The University of Colorado at Boulder has completed a $1 million facility at the Mountain Research Station west of Boulder, providing researchers, students and visitors with comfortable, year-round living and teaching quarters.
The Moores-Collins Family Lodge, the first major construction project at the station in 30 years, replaces the original Fireweed Hostel at the site. Considered by scientists to be one of the premier alpine research sites in the world, the Mountain Research Station is located 25 miles west of Boulder at an altitude of 9,500 feet and is administered by CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
The new two-story, 3,200-square-foot lodge includes meeting facilities for up to 70 people, a full kitchen, three bathrooms and winterized sleeping areas for up to 32 people, said Steve Seibold, assistant director of the station.
The new galvanized metal roof capping the lodge has already proven effective, having withstood the March 2003 winter storm that battered the Front Range and dumped seven feet of snow at the station, he said.
"We are pleased that the lodge is finally finished," said Seibold. In addition to use by CU faculty and students affiliated with station activity, it will be available for short-term day and overnight rental by other university groups, corporations or private businesses as a facility to host meetings, seminars and retreats, he said.
CU raised more than $500,000 for the project from a National Science Foundation grant and contributions from the CU Graduate School, INSTAAR, CU's Global Change and Environmental Quality Program and the ecology and evolutionary biology department, Seibold said.
Because of rising construction costs, an additional $500,000 was raised through private donations to complete the facility. This included $300,000 from Anthony and Lisbeth Moores of Boulder, longtime supporters of the university.
"It really was a group effort that allowed us to finish the lodge," said Mountain Research Station Director William Bowman. "But it would not have come together without the generous support of the Moores-Collins family."
CU-Boulder established the research station in 1921 as a recreational and educational facility on land leased from the U.S. Forest Service. Field courses established that year have continued and expanded since then, although the station was closed during World War II. In 1929, Congress and President Herbert Hoover deeded the forest service land to the university.
The station is adjacent to Niwot Ridge, which rises in elevation to 13,500 feet and is one of 26 Long-Term Ecological Research sites in North America funded by the National Science Foundation and the only one in a sub-alpine environment. Featuring tundra, talus slopes, forests, glacial lakes and wetlands, the site is managed for NSF and the U.S. Forest Service by INSTAAR.
CU students, faculty and researchers from around the world use the study area to understand how the climate and environment are changing naturally over decades and centuries and because of human-caused disturbances.
Summer courses offered at the station include plant and animal ecology, geologic field techniques, conservation biology, aquatic biology and the study of tree-rings. Faculty and students have produced more than a thousand scientific publications from station work and scores of graduate research projects have been completed by students from CU-Boulder and other universities around the world.
The Niwot Ridge study area features climate stations at varying altitudes and a state-of-the-art alpine tundra laboratory at an elevation of 11,565 feet. The tundra lab is wired with fiber-optic and high-voltage power lines, allowing for year-round research in a region where winds can approach 160 mph and the wind-chill factor can dip to as low as 70 degrees below zero.
The station also is home to a domed astronomical observatory featuring a 12.5-inch optical telescope available for use by students, faculty and the public. Because of dark night skies at the station, the telescope imaging quality is equal to the power of a telescope with twice the mirror size, allowing views of objects in deep space.