The Ohio State University at Marion
Science Café explores The Prairies of Marion County
By Wayne Rowe
Oct 4, 2008, 07:50

The Ohio State University at Marion invites the community to the Infinity Restaurant in the historic Harding Hotel, 267 West Center Street, downtown Marion, for a free monthly community dialogue on science entitled, Science Café, Tuesday, October 7, 7 p.m.

The restaurant will have plenty of fine food and drink for sale. We begin at 7:00 p.m. but arrive earlier for dinner. Our Science Cafés feature a lively conversation with a scientist about current science topics. At a Science Café you can learn about the latest issues in science, chat with a scientist in plain language, meet new friends, speak your mind, and talk with your mouth full. The overriding goal of Ohio State Marion's Science Café is to overcome reluctance to learning about science and to make science less mysterious.

The Tuesday café discussion centers on The Prairies of Marion County. The discussion will be presented by Larry Yoder, Associate Professor Emeritus at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center, Goshen College, Indiana.

The Sandusky Plains at one time covered about 300 square miles of Marion, Crawford, and Wyandot counties. Today, only scattered remnants survive. Dr. Yoder will discuss some of these remnants, the prairies of Marion County.

He will focus on the specific history of Marion County prairies and look at the impact of human activity on that ecosystem. That impact ranges from destruction of local habitat (agriculture and urban development) to altering bioregions with climate change.

Dr. Yoder was a biologist at Ohio State Marion from 1972 to 1981. During that time he led a prairie restoration project that used seeds and plants from Marion prairies to create a prairie on the grounds of the Marion campus. That prairie is the focal point of the Larry R. Yoder Prairie Nature Center at Ohio State Marion.

According to Yoder, "Folks are familiar with the Sandusky Plain and the Marion Prairies as they are now, and I'll describe them as we best can speculate from the historical and natural record.

"We can use the local prairie ecosystem for those in attendance to contribute their observations about the human choices that led to the changes that have come to the prairie and the basis for those choices," he explained.

Dr. Yoder will lead a tour of the campus prairie, starting at 1 p.m. on October 7. The tour will conclude with a visit to the Claridon prairie. For details, contact Dr. Brian McEnnis.

For more information about the Ohio State Marion Science Café, contact Dr. Brian McEnnis at mcennis.1@osu.edu.

Upcoming Science Cafés

October 28, 2008
Fritz Scheuren, Vice-President for Statistics
National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago
Elections and Exit Polls

December 2, 2008
Christopher Daddis
Department of Psychology
The Ohio State University
Parental Control and Adolescent Independence

January 6, 2009
Caroline McEnnis, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
The Science of Airport Security

February 3, 2009
Kathleen Knight and Joanne Rebbeck, USDA Forest Service, Delaware
Emerald Ash Borer: The Biology and Ecological Consequences of an Exotic Pest

March 3, 2009
Gordon Aubrecht, Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
The Large Hadron Collider

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