After a year of studying University of Wisconsin Arboretum, a review committee made up of seven UW faculty and staff members recommended the arboretum form a new subcommittee to guide its research efforts.

David Drake, UW forest and wildlife ecology associate professor and Arboretum Committee chair, said the new subcommittee will serve as a guide to facilitate and plan strategically the arboretum research.

While there is currently not a formal committee dedicated to organizing research, Drake said, it has been going on ever since the arboretum’s establishment.

“We’ve had research going on in the arboretum essentially since the arboretum was dedicated in 1934,” Drake said.

The UW Arboretum has 1,200 acres of land just south of UW campus, Drake said. It is famous for the Curtis Prairie, the oldest restored prairie in the world that UW purchased for research and education in 1933, according to the UW botany website.

While arboretum research is mostly dedicated restoration ecology or restoring the ecosystem, it also extends to other conservation-related fields such as entomology, soil sciences and plant sciences, Donna Paulnock, arboretum interim director, said.

One of the arboretum’s missions is to strengthen its tie with UW campus and serve as an educational resource for UW students and faculty, Paulnock said.

“By forming a research subcommittee, the arboretum is able to get advice in developing a…strong research vision for the arboretum,” Paulnock said. “It also [will be] able to get advice from the group about how we might…build our research program…over the next five-year period.”

The larger arboretum committee that Drake chairs will select three internal members to sit on the subcommittee. Drake said these people will be making plans for research as well as calling for research proposals across UW.