October 28, 2009 – Our Town – OWU

OWU professor David Johnson brought students from his “Organisms and their Environment” class to Ohio Wesleyan’s Bohannan Nature Preserve to collect data on tree sizes and species, ground cover vegetation, and insect diversity. This course is shared between the Botany-Microbiology and Zoology departments.

Photo by John Holliger

Living Laboratories
Ohio Wesleyan’s nature preserves provide student research opportunities

Ohio Wesleyan University’s two forested nature preserves provide access to diverse habitats and wildlife that provide science students with life-sized laboratories. The land for both preserves was donated by area families who wanted to maintain the natural condition of these Delaware County locations, while providing education and research opportunities for OWU students.

Many natural sciences classes regularly visit these preserves for research that ranges from monitoring microbes, plants, fungi, invertebrates, and birds to testing specific hypotheses about natural ecosystems. In addition, many students in botany-microbiology, chemistry, geology, and zoology classes conduct independent research in the preserves.

“The OWU nature preserves are a very rich resource for our faculty and our students, and they are actively used in both teaching and student-faculty research,” says Amy Downing, Ph.D., associate professor of zoology and chair of the preserves committee. “The results of many of the research projects conducted in these preserves are presented at national scientific meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals. The preserves also provide critical fragments of forest habitat in a highly-developed central Ohio landscape.”

Because OWU’s Kraus Nature Preserve is surrounded by a suburban residential area with an adjacent water-treatment plant, it facilitates research that focuses on the natural woodland, pond and stream ecosystems, and impact of development on these ecosystems.

Photo courtesy of OWU’s Department of Zoology

The 80-acre Kraus Wilderness Preserve was transferred to the University in three separate installments between 1977 and 1997. Donated by the late Dr. and Mrs. John Kraus, the land in southern Delaware County is composed of mature beech-maple and oak-hickory forests, transected by a deep ravine and creek. The preserve also contains two ponds and a field lab.

An endowment from the couple provides up to six annual OWU student research fellowships, which have included the study of soil microbiology, deer browse effects, and fungal endophyte-plant interaction, as well as amphibian, bird, small-mammal, and invasive-plant population surveys.

Land for the more remote Bohannan Nature Preserve was donated by the late Elizabeth and Robert Bohannan in 1981. In 1991, Elizabeth was named an honorary OWU alumna. The Bohannan Preserve is a 55-acre site with old growth beech-maple woods set within a larger forest that sits upon Ohio Shale bluffs overlooking terraced floodplain woodlands along Alum Creek in northeastern Delaware County. This undisturbed location has been used for numerous OWU student projects, including some done in collaboration with graduate students from The Ohio State University and Miami University.

For more information about Ohio Wesleyan’s nature preserves, visit naturepreserves.owu.edu.

– Linda O’Horo