What Is a Field Station?
Field stations are outdoor-based centers for research, teaching, and engagement found all across the globe. The scale of field station studies ranges from molecular to organismal and from meter-square plots to landscapes thousands of kilometers in size. Some field stations have existed for well over a hundred years.
Field stations and marine labs (FSMLs) provide space for:
- observation of environmental change;
- training the next generation of scientists;
- professional development for educators, natural resource managers, and others;
- lifelong learning - engaging the public in science and discovery of the natural world; and
- physical space to test new technologies and methods.
Field stations and marine labs often maintain plant and animal collections, genomic and microbial datasets and anything that can be sampled in the natural environment. These repositories can include data on human interactions with ecosystems, photographs, illustrations and cultural objects. Such long-term data are particularly important to understanding the earth's processes, biodiversity and how humans relate to it and each other.
The societal value of field stations and marine labs is wide-ranging and includes:
- facilitating observation and tracking of environmental change,
- linking ecology and human health,
- sparking new biomedical technology, and fighting disease
- creating a collaborative learning community, and
- hosting formal and informal educational places for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM).
Field stations and their associated information, including the expertise of scientists, educators and staff, are especially valuable in the face of local to global changes in temperature, precipitation, storm intensity, phenology, and other factors associated with changing climate and land use.
Resource for information above: The Organization of Biological Field Stations at Fifty McNulty, et al, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Volume 98, Issue 4. October 2017