News

A broad analysis of lake water quality across the United States reveals human-driven climate change is increasing risks of high toxin concentrations from algal blooms in U.S. lakes, posing increasing hazards to people and wild and domestic animals, including dogs.

The University of Kansas Field Station has scheduled a prescribed burn of part of the Rice Woodland tract of the Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve for the week of October 23–27.

The annual monarch butterfly migration is well underway. The insects are due to arrive in Mexico just in time for the Day of the Dead in early November. For decades, scientists with the nonprofit group Monarch Watch have relied on thousands of volunteers to try and figure out the mysteries behind…

About 10 barrels of oil and 1,500 barrels of industrial salt water spilled from an oil pipeline into a creek near the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge in central Kansas earlier this month. Rattlesnake Creek runs through the refuge, an important migratory stop for birds. The spill happened outside…

Several public events in early October will celebrate the completion of “here-ing,” an environmentally embedded artwork by Janine Antoni at the KU Field Station. A two-mile walking labyrinth, “here-ing” is shaped like the anatomy of the human ear that traverses a reseeded former cropland and…

Micah Unruh, a doctoral candidate in ecology & evolutionary biology, is one of two KU doctoral candidates awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award. He received $41,000 to travel to Chile to research soil carbon storage. His advisor is Sharon Billings,…

Monarch Watch founder Chip Taylor is interviewed in this Flatland KC story about a new study that he endorses.

Steve Kraske interviews Ted Harris, assistant research professor, on KCUR's Up To Date, about the implications of the global study on microplastics in lakes, which was published in Nature.

For Van Go apprentice artist Barack Bennett-Robinson, drawing from emotion is part of making meaningful art. Bennett-Robinson created a bench for local conservation organization Monarch Watch. The bench memorializes Sarah Schmidt, who had worked at Monarch Watch for several years. Sarah, her…

Two researchers from the University of Kansas are shedding light on the presence of microplastics in Kansas lakes and reservoirs alongside more than 70 other researchers in a global study, according to KU. Ted Harris, an associate research professor for the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for…