Located near the company’s corporate headquarters in Beavercreek, Ohio, the Fondriest Center for Environmental Studies aims to engage the local community, schools and universities, and industry professionals by providing educational opportunities and training courses related to field sampling and environmental monitoring. Local schools visit the field station to learn about environmental field work and data collection, while college students use the area for field studies and research.
In addition to community engagement, the field station strives to restore habitat for native wildlife and serves as an outdoor laboratory for field-testing new sensor technologies. The station includes several monitoring systems for collecting and transmitting real-time weather and water quality data to the WQData LIVE web datacenter, which is publicly available and displayed in the on-site conference center. The field station staff includes several Fondriest Applications Scientists and a team of naturalists, who explore and document native plants and wildlife.
Whitetail deer, coyote, waterfowl, raptors, and other wildlife make their home near the field station and in the surrounding areas. Habitat restoration efforts include the installation of bluebird and duck boxes, the maintenance of native wildflower meadows, the construction of a fish structure, invasive plant removal, and boundary planting of native grasses. A honey bee apiary located on the property encourages pollinators and, in turn, helps to maintain a balanced ecosystem, while the field station pond provides habitat for native fish, frogs, snakes, and turtles. A close eye is kept on water quality with an array of automated sensors.
Members of the Fondriest staff as well as local citizens serve at the station as naturalists who manage these habitat restoration initiatives. The group documents intriguing flora and fauna, which are uploaded and presented in the photo gallery of the WQData LIVE web datacenter alongside real-time weather and water quality measurements taken on-site.
Events available for registration are listed at right.
Select from the events below for more information and registration.
To schedule an event at the field station, such as a school field trip or environmental monitoring training session, click the link below.
To schedule an event at the field station, such as a school field trip or environmental monitoring training session, click the link below.
