Key takeaways:
The University’s Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve is a magnet for the world’s top ecologists.
Work at Cedar Creek has changed the course of ecology by, for example, revealing the importance of biodiversity and the potential value of retired farm fields in combatting climate change.
At Cedar Creek, adult, K-12, and college/university students enjoy priceless learning opportunities.
Studying the web of life in the waters of rural Cedar Bog Lake in the 1930’s, University of Minnesota graduate student Raymond Lindemann discovered basic principles governing ecosystems and launched the field of ecosystem ecology.
And that was just the beginning.
In the eight decades since then, the College of Biological Sciences’ 5,500-acre Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, located an hour north of the Twin Cities, has grown into a magnet for the world’s top ecologists. Home to not only Cedar Bog Lake but woodlands, former farm fields, and its namesake stream, “Cedar Creek” researchers at the site have produced one game-changing discovery after another.
“Cedar Creek is best known for demonstrating that grasslands with more plant species are more productive, resilient, and resistant to disease and invasion,” says Eric Seabloom, a University of Minnesota professor and the director of Cedar Creek.
“The results of this long-term biodiversity experiment, led by ecology professor David Tilman, inspired hundreds of studies around the world,” he says.
Today, "The power of biodiversity demonstrated in Tilman’s work is widely recognized and woven through scientific fields like agriculture and conservation," he adds. "It underpins planning at scales ranging from the United Nations to the University’s own strategic plan."
Meeting the carbon crisis
Work at Cedar Creek has also cast light on a global dilemma: how to use natural and agricultural land to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the carbon in soil.
Much of Cedar Creek’s sandy, unproductive soil lies on farmland abandoned over the last century. Such land is often overlooked as a potential carbon “sink” (carbon storage site).
In fact, grasslands store a third of the world’s terrestrial carbon, most of it below ground, beyond the reach of “increasingly common, catastrophic wildfires,” Seabloom says.
In forests, “Most carbon is aboveground,” he explains. “It’s not protected from fire. But grasslands store most of their carbon belowground, and grassland plants quickly resprout after a fire. As wildfires become more common, we need to consider the role of grasslands and retired agricultural fields in storing carbon.”
Seabloom recently led a study at Cedar Creek showing that agricultural tilling leads to loss of soil carbon. However, former farm fields can keep accumulating and storing carbon for many decades — and more recent work has shown that fire may increase this benefit.
Even with regular burning, “After tilling stops, these soils can store carbon over long periods of time,” he says.
From Minnesota to the world
While Cedar Creek’s impact extends worldwide, it is still just one site with a specific mix of factors like plant life, soil, and climate.
“This creates a serious challenge,” Seabloom says. “How do we know if the findings at Cedar Creek are relevant elsewhere when experiments may not reflect other global conditions?”
By running identical experiments at the same time at different locations, that’s how.
This inspired solution sprang from a meeting of minds among Seabloom, fellow University ecology professor Elizabeth Borer, and a few of their colleagues.
“In 2006, we realized that there was an opportunity to replicate our experiments at multiple sites,” Borer says. “We got buy-in from colleagues around the world. After the first year, we had about 25 sites, and this has continued to grow.
“Our work went viral before there was ‘viral.’
“These early conversations led to the creation of the largest and longest- running globally replicated experiment in ecology, the Nutrient Network (NutNet), in 2007 and more recently the Disturbance and Recovery Across Grasslands Network (DRAGNet). Together, these networks examine the effects of nutrient pollution, grazing, and soil tilling at sites ranging from the Minnesota Prairies to the savannas of the Serengeti.”
Supported by Cedar Creek, Borer and Seabloom now coordinate standardized experiments across more than 230 sites in 30 countries. The powerful research collaboration they created includes hundreds of scientists worldwide.
Cedar Creek’s Global Reputation — One student’s story
The foundational work at Cedar Creek is a part of ecology classes at universities across the world. This global reach can be seen through the experiences of graduate student Clarissa Moore. Though she grew up not far from Cedar Creek, Moore first heard about Cedar Creek as a biology student at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Later, when studying abroad in South Africa, it happened again.
“My professors in South Africa called [Cedar Creek] one of the birthplaces of grassland ecology, and encouraged me to apply (for an internship),” she says.
The variety of work, led by “a lot of different faculty,” appealed to her.
“I knew that an internship at Cedar Creek could help me get my foot in the door with a research lab at the University of Minnesota, where I wanted to go for graduate school,” she explains. “So after college, I got an internship and spent four months there, maintaining experiments, collecting data and falling in love with native Minnesota plants and their ecosystems.”
Moore also picked up experience in performing a group research project and became a mentor to younger students in plant identification and statistics.
Along the way she met several graduate students who offered advice and taught her and other students about the research going on at the University. On weekends, she and other interns volunteered with The Nature Conservancy. There she met Eric Chien, a former University graduate researcher who studied restoration ecology, and soon realized that restoring native plant communities was exactly what she wanted to do.
Chien urged her to check out professor Dan Larkin's lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology.
She did, and "A couple years later, I’m now a PhD student in the Larkin lab!
"Cedar Creek was critical in narrowing down my research interests, revealing opportunities, and providing experience that [led to me being] admitted to my Conservation Sciences graduate program,” she says. “Working at Cedar Creek forced me to slow down and gain familiarity with the plants that I previously overlooked, and showed me that plant community health is the basis of wildlife habitat and ecosystem functioning.”
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