The Konza Prairie Research Natural Area is a 3487 hectare research area located in the northern Kansas Flint Hills. The vegetation of Konza Prairie is predominantly tallgrass prairie with limited gallery forests along major tributaries. The vascular flora of the research area includes 441 species in 90 families. This number represents approximately 44% of the species known to occur in the Kansas Flint Hills. Konza Prairie Research Natural Area (KPRNA) is located in the northern part of the Kansas Flint Hills. This 3487 ha (8616 acre) area is situated approximately 10 kilometers south of Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Most of the area is in extreme southcentral Riley County, the rest in adjacent Geary County. KPRNA is bounded on the east by Kansas Highway 177 and on the south by Interstate 70. Konza Prairie was acquired by The Nature Conservancy, a national nonprofit private organization dedicated to the preservation of lands exemplary of diversity in the natural world. The Geary County portion, called the original Konza Prairie, consists of 371 ha (917 acres) and was purchased in December 1971 (Fig. 1). In January of 1977, the 2921 ha (7219 acre) Dewey Ranch was added to the research area. A final acquisition was made by The Nature Conservancy in December 1977, when the 194 ha (480 acre) Thowe tract was added to KPRNA. The land is leased to Kansas State University for ecological research. Konza Prairie is one of eleven Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites across the United States supported by the Division of Environmental Biology of the National Science Foundation. Konza Prairie is representative of the Flint Hills Upland, a band of rolling hills roughly 70 kilometers wide extending across Kansas from near the Nebraska-Kansas border south to Oklahoma. The hills were formed by the Contribution No. 83-74-j, Division of Biology, Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Manhattan. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.162 on Fri, 01 Jul 2016 04:08:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms VOLUME 88, NUMBERS 3-4 85 KONZA PRAIRIE RESEARCH NATURAL AREA 1 4e