About the KU Field Station

The KU Field Station, the biological field station of the University of Kansas, was established in 1947. Its mission is to foster scholarly research, environmental education and science-based stewardship of natural resources. Since the late 1990s, the Field Station has been managed by the Kansas Biological Survey & Center Ecological Research.

All field station sites are situated within the grassland/forest transition zone (ecotone) of North America, where the eastern deciduous forest and tallgrass prairie biomes meet. Faculty, students and visiting researchers use the Field Station's diverse native and managed habitats, experimental systems, support facilities and long-term databases to undertake an a wide variety of scholarly activities.

The Field Station is available to any person or group whose research, teaching or conservation interests are compatible with our mission. The Armitage Education Center, in addition to being a flexible space for research and educational activities, is a highly popular site for KU faculty and staff meetings and retreats. We also offer K-12 education and public outreach programs.

We are part of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a 30-year, continentwide ecological monitoring project and one of the most extensive long-term initiatives in the history of the National Science Foundation.

It also holds membership in the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers and the Organization of Biological Field Stations.

Visit our KU Field Station web mapping application  for administrative, ecological and hydrological spatial data on the Field Station. An archive of historical aerial photography, beginning in the 1940s, shows how the area has changed through time. All data within this application can also be downloaded in GIS, Google Earth, and web service formats from the metadata catalog of the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research.