{"id":99109,"date":"2018-06-18T17:23:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T23:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cu-boulder-museum-of-natural-history-explores-mesa-verde-national-park\/"},"modified":"2018-06-18T17:23:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T23:23:27","slug":"cu-boulder-museum-of-natural-history-explores-mesa-verde-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cu-boulder-museum-of-natural-history-explores-mesa-verde-national-park\/","title":{"rendered":"CU Boulder Museum of Natural History explores Mesa Verde National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The empty Far View Visitor Center in Mesa Verde National Park.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Over the past month, Mesa Verde National Park and the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Natural History have started a partnership that could lead to new discoveries in the park.<\/p>\n

Starting in late May, teams of field researchers from the museum have been taking trips to the park to study its plant and animal life, and a team of students spent two weeks educating park visitors on Mesa Verde\u2019s natural history. Museum Director Patrick Kociolek said it\u2019s the first time researchers have done an in-depth biological study of the area, and he hopes to give back to the park with some of his museum\u2019s scientific resources. On June 30, he will speak at a symposium on the future of the Far View Visitor Center, which could become part of the museum and park\u2019s partnership.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had the goal, for a long time, of getting more of CU\u2019s resources out across Colorado,\u201d Kociolek said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been hoping to do something out in the Southwest, and sending people to Mesa Verde seemed like a reasonable goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

CU, along with other museums and universities, has done plenty of historical and anthropological research at the park, but Kociolek said its natural environment has gone largely unexplored, especially on the microscopic level.<\/p>\n

This summer, the museum\u2019s researchers have been studying and cataloging different species of insects, lichen and other tiny creatures native to Mesa Verde. Kociolek himself recently completed a study of the park\u2019s diatoms, single-celled algae that live in its springs and other bodies of water. He said preliminary results have uncovered a \u201cfabulous\u201d amount of diversity in these small creatures, although the results aren\u2019t ready for publication yet. But there\u2019s still much to discover, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big question we\u2019re trying to answer is, \u2018What lives there?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe think we know a lot about our national parks, but there\u2019s also a lot we don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two CU Boulder graduate students are also completing internships at the park this summer.<\/p>\n

In addition to exploring the park\u2019s natural resources, he eventually wants to share more of the museum\u2019s resources with the park. That process started at the end of May, when a group of students spent two weeks giving interactive lessons to park visitors about Mesa Verde\u2019s natural resources. Rebecca Coon, the museum\u2019s exhibit and program developer, led the trip, and she said it was a good experience that both students and museum staff might be interested in repeating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to look at, \u2018What can we do that\u2019s a win-win for CU Boulder and the Natural History Museum, and Mesa Verde National Park and the visitors, including the local audiences?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kociolek said he wants to expand on the museum\u2019s partnership with Mesa Verde in the future. Part of that expansion may involve the old Far View Visitor Center, which has been empty ever since the new visitor center opened in 2013. In the June 30 symposium, park officials will discuss possibilities for using that building.<\/p>\n

One of those possibilities, Kociolek said, could be adding Natural History Museum resources to the building and turning it into a scientific interpretation center. He added that those plans are still in the very early stages and will depend on the condition of the building, among other factors, but he said the museum plans to continue working with the park no matter what.<\/p>\n

The symposium, which is open to the public, will begin at 11 a.m. at the Far View Visitor Center. According to a Wednesday news release from the park, it will start with a self-guided tour of the building\u2019s exterior, followed by several presentations on its past and future, to be held in the Rec Hall building from 1 to 3 p.m. In addition to Kociolek, the speakers will include architectural historian Christine French and principal architect Jane Crisler of Form + Works Design Group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to biology field researchers and students<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,638,173],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-library-and-museum","tag-mesa-verde-national-park"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99109"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}