Draft Genome Sequence of Fusarium sp. Strain DS 682, a Novel Fungal Isolate from the Grass Rhizosphere

ABSTRACT The novel fungal strain, Fusarium sp. strain DS 682, was isolated from the rhizosphere of the perennial grass, Bouteloua gracilis, at the Konza Prairie Biological Station in Kansas. This fungal strain is common across North American grasslands and is resilient to environmental fluctuations. The draft genome is estimated to be 97.2% complete.

Increasing groundwater CO2 in a mid-continent tallgrass prairie: Controlling factors

Alkalinity and groundwater CO2 have increased linearly from 1991–2017 at the Konza Prairie Biological Station (KPBS), a tallgrass prairie research site in northeastern Kansas. The projected increase in groundwater alkalinity (as HCO3-) and CO2 based on an earlier trend was confirmed in 2016, with predictions nearly equal to recent values (e.g., 408 ppm vs 410 ppm as HCO3-, respectively). Both the water balance and groundwater CO2 trends within the study watershed could be impacted by long-term changes in land use and climate: 1) encroachment of woody vegetation (1983–2012) as a result of the 4-year fire return interval, 2) re-introduction of bison (phased in, 1994–2006), 3) increases in air temperature, and 4) changes in precipitation patterns. If only linear processes are driving the observed water chemistry changes, then the linear increase in air temperature (1983–2017) that stimulates soil respiration may be the most likely factor enhancing groundwater HCO3- and CO2, as air temperature has risen ~1 to 1.4°C over 34 years. If groundwater chemistry is driven by more threshold behaviour, woody encroachment, which was linear but in three distinct phases, may drive groundwater chemistry. The ~2 to 3‰ decrease in the discontinuous δ13C data in the groundwater-dominated stream suggests enhanced inputs of microbially-respired labile carbon, CO2 sourced from C3 (woody vegetation), or a combination of the two.

Growing Up with the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research Program

As someone who began working at a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site prior to beginning his PhD studies, there is little doubt that the LTER program has been a major influence on all aspects of my scientific career. Working within the LTER program has provided me with great appreciation for the power of collaboration, large-scale and long-term experiments, and cross-disciplinary interactions. Scientists within the LTER network are among the most successful and influential in the world, and thus associating with them has many positive professional and personal consequences. Among the most valuable professional benefits are opportunities for exposure to ideas well beyond what a scientist experiences in a more typical research environment and the opportunity to collaborate and publish with scientists who are leaders in fields other than his or her own. My experience with the LTER program began in January 1982 with my employment at the Konza Prairie site (KNZ) in northeastern Kansas. I had recently completed an MS (in botany with a focus on subalpine plant ecophysiology) at the University of Wyoming, and I knew nothing about the new (at the time) LTER program. But at the urging of a fellow graduate student, Don Young (who eventually took a position at Virginia Commonwealth University and has long been involved with the Virginia Coast Reserve site), I applied for a research assistant position advertised in Science. This position description specifically highlighted that skills and experience were needed in abiotic measurements (i.e., installing a weather station and precipitation gauge networks and taking charge of monitoring climatic variables); these were tasks with which I had familiarity as part of my graduate program. As a lifelong resident of the western third of the United States and a fan of the mountains (often openly speaking negatively about grasslands!), I was not keen to even consider a position in eastern Kansas. But Don Young was an effective advocate and stressed the importance of keeping an open mind, something I try to stress with my students today. After presenting my research at the meeting of the Ecological Society of America in 1981, Don and I and a few other graduate students stopped in Manhattan, Kansas, as we drove cross-country from Bloomingt on, Indiana, to Laramie, Wyoming.