The effort to restored more than 1/4 of the park's area into a
tallgrass prairie was conducted by the Northern Flint Hills Audubon
Society. At this cache you will have the opportunity to enjoy a
short hike around a typical tallgrass prairie, which once covered
most of the midwest.
Feel free to upload any pictures you may have taken during your
visit to the prairie. Pictures are always welcome.
What is a Prairie?
A prairie is an ecosystem that is largely made up of grasses.
Climate, fire and grazing create the conditions necessary for the
development and maintenance of a prairie. Once, grasslands
(prairies) covered the midwest - north into Canada and south into
Texas. The western, drier areas were Shortgrass prairies, and the
eastern, moister areas (into Illinois) were Midgrass prairies. In
between them was the Tallgrass prairie.
The Flint Hills region encompasses over 1.6 million hectares
extending throughout much of eastern Kansas from near the
Kansas-Nebraska border south into northeastern Oklahoma, and
contains the largest remaining area of unplowed tallgrass prairie
in North America.
Restoration Research
The goal of restoration ecology is to repair the diversity and
dynamics of ecosystems degraded by human activities, but also
presents a valuable opportunity for basic research aimed at testing
ecological theory. Restoration studies in tallgrass prairie
are particularly timely because human activities have resulted in
widespread loss and degradation of this ecosystem. The nearly
irreversible nature of plant composition once established from seed
mixtures underscores the critical need to understand factors
influencing diversity and functional response (above and
belowground) of restored systems at the onset, over the long term,
and in response to global change.
Restoration research spans plant, soil, and ecosystem response
to disturbance and subsequent recovery through ecological
restoration, with an emphasis on the conversion of cropland to
native grassland. Our approach to understanding potential
feedbacks between plant community development and recovery of soil
structure and function in restored systems has been largely
experimental with the goal of using this information to guide
restoration and advance ecological theory.
On to the cache
After that succint lesson on the kansan prairie ecosystem I tell
you what you are looking for. It is a camo-taped micro container
which has a log only. You have to bring your own writing tool. This
trail is frequently used by exercising muggles and the fields
behind you are constantly visited by teams of muggles playing
sports. Enough said please be very careful and try not to be
muggled while searching for the cache. Final request, please
replace the cache as you find it.