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Friends of Nachusa Grasslands 2025 Scientific Research Grants – $77,801

To support scientific endeavors, Friends of Nachusa Grasslands awards monetary grants to qualified candidates conducting scientific research significant to Nachusa Grasslands.

Research projects focus primarily on prairie, savanna, wetland, woodland, and stream habitat management, such as prescribed fire, seed collection, weed control, general or specific flora or faunal populations, and natural areas restoration.

Thanks to a 1:1 challenge grant and the generous support of individual donors, organizations, and foundations, Friends has awarded $77,801 for 2025-2026, divided in varying amounts among ten researchers.

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Donations to Friends can be designated to Scientific Research Grants.

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2025 Grant Recipients, Projects, and Amounts

Samantha Berk, MSc Northern Illinois University. “Quantifying the functional impacts of bison grazing intensity on plant communities in tallgrass prairie restorations.” This project will explore the impacts that varying bison grazing intensities have on plant functional diversity, vegetation structure, and ecosystem function. By studying these functional impacts in the natural mosaic of varied grazing intensity at Nachusa, we will better understand how grazing can be applied to maximize management objectives and create healthy, functioning ecosystems. ($9,889)
 
KC Carter, MS, Illinois Natural History Survey. “Using zoo-centric metabarcoding to identify bumblebee-plant interactions within low-quality and high-quality habitats in Nachusa Grasslands.” This study addresses the urgent decline of bumblebee diversity, abundance, and distributions in Illinois by investigating how habitat quality and invasive species impact bumblebee-plant interactions and forage availability. Using network analysis, DNA metabarcoding, and macronutrient analyses, the research will examine bumblebee assemblages and diet across degraded, restored, and remnant landscapes, identifying key plant species essential for the resilience and stability of bumblebee communities. ($8,432)
 
Kamal Ehrlich, MSc Northern Illinois University, “Directed research grant investigating bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).” Both the abundance and persistence in the soil seed bank in areas of Nachusa with high, medium, and low levels of invasion as well as approaches for mitigating the invasive species will be studied. They are being co-advised by Dr. Holly Jones (NIU) and Dr. Elizabeth Bach (TNC, Nachusa Grasslands). ($16,000 in 2025)
 
Tyler Karp, PhD University of Chicago. “Do changes in grazing intensity impact burned areas in tallgrass prairies?” Dr. Karp will seek to take advantage of Nachusa managements' decision to concentrate bison in the Northern units during the 2025 growing season to test if and how changing Bison density impacts the total area burned during prescribed fires. To do this, they will quantify grass fuel loads, plant community, grazing lawn/path area, wallow area, and burned area in North (bison to increased bison), South (bison to no bison), and East (no bison to no bison) units before and after shifting bison distributions. ($7,932)

Richard King, PhD, Northern Illinois University. “Monitoring Headstarted Blanding’s Turtles at Nachusa Grasslands.” Blanding’s turtle management at Nachusa Grasslands entered a new phase with the initiation of a headstarting program in 2019. The first release of 37 headstarted turtles (20 equipped with radio transmitters) occurred in 2020, another 23 headstarted turtles (18 equipped with radio transmitters) were released in 2022. Dr. King and his team plan to capture turtles for monitoring purposes as well as re-equip adult females captured with new transmitters so they may be tracked during the next several nesting seasons. ($4,640)

Ryan Klopf, PhD, Virginia Tech. “The effects of bison reintroduction on tallgrass prairie plant diversity and soil carbon.” In 18 plantings (10 with bison; 8 without bison), plant community composition and total soil C and N (0-10 cm) in 2025 will be measured and compared to measurements of these same variables collected in 2008. This resampling will enable an examination of both changes in plant diversity with or without bison across nearly two decades of restoration, and whether bison reintroduction has altered changes in soil C and N across time. ($13,000)
 
Gavin McNicol, PhD, University of Illinois Chicago. “Effects of ecosystem type, environmental gradients, and prescribed fire on Midwest ecosystem climate interactions.” Dr. McNicol and his team aim to continue quantifying the greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of Nachusa prairies, woodlands, and wetlands. In 2025, they hope to capture the effects of no prescribed burn being conducted in the prairie and wetland ecosystem units in Tellabs West, which will help us understand how temporary fire suppression modulates the GHG exchanges we have seen during the 2023 and 2024 growing seasons, which were both preceded by burns in the prior spring or fall. ($4,508)
 
Jason Robinson, PhD, Illinois Natural History Survey. “Occupancy and Use of Artificial Nest Structures by Bumble Bees.” Nesting habits of many bumble bees are poorly understood. Dr. Robinson will compare the occupancy of several different artificial nests (by nesting bumble bees) across the Nachusa Grasslands site to determine whether some combinations may be preferred by Rusty Patched Bumble Bee. This project seeks to answer some basic questions about the relative utility of some different strategies for enticing bumble bees to nest in artificial structures. ($3,600)
 
Ethan Rose, PhD Candidate, Michigan State University. “Assessing bison reintroduction outcomes across the tallgrass prairie.” This research will conclude a 3-year investigation (2-year for restored prairies) of the individual and interactive roles of climate and bison grazing in plant communities across the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. This project will assess the efficacy of bison reintroduction as a conservation and restoration tool in different environmental contexts. This research will compare plant communities at Nachusa grasslands with and without bison grazing to those of similar sites across the tallgrass prairie region. These findings will inform bison management for prairie restoration and maintenance at Nachusa Grasslands by determining the climatic drivers of grazing response. ($2,000)
 
Max Scheel, PhD Candidate, University of Notre Dame. “Shifts in vegetation structure across a chronosequence of grassland restorations.” Recent developments in remote sensing have provided the capability of taking high resolution remote sensing imagery over large, management-level scales. This project intends to use this remote sensing technique to provide Nachusa Grasslands with baseline remote sensing data and measure how structural complexity has changed with respect to restoration age in a large-scale restored grassland ecosystem. ($7,800)

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For project descriptions, recipients and award amounts from other years, see Science at Nachusa Grasslands.

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UPDATED 02/2025