Walnut Creek Center for Education and Research

Thank you GEM! These hard working industrious folks came out to Walnut Creek and put many hours into trail building, cleaning up downed limbs and fixing fences. They completely remade and labeled the Phenology trail. Deep appreciation to all of you and your efforts!

Prescott College out at Walnut Creek Center for Education and Research. Environmental science with Ed Boyer, David Gilligan and Doug Humes. Beautiful days and cold mornings!

We are looking forward to a busy season here at WCCER and the oven quit working in the propane range in the group kitchen. It's so old that replacement parts aren't available so we need to get a different range. Do any of you happen to have a propane kitchen stove you don't need and can donate to the center?

We are sorry to have to announce that we are cancelling our Bio Blast event (scheduled for Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, 2017)
due to various reasons, including conflicts with other events and too few presenters/teachers for this one. Rather than put on a weak event we thought it best to cancel for this year.

We plan to try again next year, with more outreach, better advertising, etc. so we can put on an equal or better event than we did last year, which was so much fun!

There are several other fun science and learning events coming up that same weekend that you might enjoy. Here are a few of them:

The Arboretum at Flagstaff is having their annual open house Sunday, October 1st. - http://www.thearb.org

Flagstaff Festival of Science- an entire week of science events! - Sept. 22 through Oct. 1http://www.scifest.org/assets/pdf/FFS_Passport17_0910WEB.pdf

Arizona Insect Festival in Tucson - Oct. 1: http://www.arizonainsectfestival.com/2017-festival.html

The scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology are back to collect data from their wild to***co experiment here. Here's a couple of them counting predatory bugs.

Here's a link to the Prescott National Forest's brand new video about the historical buildings at WCCER and their current use as part of our biological field station. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/prescott/specialplaces/?cid=FSEPRD543077 Big thanks to the Prescott National Forest for featuring WCCER as a "special place."

Prescott National Forest - Special Places Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Register of Historic Places is part of a program that protects America's significant cultural resources. The Walnut Creek house and barn were built in the 1930s, and placed on the Register in 1993. The buildings are classic e...

WCCER is hosting an experiment by the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology from Jena, Germany. They are doing genetic studies of Nicotiana attenuata, a species of wild to***co that is native to the western United States. For this experiment they have created approximately 250 genotypes by crossing the Utah variety with the Arizona variety. We are planting approximately 1400 plants here, four plants from each of the 250 genotypes plus about 400 of the Utah variety as the control group. They are planting the same set of plants at another site in south west Utah.
Over the next two or three months they will be collecting data from both sites as the plants grow. The data will hopefully help scientists understand the differences in genetics as they relate to the production of various compounds in different parts of the plants at different times during the growth cycle. Many of these compounds are natural defenses against fungi and other predatory organisms. We are excited to host this kind of world-class research at WCCER.

Sorting out the irrigation supplies yesterday for the Nicotiana attenuata study which starts later this week. A big project for Walnut Creek!

New solar panels are now powering Walnut Creek. Now there is full-time power at the barn!