In fall 1935, Norman Fassett, a botanist and UW–Madison professor, led a series of excursions to southern Wisconsin prairie remnants. John Thomson, a botany graduate student at the time, noted that the goal of these visits was to collect “materials for experiments to determine what might be the best way to cover a large part of the Arboretum with prairie.”

The small-scale, student-led experiments in 1935 laid the foundation for groundbreaking prairie restoration efforts in what is now Curtis Prairie – considered one of the oldest restoration efforts in the world. These experiments also mark the beginning of research at the Arboretum, namely research intended to inform and advance restoration and conservation.

Over the last nine decades, the UW–Madison Arboretum and surrounding city have changed considerably. Yet the legacy of research and experimentation remains central to our mission and identity. Countless students, faculty, and other researchers have conducted experiments here, from pioneering studies in the 1940s about the role of fire in tallgrass prairies to more recent work investigating new challenges such as the ecological impact of invasive species like jumping worms and golden oyster mushrooms.

The Arboretum is now well established as an outdoor laboratory and UW–Madison research center, offering unique opportunities to learn from restoration efforts at a site widely recognized for its pioneering role in ecological restoration. As we look toward the Arboretum’s centennial, we’re considering an important question: what is next for research at the Arboretum?

We are focused on three key priorities to strengthen and grow our research program: expanding support for student research, building collaborations to address pressing environmental challenges, and increasing opportunities for public participation in science.

Thanks to generous gifts, we support three to five graduate students a year through Arboretum Research Fellowships. These fellowships fund important mission-related research, and they also offer opportunities for staff to mentor – and learn from – a new generation of conservation and research leaders. We aspire to expand the Fellowship program, providing critical support for more young scientists. We are also excited to involve more undergraduate students in Arboretum research.

Collaborating with UW–Madison researchers and other partners in southern Wisconsin is essential for addressing conservation and restoration issues in a rapidly changing world. For example, the Arboretum joined a collaborative effort to install eddy covariance flux towers in restored prairies to quantify how carbon and other elements move between prairie ecosystems and the atmosphere. This research can provide broad-scale insights about the benefits of restoring landscapes.

Public participation in the scientific process helps build science literacy and inspire people to care for nature in their local communities. More than 100 people participate annually in Arboretum citizen science programs, and in 2025 they spent more than 1,000 hours collecting valuable data that informs different aspects of Arboretum work. For example, volunteers surveying dragonflies and damselflies for the Wisconsin Odonata Survey documented 40 different species here. This represents approximately two-thirds of the species found in Dane County, even though the Arboretum makes up less than 0.2 percent of Dane County’s total land area.

The Arboretum is uniquely positioned to foster connections among UW–Madison researchers and students, an enthusiastic and engaged public, and southern Wisconsin’s vibrant conservation and restoration community. In the coming years, we will strive to establish the Arboretum as a hub for sharing ecological research – especially when it informs restoration and conservation – among scientists, practitioners, and the broader community.

– Jared Beck, research ecologist