A remarkable strength of Archbold Biological Station is the clear linkages among research, conservation, and education programs. Fundamental research continues to inform conservation decisions. Conservation problems pose challenging research questions for us to address. Conservation successes inspire participants in our education programs.
In 1941, when Archbold Biological Station was founded, scrub habitat was extensive on the Lake Wales Ridge, and on other scrub ridges throughout Florida. There was little foresight of the vital role Archbold Biological Station would play to help save this ecosystem. As scrub habitat was destroyed and fragmented by urban development and agriculture the research conducted by Archbold was vital to:
recognizing the scrub system as one of global importance and under threat
spurring acquisition of the last remaining parcels of Florida scrub on the Lake Wales Ridge
understanding the conservation needs of some of the rarest listed species in North America
and promoting the types of land management activities, prescribed fire in particular, required to keep the scrub ecosystem viable.
Conservation joined research and education, becoming the third integral component of the Archbold mission. We focus Archbold's land acquisition programs on protecting the last precious remnants of scrub around the Station. Our conservation role has increasing relevance and urgency.
In response to the loss of scrub habitat state-wide, Archbold Biological Station, in conjunction with many other conservation partners notably The Nature Conservancy, helped identify and target lands for protection and guide a successful public land acquisition program that has trebled the area of protected Lake Wales Ridge habitats since 1985, with nearly $70M spent on acquiring nearly 25,000 acres, so that now about half of the remaining scrub and sandhill habitat is in protected lands. Our research, conservation planning, and these land acquisition programs have contributed towards improving the conservation status of 56 species listed as state or federally threatened or endangered, or globally threatened, 36 of which are endemics restricted to scrub habitats. In the last few years, using Archbold data to guide and prioritize fire management needs for conserving natural communities and associated species. Hundreds of acres per year of prescribed burns have been conducted on conservation lands along the Lake Wales Ridge (TNC Fire Strike Team Annual Reports).
Nowadays many Archbold studies are funded to focus on specific conservation problems, but most of our work is still the fundamental research essential to understanding how a natural community or species is adapted to environmental conditions. Only by unraveling the basics such as the diversity of species are present in this ecosystem, the life history patterns of plants and animals, responses to ecosystem processes like fire, and the role of nutrients and food resources, are we able to knowledgeably inform conservation decisions in Florida scrub habitats. Furthermore, many of our studies have been conducted over decades so that we can differentiate long-term trends, either natural or human induced, from annual and seasonal variation.
All of us at Archbold remember daily that the very survival of the scrub ecosystem, which has so informed, inspired, and challenged us as scientists, will continue to depend on us conveying our feeling of wonder and scientific adventure to others. Scrub is not an ecosystem easily appreciated by those that disdain science; without scientific understanding the ability to grasp and fathom its wonder and beauty is greatly diminished. John Jerome wrote in his 1994 essay on the Last Great Places—entitled Scrub Beautiful Scrub—"here is all this biology, working all these complex schemes to accommodate the geographical harshness that soil, climate, altitude and aspect have dealt it …What’s so beautiful about scrub, you eventually come to realize, is that it works; that it simply is." Understanding this type of beauty, observed the late Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, is "that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound."
conservation