Facilities


The renovated Dewey ranch house was dedicated in 1997 as the Hulbert Research Center. This 3-story limestone building houses the station administrative offices, library, reference herbarium and animal collections, and includes lodging space for visiting investigators. A classroom and small conference room can accommodate scientific meetings, workshops, and educational functions for up to 40 participants. Housing facilities are heated and air-conditioned and include single and double rooms, a large bunkroom, bathroom facilities with showers, kitchen, outdoor patio with picnic tables, and desk space with telephone. Two small on-site residences provide longer-term housing for site staff and graduate students. The large limestone barn contains an open, unheated meeting area and storage space for research equipment. The Ecology Laboratory building contains three laboratories, computer room, plant processing and root washing facilities, bathroom with shower, and researchersı shop. The Konza Fire Station building houses fire trucks and equipment, maintenance shop, and site managerıs office. All station buildings have T-1 line computer connectivity to the K-State campus.

Various ongoing research programs maintain other on-site facilities such as weather stations, stream monitoring stations, atmospheric gas flux instrument towers, grazing exclosures, irrigated prairie plots, and rain-out shelters. The site includes a 992 ha bison enclosure, a bison corral and handling facility, a 325 ha cattle enclosure, eight smaller (5.1 ha) experimental grazing enclosures, a 28 ha area dedicated to small plot experimental manipulations, and a series of tallgrass prairie restorations on former crop fields. A computing and GIS center and other laboratories are located nearby at the LTER research facilities on the Kansas State University campus. The station does not maintain field vehicles for visiting researchers, however good gravel roads provide easy access to most areas.