportunity for the students. So much work, but really cool experiment.
Great example of science at work!!
Really awesome collaborative effort!
Just putting in a plug for EPS (Earth Partnership for Schools).