As part of the University of Texas at Austin’s Biodiversity Center, Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station (SLP) is a 573 acre wild space seated in a relic stand of piney woods located about an hour east of the UT Austin main campus. SLP provides students and researchers in Integrative Biology with valuable study space and inspiration. This research station compliments Brackenridge Field Lab by adding another ecosystem to UT's study sites. The station is used by undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers from around the world.
The property has meadows and open areas that fade into a pine forest with mixed hardwoods. JD Creek bisects the property and provides topographic relief exposing the area's unique soil structures which allow for the characteristic flora. The fast draining sandy soil has a clay pan beneath it which holds water during dryer times. This creates a setting that allows cacti to grow right next to fungi and agaves to grow in the shade of pine trees. Such diversity makes SLP a valuable study site to students and researchers in biology, ecology, and evolution.
Field stations are observatories to the living world, providing centers for scientific research of local and international importance. They are places where rapid environmental change can be studied, relevant to many major societal challenges such as threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, natural resource extraction, fire ecology, invasive species and pollution. At field stations, students gain transformative insights into the natural world through discovery-based, experiential learning. While many student projects are small-scale on a short time frame, their data adds to the deep time-series of knowledge for the field station, providing a baseline for longer term studies. The primary resource of any field station is the land, which supports a diversity of habitats, organisms and ecosystems.