OSU Botany Student Publishes Book About Tallgrass Prairie

Monday, February 22, 2010

By Joseph Dunn

(Feb. 22, 2010, STILLWATER, Okla.) – Matthew Allen, a botany doctoral student at Oklahoma State University, has been learning lessons about the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County, Okla., for more than four years.

Allen recorded the preserve’s history in a new book titled Lessons from the Prairie: Research at The Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Reserve, which includes research to aid scientists in their own studies.

Before now, no publications had summarized what is known of the preserve’s ecology, Allen said. So with more than 160 scientific publications produced since the late 1980s, his goal was to summarize and explain the large body of research.
Allen, a native of Sterling, Colo., co-authored the publication with Mike Palmer, of the OSU Department of Botany; Ulrich Melcher, OSU Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; and Robert Hamilton, The Nature Conservancy.

The book was supported by the OSU College of Arts & Sciences, OSU Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer, and National Science Foundation. It was published by the Oklahoma Academy of Science. Electronic copies are available at http://ecology.okstate.edu/tgp_booklet_web.pdf.

The OSU Department of Botany is one of 24 departments in the College of Arts & Sciences. To learn more visit http://cas.okstate.edu.

Please see a photo of Matthew Allen by visiting our Flickr site! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ostatenews/4379635738/