Planning for the Jenna Welch Nature Study Center

While its size and visitation requirements must await feasibility and schematic design studies, it can be stated that the future Center is intended to be a world-class, state-of-the art facility that will offer quality environmental education to college students and the general public, both in the Preserve and in orientation-demonstration areas at the Center. An emphasis on playa and related habitat interpretation will provide research opportunities for faculty, graduate, and undergraduate research at the region's universities and colleges. The Preserve's shelter and resting sites for West Central Flyway migratory species and its interactive, real-time mapping on Center computer stations will allow visitors to both observe arrivals on the playa lake and to track their complete migrations, for example, with the Peregrine Falcon from its summering habitat in the northern U.S. and Canada to wintering grounds in Latin America. Interactive monitors, lobby dioramas and other displays, an amphitheater for audio-visual presentations, a laboratory, and facilities for university field programs will be valuable elements of the Center¹s educational and research offerings, as will a bookstore, offices, and conference areas for the broader public and interested institutions, associations, and agencies. Orientation-Demonstration Habitats Outdoors adjacent to the Center, five orientation-demonstration habitats will be invaluable as introductions to the Preserve for the visitor. There will be five such areas, each small in size but sufficient in habitat representation to educate the visitor, with appropriate interpretive signage, on their ecological value:

1. Playa, Pond, and Marsh
2. Floodplain Forest
3. Thicket
4. Prairie and Upland
5. Butterfly and Hummingbird Habitat

The use of a network of interpretive signs in the orientation-demonstration areas will allow a minimizing of sign emplacements within the playa terrain, which will help conserve its natural character. Audio-cassettes provided by the Center for Preserve walks will also allow the visitor's footprint to be soft and impermanent. Short posts in the Preserve with alpha-numeric signing keyed to both audio-cassettes and Preserve hand-out maps will be preferable to large interpretive kiosks built within the Preserve's precincts.

General visitors will be encouraged to participate in monitoring and research activities under the guidance of Center personnel. Returning from the Preserve's playa boardwalk with a water sample and running tests in the Center's lab would strongly enrich the visitor experience, while the recorded results would add to the Center¹s scientific database.

Rain Harvesting and Xeriscape Demonstration Plantings
With water a scarce resource in the semi-desert of West Texas, the Preserve's Nature Study Center can serve a valuable role in informing the public on available measures to achieve water conservation. One such measure is the use of rain harvesting. With the Center equipped with rain barrels and/or tanks, this example of the utility of capturing and using precipitation for site irrigation and other non-potable uses will be valuable to interested Center visitors. Similarly, the installation of xeriscape plants in a demonstration area at the center, together with suitable electronic and hard copy explanations of how low-water requiring landscaping can save both water and dollars can be another valuable educational component of the Center's program.

Landscape Screening
Both within the Preserve and at the Nature Study Center site it will be necessary to plant trees along property perimeters in order to screen views of highways, roads, and adjacent land. With dense plantings, some degree of noise attenuation may be possible. The need for such screening has been made clear in studies on preserves and nature centers elsewhere.