Ning is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. He obtained his bachelor’s in Geotechnical Engineering at Wuhan University of Technology, and both his master’s and doctorate in Civil Engineering at John Hopkins University. He is well-known internationally for his work on stresses in variably saturated porous media, with his primary research interest in seeking common threads among basic soil physical phenomena, including fluid flow, chemical transport, heat transfer, stress, and deformation.

Erin is an Agricultural Engineer and Professor in the Department of Soil and Water Systems at the University of Idaho. He obtained his bachelors in Agricultural Engineering with a Soil and Water Engineering emphasis at Washington State University, and then went on to get his master’s from the University of Minnesota and doctorate from the University of Idaho, both specializing in Hydrologic Measurement and Modeling. Erin’s current research focuses on the management of ecosystems through the combination of field experiments and modeling.

Dr. Dedrick Davis is an Assistant Professor in Soil Physics at Alabama A&M University. He obtained his PhD in Soil Science and Environmental Science from Iowa State University,and his teaching expertise is in soil physics and soil hydrology. He has published research papers in national and international scientific journals, as well as several book chapters, and he has taken part in national and international congresses, including recently, when he was invited to join a national panel discussing Climate-Smart Cotton.

Links to learn more about Dr. Dedrick Davis:

Dr. Dedrick Davis on ResearchGate

Article: Dr. Dedrick Davis in Scientia

Article: Dr. Davis joins national panel

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

DEDRICK DAVIS 0:08

So with biochar, I think the original interest in it came from the terra preta soils that are out in America inches there. But here in the United States, I think when there was interested in biofuels and the pyrolysis process, and it's used to produce those biofuels, when this process is used, you get three products, which is the fuel, the oil, and then also the ash from the biomass that has been burned. And with biofuels, the thought was if you're going to be taken off this vegetation for the production of biofuels, what can we do to make sure that it's a sustainable process, and the thought was that we have this ash it is a stable form of carbon that can be returned back to the soil. And there therefore we can potentially increase the carbon in the soil sequester carbon.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:45

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is Dr. Dedrick Davis, associate professor in soil physics at Alabama A&M University. He obtained his PhD in soil science and environmental science from Iowa State University, and his teaching experiences in soil physics and soil hydrology. He's published research papers in national and international scientific journals. And he's taken part in the national and international congresses, including just recently when he was invited to join a national panel discussing climate smart cotton. And today, he's here to talk about his many research projects at Alabama A&M. So Dedrick thanks so much for being here.

DEDRICK DAVIS 1:50

Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invitation to share with you what we have going on here at Alabama A&M University.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:57

Great. So we do want to start off definitely we want to get into all of your projects and research interests. But first, can you tell us a little bit about your your background, and how you became involved in soil science and in the the field that you find yourself now?

DEDRICK DAVIS 2:14

Um, so my background, I'm from Alabama, native of Alabama, and actually, I grew up probably about 30 miles away from here away from Alabama A&M University in a small rural community. And my family I come from a farming family. But probably about the time that I was starting to get into being an active or play and active role on the farm. My grandfather decided to retire from farming. So I stayed active through crop scouting with my uncle. So I've always had a heart for agriculture and was always curious about some of the things that my grandfather did. When it came to farming. One of the things I noticed that he always did. He did cotton. There were never any rotations. No, no, there was no tail was not used. So you can really tell it is by its impact on the cotton that was grown, I got to see when he took that same land out of production and put it in pasture for a number of years, and then returned it to cotton production, I got to see the increase talking yield, you could just tell the physical difference in the growth by the growth of the plant. So that got my curiosity to go on about agriculture even more. And when it came time to pursue or go to college, I had to choose a major. And the major that I chose was forestry here at Alabama A&M University. This is where I did my undergrad. But as part of the forestry program, one of the classes we had to take was intro to soil science. And in the intro to soil science class, I had an instructor that made soils seemed like they were the coolest thing ever. So once I took that intro to soil science class, I ended up switching my major to environmental science with a soil science concentration, ever since then I've been in soil science. And from Alabama A&M University I went to Iowa State for my masters did that under Dr. Sally Lawson, in soil physics and then PhD in soil physics with Dr. Robert Boyd. I think the cool thing about soil physics was there were things that were moving things at play just really seem interesting to me. And that is the route that I've taken so far.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:46

That's interesting. There's a lot of similarities. We've had other guests on who are current experts in soil science. A lot of them have taken a similar route where they've started out somewhere else took a class, whether in college or whatever. I like oh man, so super exciting. Who knew that soil could be so exciting, right?

DEDRICK DAVIS 4:54

Yes, I totally agree. Like I said, I came into the forestry program for one; there was a promise of paying for your college education, but also to you have a job. And I realized, forests, they need soil scientists also. Yeah, I was like, Alright, there's a route. So again, switching to that soil science major was very important for me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:16

It always seems, especially for those not in the soil science field, that the vast majority of the human population takes soils for granted. We walk past it, we walk over it, you know, we get our food from the store or whatever, and the whole world of soil sciences, we're oblivious to it.

DEDRICK DAVIS 5:35

Yes, we are. We're totally oblivious to it. But I think once you're made known aware of what soil does what it provides, it's hard to not acknowledge that, and then not even to become interested in it, just talking to people when I tell them what I do. And then I might go into what soil provides or how affects our everyday lives. There's an interest there even from like as a just talking to the public.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:02

So you talked about crop scouting with your uncle, can you go in a little bit detail about what crop scouting is?

DEDRICK DAVIS 6:09

So the crop scouting idea was for cotton here in Alabama, in the north Alabama area, and he usually contracted with farmers. And basically what we did with cotton scouting is we would go to certain fields that the farmers contracted with my uncle, and we would scout that cotton field for pest get an idea of what pests are there. And then, depending on what pests are there what we noted, the most, I guess, numerous type of pests, we would then go and we would recommend pesticide applications for that specific cotton field. And this is done to help reduce the impact of those past on that yield for cotton that that farmer hope to get from that field. I think it was something that was very important and a service that they need.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:58

What are some of those primary pests that cotton farmers are dealing with nowadays?

DEDRICK DAVIS 7:02

Probably the biggest one being that we have to keep a lookout for it was boll weevil. And there was some other pests that were I can't even recall right now because it's been so long, but some other ones that we were concerned about, but that were pretty prevalent back then.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:19

Interesting. All right. So you are now a professor of soil physics, can you go into a little bit more detail as to what exactly is encapsulated within soil physics within soil science?

DEDRICK DAVIS 7:34

I think when it comes to soil physics, at least the way I explained it to my students, soil physics is the study of the physical properties of soil, but also the physical processes that are occurring in soil. And those physical processes being the transfer of water or the movement of water, or liquids, fluids, movement of gases, and then also the movement of energy throughout the soil and those processes that are at play there. And a lot of the physical properties that are involved impacts these physical processes that occur in the soil.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:14

All right, so you were recently a panelist at the cotton sustainability conference. And the panel was entitled us climate smart cotton goals projects process. Can you tell us a little bit about what was going on with that initiative there?

DEDRICK DAVIS 8:28

That initiative is to increase the adoption of what we would call climate smart agricultural practices for cotton production. And a lot of those climate smart practices being mostly soil based. When we think of these climate smart ag practices, they can have reduced tillage or no till the use of cover crops, specifically for cotton production. Even though we've heard about reduced tillage, and no till and the adoption of cover crops. If I go out right now outside of my office, and I take a ride around here in North Alabama, I can see that there's quite a few acres that were under cotton production, that don't have a cover crop that possibly where no till is not implement. So I think we still have a long way to go when it comes to the adoption of these climate smart ag practices for cotton production, especially here in Alabama. So this project is here to help encourage the adoption of these practices. But one of the things that I think is missing in us also being noted is, a lot of times farmers are hesitant to adopt these practices because there's no proof of if they adopt this practice, how it might improve the health of their soils. So this project will go into gathering information regarding soil health, how these practices increase the health of the soil, but also to possibly help To establish a target for soil health as it relates to cotton production here for soils in Alabama.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:08

I've heard the same thing from other guests about the farmers and growers are very conservative in their practices, it is definitely a risky proposition for them to change the way that they grow their crop. If there's no direct proof, they need to see that these practices will then improve their yield further on, do you have any tips on how you've been able to try to communicate those best practices?

DEDRICK DAVIS 10:33

I think probably the best tips are just staying in communication with farmers but also to I think the other thing that is probably a big help is that farmer that is probably hesitant actually seeing it implemented, and being beneficial on another farm. So I think that Farmer to Farmer interaction networking, in regards to the adoption of these practices is very important. Because I can say, I'm on the academic side, and I can advocate for these practices all at once. But until they're able to actually see them in place, and the actual improvements from those practices, I think, just blowing hot air. So I think that is probably the biggest thing. To give you an example, I still have to talk to my uncle about even adopting some of these practices. So I think just staying in constant communication with farmers, but also having having an example for them to see the benefit of these practices is very important.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:39

What is it about no till or cover crops that then have become best practices when it comes to sustainability or climate smart crops?

DEDRICK DAVIS 11:49

I think when it comes to no till it's less tillage, of course. So we're hopefully enhancing carbon sequestration within that soil, but also to if we're enhancing the carbon, maybe we have also these other benefits that are associated with this, such as increased water storage within that soil, or water availability within that soil. And that's important, especially for areas like here in the southeast, where during the summer, we can experience times of drought during the growing season. But also to with the implementation of notes yield and also cover crops, hopefully we're seeing a reduction in carbon dioxide fluxes from that soil also. And I think probably the biggest thing that I see with the use of cover crops, and I'll speak here for Alabama, we receive a lot of our rainfall from the time period of November, so possibly, probably around April and May. And we get a lot of heavy rainfall. And for those soils that have no cover on them, protecting them, no cover crops, the amount of erosion, the amount of spilling, taking place is unbelievable. So just from that point of view, I think Cover crops are beneficial, especially here where I'm at in North Alabama.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:07

So does soil health in Northern Alabama in that region, is that going to look different than elsewhere?

DEDRICK DAVIS 13:13

I think it will be different, I think it will be we can say reduced tillage and cover crops and things like that. But I think if we get very specific about it is going to be very different than say some other part of the country, I would hate to do a one size fits all approach for soil health, where you might have one thing for soil health in Iowa and you try to apply that same thing here in Alabama, it's not going to work. Because our soils are very different. Our soils here in Alabama are highly weathered, I think inherently lower quality soils because of where we're at because of the weathering that has taken place over time. So the needs for our soil is going to be different than say somewhere else. And I think you have to really consider that when it comes to soil health here in Alabama, and then also to considering cropping systems that are in place, what are we growing? And things like that? I know for instance, I say no till, but also to I know I'm not on the farm, but I know farmers have experienced times where if they implement no till sometimes they complain of compaction with long term no till. And that affects plant growth also. So what we do here is probably going to be different than somewhere.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:32

Now a lot of or so many research projects are also delve into this when it comes to land use practices. And can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of the variability that can occur when it comes to different land uses and the properties of the soil whether it's hydraulic conductivity or water retention or other things like that?

DEDRICK DAVIS 14:51

I think when it comes to land uses, you're going to see big differences as far as some of these soil hydraulic properties or processes that we're usually concerned about. For instance, the one of the things that I'm studying here at Alabama A&M is looking at the impact the land uses on soil hydrology. Specifically, some of those land uses that we're looking at include like, for instance, a loblolly pine plantation, also row crop agriculture, so soybean, and then also corn, a pasture is also included in that. And then if I can get my way, I would like to, hopefully within the next year or so six months to a year and set up a residential lawn site, because all of these land uses, they're going to affect soil hydrology in different ways. For instance, a loblolly pine plantation is not going to be highly disturbed. And you're probably going to have more macropores there that can facilitate water flow, high rates of water flow through that soil, say compared to highly managed row crop areas such as corn and soybeans, where you can have significant amounts of compaction that can occur that can reduce the flow of water through that soil. And then you have pasture, which again, it's not as disturbed as the row crop area, but it's going to affect hydrology in the soil differently than the row crops, then the loblolly pine. And then here, I mentioned in residential launch site that I would like to set up. And that is important because here in North Alabama, in Huntsville, we're experiencing rapid growth. So a lot of the farmland that I see they're growing houses now. They are turning into subdivisions, right. So that hydrology that we've seen those runoff, things like that infiltration that we've seen under these previous land use is obviously going to change with the conversion of this land from say, row crop agriculture to now housing subdivision. Right. So I believe, in order to be able to effectively manage water, we have to have an understanding of how these different land use influence to hydrology.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:08

Along with that, we've seen a lot of folks, a lot of our customers and other people that we interact with, there's a lot of new research projects pointing towards agroforestry. And I was wondering if I could get your take on pros and cons of agroforestry? And the implications for it going forward?

DEDRICK DAVIS 17:24

I will be honest with you, I don't think I have too many cons associated with it. I did my master's research in riparian buffer. So a little bit of agroforestry there but also to one of the projects that I have here at Alabama A&M University is an agroforestry project in I think agroforestry, depending on what is being used for and I will our target here is for increasing the income potential for small size farms and minority landowners here in Alabama. agroforestry has looked as a way to do that, when we think of agroforestry from that perspective is something that can give farmers income in the long term with the growth of trees. But in this specific project, which is an alley cropping project in the area between the trees, the growth of specially vegetable crops can give farmers income in the short term. So you look at it, the income benefit is there. But also to I think the benefit is there from an environmental and sustainability point of view. Because the trees are going to be there for a long time. Our hope is is that the trees are contributing to mastering carbon, building up the amount of carbon in soil, but also to, that growth of the vegetables can help to produce food, I guess, for different populations that like those specialty vegetable crops, especially with the cost of produce and food these days and inflation. I think can be something that's beneficial.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:06

So do you see that then as as more so more sustainable, but also more resilient. Practice when it comes to to growing, especially within the face of like you mentioned, you talked about you know in inflation and other global issues right now, but especially within, you know, in the face of climate change and, and how the climate is, you know, becoming much less predictable or stable year to year.

DEDRICK DAVIS 19:31

I do think it can be viewed as resilient. And I think it can help reduce the impact of climate change, if you can help to reduce the impact of climate change with agroforestry. But also to I think the important thing is people these days, I think, want they're food more localized. So there's another route for you to get food that is grown within your local area if that farm is successful utilizing agroforestry for the growth of vegetables like we're doing in this project that we have going on here. So I think it's benefits from both of those perspective.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:07

Are you seeing much luck with adoption?

DEDRICK DAVIS 20:09

I think that adoption, people are open to it. Our specific project is geared towards the minority farmer.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:15

Okay.

DEDRICK DAVIS 20:16

So they're pretty open to adoption of it. And again, loblolly pine, those are the trees that were using also, pecan trees. Were using that in our study here. So they're very open to it. But also to, I think they're open to it because it gives them multiple income streams. So they can grow the crops, they have the trees, and in some instances with others that are doing research here in Alabama, they also look at grazing goats, okay, within an agroforestry or civil pastoral system, right. So there's a lot of different routes and a lot of interest here for people to go and the interest is there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:54

Can you give us a brief introduction into into biochar, what it is how it's used, and its importance and future uses?

DEDRICK DAVIS 21:00

So with biochar I think the original interest in it came from the terra preta soils that are in South America and the interest there. But here in the United States, I think when there was interested in biofuels and the pyrolysis process, and it's used to produce those biofuels, when this process is used, you get three products, which is the fuel the oil, and then also the ash from the biomass that has been burned. And with biofuels, the thought was if you're going to be taken off this vegetation for the production of biofuels, what can we do to make sure that it's a sustainable process, and the thought was that we have this asset is a stable form of carbon that can be returned back to the soil, and therefore we could potentially increase the carbon in the soil sequester carbon. So that is where the interest in biochar originated from, or at least this is what I'm familiar with. I'm doing my time and my work with biochar was that you can return it as a soil amendment that can be used to enhance the physical, chemical and biological properties of soil, for the production of biofuels.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:13

How is biochar applied to the soil? And what are some of those specific characteristics that it can help improve?

DEDRICK DAVIS 22:20

The biochar has been applied, like I said, as a solvent with the hopes that it can enhance soil fertility, but also to enhance the physical properties of that soil, and then also affect the biological properties of the soil. All with the thought of enhancing all three of those some of the ways in which it has been applied and some of the things that we see that have taken place from studies that have been conducted is, for instance, if you apply the biochar to the soil is it looks way different than the soil itself. For instance, the biochar will reduce bulk density or soil compaction, but also potentially increase the water holding capacity of the soil due to its characteristics, but also to how it enhances the porosity of the soil through the reduction of bone density. So things like that is the ways that people looked at it as a soil.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:15

In your mind, were some of the next steps. What are some things that we can do to improve that use of biochar?

DEDRICK DAVIS 23:20

I think next steps and I'm speaking strictly from a research purposes, understand how it performs long term. A lot of the early studies with biochar have been in a lab, or as there have been field studies, those field studies have been very short term field studies. So collecting the long term data to see how it impacts the physical, biological, and chemical properties of soils is going to be very important, but also to I think, in understanding how it's going to impact crop yield and things of that nature is going to be important. And the more data that we get better of an idea we'll have other use of biochar as a soil amendment. So I think those are probably going to be the next important steps for biochar usage. But then too, I know there's also people who are looking at it from an environmental perspective and looking at it's impacts on processes such as reducing the flow of chemicals or things like that in soil. So I think it's very important that we continue to evaluate biochar and its potential impact

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:26

for the other soil scientists and so physicists in our audience, what are some of the more specific measurements you're taking or how is your lab and your field research set up?

DEDRICK DAVIS 24:35

Well a lot of our work has been with evaluating the impact of biochar physical properties of soil specifically soil water retention, and thermal property. Because my thought has always been if you have biochar, you're going to apply it to the soil and then you're probably going to mix it in or incorporate it into the soil the upper part of the soil or near soil surface environment. And when I say near surface soil and soil surface environment I'm talking about from the soil surface down to maybe 15 centimeters in depth. So when you add this biochar there, to me that influences a lot of these physical processes and properties that we see that occur in soil. To me, the ones that are the most important are going to be soil water retention, because that biochar could potentially enhance the amount of water that is retained in soil. So one of the things that we've tried to do is we tried to measure the impacts those biochar on slow water retention from saturation to oven dry condition, near the soil surface, near the soil surface, you have a lot of processes that are occurring, specifically heat and water movement that play a role in these processes such as the evaporation of water from soil, and we know that near the soil surface, our soil water contents can vary from near saturation to extremely dry. So having an understanding of the soil water retention curve from saturation to oven dry conditions are very dry conditions can be, in my opinion very important to when it comes to modeling, or having an idea of how biochar impacts these other hydrologic processes such as the evaporation that occurs in soil. The other aspect that we're looking at is looking at the impact of biochar on soil thermal properties. There's been a lot of work looking at the impact of biochar on soil fertility, soil biological properties and processes. Also physical properties. There's been quite a bit of work done there. But when we look at his impact on soil thermal properties, there's not a lot of work that has been done there. I think the last time I looked at the number of articles that have been published where people have evaluated the impact of biochar on soil thermal properties, I think it was probably around 40 articles that have been published. This is a low amount of research when you consider biochar research has really been going on heavily for probably like the last 15 years. Those are what our studies are concerned with.

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:17

So can you talk about poultry litter, what it is how it is used as a soil amendment as well.

DEDRICK DAVIS 27:24

In short, poultry litter is the bedding that is usually taken up from poultry production houses, and it's looked at as a deep fertilizer source for crops because it's high in nitrogen. Alabama is a one of the leading states in broiler chicken production. In the United States, I think we're like, maybe number three, four, maybe five, somewhere in there, but we're near the top. And so we have a lot of poultry litter here in Alabama that poultry litter is usually applied to pastures as a way to dispose of that poultry litter here within the last year it's been beat, it's been applied to row crops, because of the increase in fertilizer prices. So application of this poultry litter is occurring every year here in Alabama. The other thing with poultry litter is when you apply this filter later, a lot of times it can be broadcast. So surface apply, can then potentially incorporated mixed in with the soil. So there are some environmental concerns that arise from that one being runoff, but also see you have ammonia that is volatilization that is occurring, but also to the odor that occurs with it. So it's not a very pleasant odor. So you have all these environmental concerns that occur. And one of the things that has that researchers have developed is a way to place this poultry litter below the soil surface with the implement that can basically open up a trench in the soil, place the poultry litter probably about three centimeters below the soil surface, and then put another layer on top of it being a soil physicists and one of the things that I'm interested about is water and heat movement near the soil surface. It became an interesting setup for me because you have sort of this non homogeneous system where you have soil poultry litter and soil underneath. Yeah, and this like I said, is very close to the soil surface. And some of those processes that are occurring that I mentioned with biochar heat and water movement, they can be impacted in my opinion through the placement of that poultry litter that is there because you have this non homogeneous system or heterogeneous system where you have soil poultry litter, soil, poultry litter is going to retain water way differently than the soil, but also to is going to affect the water flow differently compared to the soil. So that is where my interest in poultry litter stems from.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:51

Alright. Do you have any preliminary results from from any of your studies yet?

DEDRICK DAVIS 29:56

Yes, we do. One of the things that we've been looking at is we've been like In that the effects of poultry litter or comparing water vapor absorption with in poultry litter to that of soil using a water vapor absorption analyzer from METER, we looked at water vapor absorption isotherms for poultry litter and we looked at the drying and also the wetting and what we saw was was that there's a considerable amount of hysteresis that occurs with the poultry litter compared to the hysteresis from the two soils that we evaluated one being a sandy soil and the other one being a silty clay loam soil these different degrees of hysteresis leads me to think that the poultry litter impacts water movement differently than the say the to soil if we only had soil there. So to me that sort of gives me the opinion that hey, we have to consider the effects of this poultry litter and the impact it might have on water movement in the soil, especially under dry conditions when compared to the soil itself especially if we have a system where we have soil poultry litter and soil.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:06

So, really quickly for the non soil scientists can you describe hysteresis and what that entails.

DEDRICK DAVIS 31:14

So, soil undergoes wetting and drying daily, we can have drying that occurs, but then also too we can have wetting that occurs. In soils, we measure what is called the soil water retention curve and we look at the relationship between what we call matric potential, and water content. That matric potentials tells us how tightly that water is held in soil and usually the matric potential gets more negative. So as held with greater energy, as the soil gets drier, it would take more energy for us to extract that water from soil. As it gets dry, we can have a drying curve, but we can also have a wetting curve. Even though we might be at the same water content, our matric potential is not going to be the same depending on whether we're wedding or drying because of properties of that soil, whether it's the porosity or whether it's the surface effects. So when I say surface effects, these will be related more so to the texture and things of that nature is going to determine what we see as far as that hysteresis that is that occurs. And that hysteresis which can be viewed as the difference in water content at the same matric when we're have a wetting and a drying

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:35

With a poultry litter then just based off the characteristics how much needs to be applied for it to really make an effect on improving the soil you know, soil health or the various soil characteristics that you're looking at.

DEDRICK DAVIS 32:47

Usually, within that culture litter is applied, it's applied based on nitrogen content what studies have shown because Alabamian and previous to my arrival here, um, there were some researchers who actually did long term studies looking at poultry litter application along with cover cropping and reduced tillage that poultry litter when it's applied, it can be very beneficial to the properties of the soil from like chemical and biological perspective, but also to a physical perspective. I know one specific study that was conducted by a former grad student here, they actually saw enhancement of soil hydraulic conductivity and some of the physical properties such as a reduction in compaction or bone density with the use of poultry litter for a long, long time. So that poultry litter has a big effect as far as what we see as far as soil health, because you're basically adding them on a grant an organic material to the soil, that provides nutrients, but also to it does a very good job of improving the physical properties of that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:56

one of your other research topics is looking into the application of biopolymers within soil for soil stabilization and other applications kind of more on the geotechnical side of things. Can you give us a little introduction to bio polymers and how they're used in in soil stabilization.

DEDRICK DAVIS 34:15

So on the geotechnical side, there's been interest in the use of bio polymers and biopolymers being things such as that can gum things such as jellen, gum agar, those types of things. And researchers have looked to apply these bio polymers to soils to enhance the mechanical geotechnical properties of the soils. And when you think of xanthan gum, I tell people, if you haven't heard of it, if you eat yogurt, go and look on the back of that yogurt container. And xanthan gum is usually used in the food industry as a thickener for certain foods you have given a thicker appearance or to enhance the thickness of that Food with these bio polymers, they also have an impact on soils. Because these bio polymers, once they're wet, they sort of are like sticky. And so they can bring a non cohesive soil, we typically think of saying together enhance the stabilization of those non cohesive soils. The reason that they're biopolymers is in the past, people have used amendments to do this. But those amendments have not been as eco friendly or environmentally friendly biopolymers, that they're going to be biodegradable, and are thought to have very little effect on the environment. So that's where the interest comes from, with these biopolymers. Again, if you look at some of the previous methods that were used, such as semen, things like that, you emit a lot of co2 in the production of x. So, from that perspective, there's a lot of interest in these bio polymers for enhancing soil stabilization. The project that we have is understanding how these bio polymers enhance soil stabilization, or some of these chemical properties of the soil. In order to understand how it enhances those properties, you have to understand how it would enhance or affect some of the physical properties, such as water retention, water movement in soils, the thermal properties in soils, to me, it becomes very important to understand those also in order to get a better understanding of its impacts on the mechanical and geotechnical.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:31

You've talked about some of these biopolymers being biodegradable, as they degrade, does that then also degrade the stability of the soil that they've been interacting with?

DEDRICK DAVIS 36:40

Yes, it could grade to the stability of the soil. I think when it comes to this, from what I've seen, there hasn't been a lot of research on how long the stabilization holds up to the biopolymer being applied. And I think that is where one of our other faculty members here is actually looking at the stability and how long is it going to be stable in that soil? That is a very important question. I know from some of the preliminary experiments that we've seen by this biopolymer to the soil, but over time, you can see some changes in the soil as we go through repeated measurements with the same soil samples. So there's some some questions there about how it degrades after you've applied it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:21

In our last few minutes, we want to kind of switch gears and talk more on the social side of things when it comes to being a soil scientist. You've gone from Alabama a&m, which is a historically black college or university, you moved to Iowa State, and then back again, can you talk a little bit about your experience when it comes to diversity within the sciences, and what you're doing currently, or what you have done to help improve diversity within ag and Soil Sciences,

DEDRICK DAVIS 37:50

the example of going from Alabama leading into Iowa. And I will admit to you that was a big shock. Because two very different environments, I think when it comes to understanding the value of this to diversity is very important, because I think students have to have an idea of how to operate in all different environments. And being an Alabama was in a course in a historically black college university in a predominantly black student population. So it was something that I became used to, but then going to Iowa State got me out of my comfort zone, because it's a totally different environment, predominantly white institution, Alabama a&m 6000 students, I will state when I left I think was right around 30,000. So even navigating that whole thing is pretty important and can enhance the student with certain skills. And I think being able to operate within those different environments becomes important. But also to I think it speaks to the importance of knowing your different audience, and how to get along with those different audiences. What I did at Alabama a&m university, I couldn't do at Iowa State, I was very comfortable at Alabama a&m, not comfortable at Iowa State. So that forced me to get out of my comfort zone and be proactive, and getting to know people. So I think that is very important when it comes to my own research group and the diversity in it. I tried to have a diverse research. And when I say that verse I mean nationality, racial diversity, and it's something that I'm proud of, because in my research group right now, we have African American students, a few Indian students, a Haitian student, just joined. We also have a Chinese scientists. We have a Jamaican student, and even though a large number of us are, what we would consider black, just being from those different countries brings diversity there and difference of opinions that I've really grown to appreciate. I think also too, by having this diversity in my group has helped us to consider how we communicate with one another. Because the norms of one culture are not going to be the norms of another culture. Yeah, so you come to appreciate that. And I think my students have come to appreciate that. Also, over the last few years, as we've grown in number and as we've grown in diversity, and I look at it as actually preparing my students for what they might encounter once they leave Alabama a&m. So it's very important to me, and then I think, also to that other diversity piece. Because students once they leave here, the world is not going to look like Alabama a&m. So I tried to take advantage of every opportunity I can to get them away from Alabama a&m and put them in a, in an environment that might be more of a reflection of what they might encounter once they leave Alabama a&m. So hopefully, they're getting the best of Alabama a&m, but also the world.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:06

We're out of time here. But is there anything else that you would like to add? What is what does the future hold for your research? What are you excited about here in the next few years?

DEDRICK DAVIS 41:16

I think I'm excited about from a research perspective. For one I like the different projects that we have going on, they're very interesting to me from build the lab study. And they have different applications were working in soil health, which in my opinion, is very important because to me, everything starts with the soil. Soil Health provides us the ability to take a holistic approach to a route to improving soil, I think that is important, we have to consider not only the chemical or the biological, or just the physical by itself, we have to consider it all together. And being able to take that and apply it to something that is important for the state of Alabama, such as cotton production, to me is very important. So it shows that what we're doing is important on a local state and national basis, but also to when it comes to the project, such as the one with the biopolymer, being able to have an understanding of how these bio polymers impact. Soil physical properties and processes is going to be important because it's going to help understand how to utilize these bio polymers to enhance soil stabilization for let's say, the Department of Defense or for the army. So being able to see the application there is what I'm excited about, as we take on these projects. And as we do more and more work, being able to see the growth in the students and being able to see the growth in my research group. And the interesting individuals that come into that research group, which I'm appreciative of, is something that I'm excited about, because it goes from a point of where we're training students, but then eventually, as the students progress through their program, they started training me on what they're finding, and that is what I get excited about when that I guess when that switch takes place. I'm not the lead, but they're leading me. And for the PhD student I have that is what is happening right now. And every day I get excited about that. And it keeps me coming back here to see what she has to tell me to see what she's learned and to see how her thinking progress has progressed. And those are the things I'm excited about going forward.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:41

All right. It looks like our time is up for today. Thank you again, Dedrick for joining us and sharing your research and being able to talk with us today. It's it's really been a very interesting, fascinating conversation.

DEDRICK DAVIS 43:53

All right. Well, thank you, Brad. Thank you for the invitation. And I've enjoyed this.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:57

Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Contact us at metergroup.com or find us on twitter @meter_env

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Dr. Arron Carter, professor and O.A. Vogel Endowed Chair of Wheat Breeding and Genetics at Washington State University, graduated with both a bachelor's and master's in plant science from the University of Idaho and received his doctorate at Washington State University in crop science, where he currently leads the winter wheat breeding and genetics program. His research is directed towards breeding improved wheat varieties for cropping systems in Washington state that incorporate diverse rotations and environments. His goal in this program is to release high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties with good end-use quality that will maintain profitability and reduce the risk to growers.

Links to learn more about Dr. Arron Carter:

Dr. Carter's WSU faculty page

Dr. Carter's list of publications on Google Scholar

Dr. Carter on ResearchGate

Dr. Carter on LinkedIn

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists for scientists.

ARRON CARTER 0:08

We're managing several varieties at a time, you know, the first time when we go out in the field. For a yield test, there might be 2,000, you know, lines that we're looking at. And then again, thinking of this, like all star team, right, we're going along and slowly getting rid of those that don't have the characteristics we want. And then focusing on looking at those that do have the characteristics to find the elite variety. We start off with 1000s and up hopefully after four or five years with one.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:39

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today, We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is Dr. Arron Carter, professor and OA Vogel Endowed Chair of wheat breeding and genetics at Washington State University. Arron graduated with both a Bachelor's and Master's in Plant Science from the University of Idaho, and received his doctorate at Washington State University in crop science, where he currently leads the winter wheat breeding and genetics program. His research is directed towards breeding improved wheat varieties for cropping systems in Washington state than incorporate diverse rotations and environments. His goal in this program is to release high yielding disease resistant varieties with good and use quality that will maintain profitability and reduce the risk to growers. And today, he's here to talk to us about his work breeding the perfect variety of winter wheat. So, Arron, thanks so much for being here!

ARRON CARTER 1:41

Yeah, thank you so, so much for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:43

How did you get interested in crop science in general? And how did you work your way into plant breeding and winter wheat specifically?

ARRON CARTER 1:50

So yeah, it's kind of a funny story, how I got involved in plant breeding. It goes all the way back to you know, high school, when I was always interested in science and math, figuring out how things worked. And I learned that my high school ag teacher, let his favorite senior take his 69 Stingray Corvette to senior prom. And so when I went to high school, I was like, Well, I guess I better take a plant class, so I can get on the good side of this teacher. So I went in, and it was an intro to plant science class as freshman in high school. And we had to work on this little project. And the teacher wanted to figure out how to take a transplant of IV from the school so he could take it home and grow it on his barn, I thought, well, the best way to get on his good side is figure this out. So I spent a couple months tinkering around how to get this transplant to grow and take a cutting from it. I got interested in combining the science side of biology with the plants and really figuring out how plants work and what makes them grow. So that just kind of sparked that interest in plant science. As a general topic, I worked all out through high school. And so my senior year, there was a Research and Extension Center near my town. So I went and did some job shadowing, and did some plant breeding and made some crosses with a pea and bean breeder. And it was just like, wow, this, this looks interesting. So after taking the Corvette to prom, I did get on his good side and take that. I went to the University of Idaho and happened to get partnered up with the wheat breeder at the University of Idaho and started working in his program. And again, just kind of flushing out what exactly is plant breeding and how does it work, and I fell in love with it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:37

Awesome. For those of us in the audience who might not have as much of a background in crop science, can you just give us a little introduction to plant breeding? And to specifically wheat breeding? What is it? What are your goals? What are you looking to accomplish?

ARRON CARTER 3:49

Yeah, so plant breeding in general is really just about finding the best combination of genes within one given individual. It's really just about looking at a lot of variation. So just like when you look at humans, right, there's multiple people out there and every person looks a little different. Every person came from a different heritage and different parents. And you know, most parents have genes that they can pass to their offspring plants are exactly the same, right? So we'll take two plants that have favorable and complementing characteristics, we cross them together, just like they would happen in nature, we make a cross and then we look at hundreds or 1000s of progeny from that one individual cross. And when then again, making multiple crosses or looking at 10s of 1000s of individuals, and then going through and really looking for the best individual. It's kind of like looking at, you know, high school football teams, and then you find the best out of those high school football teams and then go on to college and then go on to the NFL, and eventually the all star team and eventually the MVP, you move that process along until you find that one elite cultivar that has all the characteristics you're looking for, for commercial production, every crop that you work with is going to be a little different as far as cycle time. So yeah, you have, you have some crops that could go multiple generations in greenhouses very rapidly, you have some crops, where they'll grow the summer in the US. And then in US winter, they send it to Argentina, and then they grow another season in Argentina. And so they kind of do this shuttle back and forth, so they can get to field seasons in a given year, we're looking in wheat, anywhere from eight to 10 years of development and testing, before we identify something that we have confidence in is going to be a good variety. But you know, if you look at a tree for breeding, that could be up to 20 or 30 years, other crops are a little bit faster. So it kind of all varies, but for wheat in particular, it's about eight to 10 years. So yeah, it is time and a process associated.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:00

All right, and can you explain a little bit about what winter wheat is compared to other varieties and how you got involved in winter wheat specifically.

ARRON CARTER 6:10

So the main two types are either a winter wheat or spring wheat. And the main difference is winter wheat requires a period, which is about six to eight weeks of cold temperatures, so about four degrees Celsius or 40 degrees Fahrenheit, to make a transition from vegetative, or it's only growing leaves to reproductive when it actually puts a flower up and makes the seed. So it's there's a couple genes called the vernalization genes that the dictate whether it's spring or winter. And so that's kind of the main difference. So if you grew, you know, if you planted winter wheat in March or April, right, it doesn't get that cold period. So it's just going to sit vegetative, grow a lot of leaves, whereas spring wheat would immediately start growing, start flowering and produce seed. So most of your winter wheat is going to be planted in the fall, August, September, October. And then over winter, it kind of goes dormant and receives that vernalization requirement that cold period, and then starts growing in the spring turning reproductive, the difference between spring and winter wheat is really about production. So you know, spring we is geared to go fast, because you know, you're planting it as soon as you can after winter time. So wherever you're at here in Washington, you know, that's typically late March to April, and then you're harvesting four months later, right? So it's a rapid, fast growth. Whereas winter wheat in Washington, you're planting anywhere from August to October. And then you're harvesting in July. So you're looking at like a 10 month growth period. So because of that, you know, winter, we usually has a yield advantage, more more stems, more flowers, more kernels associated with it, just because it has that longer time to grow than the speed of a spring wheat

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:10

Right, now, is this a much more recent development, where we have the winter varieties that then can over winter in the vegetative state before vernalization?

ARRON CARTER 8:20

Some of the ancestors going back again, 10 12,000 years, they were also what we would call a winter annual. So yeah, there was probably along the way, some mutations that occurred that caused the spring wheat, there are even spring and winter types of those ancestral varieties as well. You know, if you look historically, at wheat it's pretty complex hybridization events to kind of make because we have three ancestral varieties, or what we would call genomes kind of three distinct plants that kind of make what wheat is today.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:57

Okay. All right. And with that, what are the specific characteristics that you're looking for in a good variety of winter wheat.

ARRON CARTER 9:06

There's a lot of things that we look at first, it has to be agronomics, because it's winter wheat has to survive the winter, right? So it can be susceptible than any kind of cold. Right now we're sitting under a couple feet of snow, and it's super cold outside today. They have to be able to survive just sitting under three months of snow for months of snow and these cold temperatures. So that's the first thing you have to get through in some of our cropping systems, especially here in Washington, we will plant six to eight inches deep because it's so dry. They've got to be able to emerge, they've got to be able to establish well in the fall, and then move into that winter period. And then in the springtime. It's about how fast is it break that winter dormancy and start growing again to take advantage of the good weather. How fast is the canopy close? How competitive is it with weeds and other things in the field? yield. And then ultimately, you know, looking at final grain yield, that's kind of the tell tale of everything it has to yield well has to yield high, so that farmers can make a profit on that. And then of course, along the way, there's just a lot of things that are trying to take away from that final yield. So you have insect pests, you have fungal pest, viral pest, we're really trying to develop varieties that are also resistant to all those pests and diseases out in the field. So that we can maintain that yield potential that is inherent within the variety, instead of being taken away from because of whatever pest. That's kind of the main thing, we look at making sure it's the proper plant height, so it doesn't get too tall and fall over, making sure a flower is at the right time. So late frost don't come in and kill the plant, whatever it might be. Really looking at agronomics associated with it, and then kind of the final step is our indies quality, because eventually you're going to make a product with the wheat variety. A lot of our varieties in the Pacific Northwest go to export markets, specifically the Pacific Rim. So think about like Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, they're kind of our major buyers. So we work very closely with them, to understand what their markets are, what products they're aching, to make sure we develop a variety that meets their standards for their quality as well

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:26

Are their prime climate zones or latitudes that then winter wheat can flourish more readily than others?

ARRON CARTER 11:33

There definitely are, you know, just like any crop, it's kind of suited to different weather patterns. In Washington, we have fairly favorable conditions. So our summers are pretty mild, considering you know, our high temperatures are 85-90 degrees, right? If we get above 90, we start complaining that it's too hot. It's more sometimes about nighttime temperatures than daytime temperatures. So you can have a high daytime temperature. But if your nighttime temperatures cool, the plant can kind of recover from that stress of the day and handle it a little bit. Whereas if you're talking about 100 degrees in daytime, but 85 at night, they just get no relief from that heat. In Washington, we have some fairly favorable conditions for just growing wheat. And when you look, you know, Whitman County, where we're at here and Pullman is one of the highest yielding counties in the United States. Just again, because favorable weather conditions and our soils have a very high water holding capacity. You know, everything kind of lines up well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:36

Is this a variety than that is grown via dry farming primarily?

ARRON CARTER 12:39

Yeah. So primarily in Washington, everything is dry farming. So whatever, you know, snowfall, we get a rainfall during the season is what the plant has available to it, you know, a little bit of irrigation in the central part of Washington. But yeah, mainly everything's dry farming.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:54

When it comes to growing, you've got your cash crops, but you also have cover crops. I think I read somewhere that winter wheat can be used as a cover crop as well, in some places, is that correct?

ARRON CARTER 13:03

Again, in Washington, we usually don't do that. But in other places like Oklahoma, for example, they actually use it for grazing, they plant the winter wheat, and they graze it for their cattle most of the year. And then if conditions are favorable, and the weather is favorable, they'll take it to a grain crop and make a little profit on the grain. But the primary reason for planting winter wheat in like Oklahoma is grazing first. So yeah, it does have some other uses around the US as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:32

Interesting so coming back to the characteristics that you're looking for, how are you measuring that? And what are you looking for specifically?

ARRON CARTER 13:38

Right, yeah, so as I mentioned, you're looking at good emergence and stand establishment after planting, good winter survival. And those are just kind of rated on a zero to 10 scale, you know, good to bad, you know, it's kind of just the sliding scale. And then, you know, we get into the specifics of flowering date and final plant height, test way that's kind of about the density of the seed, you know, is packed full of starches, or is it not, that kind of feeds into the end use quality, we do full milling and baking analysis on all these varieties. You know, we mill samples into flour, we make products out of those, so we're actually seeing how they work functionally for indies quality, a lot of disease resistance. So there's about a dozen different diseases that we kind of focus on mainly. So again, rating those on a scale of how much disease is present, what's the severity of that disease, we're also looking at the abiotic. So the nonliving things like soil pH and drought tolerance and heat tolerance and you know a lot of different aspects. We have certain locations where we know we get certain diseases or the pH is low so we can screen variety. Some locations are purely about just screening for a disease or a stress. Other locations are more about looking at final yield potential. You know one thing we also look at is not only how a variety performs in a given year, but how is it going to perform across multiple environments in multiple years. Because again, you know, you don't want to give a farmer a variety that does great in a wet year. But then if a dry year comes along, it's a complete failure, you know, we want to be able to have something that is good in every situation. And that's kind of the golden ticket there is finding those varieties that will perform well across the multiple environments.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:29

As you're doing that, are you focusing primarily on one variety, and that's where your all your efforts are going towards? Are you managing several different varieties at the same time?

ARRON CARTER 15:38

We're managing several varieties at a time, you know, the first time when we go out in the field, for a yield test, there might be 2000, you know, lines that we're looking at. And then again, thinking of this, like all star team, right, we're going along and slowly getting rid of those that don't have the characteristics we want. And then focusing on looking at those that do have the characteristics to find the elite variety. We start off with 1000s and up hopefully, after four or five years with one, basil's characteristics, and then of course, you know, every year we're moving that through, so I have elite trials, the same year, I have preliminary first year trials, you know, so we kind of keep that pipeline, if you will, full of varieties moving through, it's a lot about testing the varieties over multiple locations and multiple years to see how they perform. Gathering enough data that you have confidence that you can say, okay, definitely a bad line, it needs to go in the trash can, or Wow, this lens looking really good. We're going to keep that untested another year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:42

What is that Final Cut, where it says, this is a Hall of Fame variety, it's good to send off to the growers or to market?

ARRON CARTER 16:49

Oh, if I see a variety out there that growers are growing, but maybe it's susceptible to a disease, I'm gonna give them a variety of that, at least performs equal to if not better than and has that disease resistance associated with it. And you know, there's there's given takes all the time, you know, you might have something that's acceptable in one area, and phenomenal. And another, you know, and you kind of have to weigh those back and forth, which just comes a lot with time and experience, talking with the growers understanding, okay, this trade is essential, the straights desired, but not essential. You know, and when you're looking at 60 traits in a given year, you're gonna have everything from it's good, it's good, acceptable, acceptable, good. So again, you're trying to find those varieties that have increased number of favorable traits associated with them,

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:39

right. I'm interested in hearing about your process about how that plays out, but also the traditional process of phenotyping from decades ago, and how that's evolved and changed and improved over time.

ARRON CARTER 17:51

So we've had a wheat breeding program at Washington State University for over 125 years. And when I look back at what the objectives were, for those first wheat breeders, they're the same as what I'm doing good yield, good production, good performance, good quality differences, we have different tools, you know, as I talked about previously, you can measure plant height, you can measure flowering date, they're all things we can see with our eye, I can put a stick down until you 36 inches tall, I can tell you it flowered on June 12, whatever it is, because my eye can see that. Now we're starting to phenotype everything our eye can't see. And that's where we start getting into different sensors, and thermal cameras, wavelengths and spectral indices that help us understand how much nitrogen the plant is using, how much water the plant is using, how much transpiration is occurring. So all of these now are starting to be phenotypes and traits that my predecessors never had available to them. But we now have available to help us better understand how the environment is affecting the plants. And hopefully that's helping us make better selections. And it's a thing that my program has been looking at a lot. You know, we've been flying drones and using sensors on our variety since 2016. So we've got about six years of data now, where we've been able to watch varieties and see how they're performing for these traits that you can't see with your eye.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:23

With a drone, specifically, what kind of sensors do have on those.

ARRON CARTER 19:27

Initially, we did the research to kind of understand what we needed to look at. So as what we're looking at specifically, are just again, specific wavelengths. And looking at that reflectance. There's multiple companies that will develop these cameras for you and put different filters in so that you can look at these different wavelengths. We're just looking at those to build the indices that we're interested in. So we use five different wavelengths to help us build a water index and a nitrogen index and of photosynthetic index to help us again understand how that plant is kind of working under these different stresses, and use those as additional trait values.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:07

And you talked about drones, have you been gone up a little bit higher and use satellites and satellite imaging as well.

ARRON CARTER 20:13

I've got some great collaborators at the university. And we've looked at everything from you know, handheld instruments to tractor mounted to drones, to satellites, lower reading satellites, a little bit of everything, you know, all of them have their pros and cons, we, right now still find the drone is kind of the easiest for us to use, because we can still control it. When you're working with satellites, you know, maybe it's a cloudy day, maybe this or that is going on, and you might not get it, we're still playing around with all that satellite data we are getting to see you know, exactly how is it going to help us. Sometimes for us, when we're working with just little plots and little blips on the ground, satellites don't quite have the resolution we need for those cases. So the drones kind of are a good fit in between where you can fly and kind of capture that whole field in one picture, and still have pretty good resolution.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:08

Does all of this play into your process of rapid phenotyping?

ARRON CARTER 21:12

Yeah, definitely goes into rapid phenotyping. But what I've been learning, everyone's a little different, right. So different crops behave a little differently, different parts of the country behave a little differently. So this is kind of what I've learned about wheat in Washington, is it's not really about how it's doing in the given year. Because you know, the sensor data, we get very high correlations with performance in that year at that location. But it's not necessarily telling us how well that variety will perform the next year, when we might have extreme moisture or extreme drought, you know, and so is what we're looking at now is collecting enough data that we can start building prediction models, and actually taking all this past performance and saying, Okay, we know how these 1000s of varieties performed in the dry years and the wet years and the hot years in the cold years, and then doing our forward prediction and saying, Okay, here's a variety that's never seen the field, but how would it perform in any of these predicted environments. And so again, it would kind of be like going to the high school football team, and saying, we're just going to predict who would do well, in the NFL, we'll skip the college years, and just send them straight to the NFL, because they're predicted to do phenomenal there. We do that a lot with genetics, and genotyping and understanding on a genetic level, which of these varieties have those genes that would make them favorable in the field, I mean, it's not perfect, but it allows us to remove varieties that we're pretty confident are never going to make it, they don't have the characteristics we need. And then it helps us really focus in on these elite varieties and testing them. And again, kind of, you know, if we grow them that first year in a wet year, since I don't know how it'll perform in a dry year, I can now predict that, so then I can have Okay, here's how it actually didn't know what year and here's how it's predicted to do in a dry year, a little more information that now I can make better selection decisions to advance those forward.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:29

Right? Would you be able to go into a bit more detail about how that genotyping process works and bit more about how it plays into the phenotyping in the breeding aspects?

ARRON CARTER 23:39

For wheat being kind of one of the major staple crops, it's actually one of the last that we actually have, like a full genome assembly, because it's complex, because it has these three ancestral varieties that, you know, kind of formed together, and it's a very big genome. So there's a lot of DNA there that you kind of have to figure out, but we have the genome assembly over the last couple of years. You know, it gives us a really good picture before we are just kind of dealing with one gene, and one DNA marker that kind of tracks that gene. So you know, we know it has the disease resistance or doesn't have the disease resistance. But yeah, now we're kind of at that stage where we can do full genome sequencing, and kind of look at every piece of DNA that's there, we still don't understand all the genes, and what the different DNA regions are doing. But with these models, we know okay, if you have this specific DNA sequence, you're predicted to do better. We don't know what that is, is that a drought tolerance is that a disease tolerance is that like, we don't know what that means. But we just know if you have this, you're predicted to do better than than not. I mean, the genotyping technology is advancing very rapidly. So I joke around so I've been out of my PhD for about 13-14 years now. And you know, when I started I was excited because we went From a one, channel pipette. So just being able to pull up one sample at a time to a 12 channel, right now I can pull 12 at a time, right. And now we have robots where you stick a 384 well plate in, and it's moving 384 samples at a time. And so I know my PhD project took me six months to get genotype information. Now I can send it away and to a lab and a couple of weeks later, you know, so that technology is just moving so rapidly, what I'm talking about, we can do now is probably going to change in the next five years as well. But the point of it all is, you know, we're to that point where really we know enough about the genetics and of wheat that we can start making these big prediction models.

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:47

Has your work gotten involved at all with genetic modification of the wheat varieties?

ARRON CARTER 25:52

Yeah, we just work with modeling and phenotyping, you know, we make our crosses just like they would out in nature. So we don't work with anything. And this is we breeding programs across the US, we don't work with genetic modification or anything like that yet. It's a tool, and it's a technology that's available. But we don't work with it a lot, because a lot of our export markets still don't accept genetic modification. So if there are programs that happen to be using it, they're not associated with the plant breeding programs, you know, they're kind of the programs in the lab playing around with it, seeing if it will work. But we keep that away from all the plant breeding, so we don't contaminate anything and brew in any of our domestic or export markets.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:36

Could you explain a bit about environment typing, and its importance to the work that you're doing as well?

ARRON CARTER 26:41

Yeah. So this is just kind of come out in the past couple of years, where we're really now starting to think about the environments that were growing varieties in the really unique characteristics about all of those, you know, as a plant breeder, you're always looking at your environments. And so you know, it was cold, it was hot, you know, on kind of these general trends. But now we're really starting to dial it in and really understand exactly what's going on all these environments. I talked about these fluctuations in every year. So even they're all I'm growing a test plot in the same location every year. That's really a different location every year, because it's a different environment. So as we start understanding more about the environment, and doing this in viral typing, it's going to help us really understand what's going on at that location, what were the stresses, when those stresses came? How much water was available? What were the growing degree days, right, all of this that we kind of looked at 10, generally, previously, and dial it in a lot more. You know, I know a lot of the private companies, especially in like maize breeding and soybean breeding, they've been doing this for a while already. But kind of coming down to the university level, we're just kind of starting to dive into it heavily,

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:59

right? We have a lot of soil scientists here at METER and a lot of our customers are dealing with soil science and soil research, how does the soil play a role in Enviro typing? And how do you measure that change from year to year, or the various characteristics of the soil and soil health

ARRON CARTER 28:16

soil is very important, because that's, you know, all your nutrients come from that all our water comes from that we don't get a lot of water in season, so it's all stored in the soil. So you know, really the soil is our medium for what the plants going to do that year? How do you understand that, you know, we're still discussing that, you know, you can put in sensors, and you can kind of look at how much water is available there and what the water potential is of the soil and, and that but you know, the difficulty we have in a plant breeding program is I'm looking at 1000s of varieties across the entire field. And so you have to capture all the variation of that field. And it's just not possible to put a soil sensor in every single plot that's out there, although it would be phenomenal, you know, it's just not going to happen. So, you know, it's really kind of looking at, you know, trends and understanding what we think's going on in the soil with the ultimate goal is to again, be able to better make prediction models based on what we know is going on in that certain environment, for example, right, if I have an environment where the stress came early, and I know it was an early season stress, versus of late season stress, that's going to inform how I make decisions about what varieties to keep, and gives me information. Okay, I know if this variety did well, it was because it could survive an early season stress and know the very specifics of that, versus in another location. You know, maybe the stress came later or maybe the stress came in the fall and not in the springtime, you know, so there's all these different scenarios. Where yield could be taken away? Right? So I think as we understand that better about each of these environments that we're growing in, like I say, it may be the same farmer's field. But every year, it's going to be a little different. Because right now we just generalize it, right? It's high rainfall, it's low rainfall, it's a northern latitude. It's a southern latitude, you know, you make these generalities. But in reality, right, even though it's a southern latitude, it may have a cold stress, when you typically would say, oh, there's no cold stress down there, understanding all of this. And really building these prediction models, I think, is kind of where we're going and better understanding these environments. We're still like I say, conversing with a lot of different experts in, in these fields outside of plant breeding, to really figure out how we're going to use this information in these models, right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:53

So if you were able to build like a perfect test plot and have the environmental variables that you would be able to understand what would go into that,

ARRON CARTER 31:01

I want to know how a variety will perform in any condition you give it, right, because that way, when I give it to the grower, I've got this confidence again, that like, Hey, if you have a wet year, dry year is still going to be the best. Now if you have a dry year yield is not going to be as high as a wet year. But I don't want it going from the number one variety to the number 100 variety in the test, I want to always to be number one, regardless of what you throw at it. For me, it's more about being able to understand how it would do in multiple environments. So like my perfect environment is multiple environments that are all kind of giving you something a little different. Because if all my locations this coming year are beautiful, and no stress, and you know, phenomenal and high yield. I'm like, great. But what's going to happen when it's a stressful environment, which one of these is still going to be number one, I kind of look at it as, again, I want to understand what each of the environments I'm testing in are telling me. Right? Not just Well, this was high yield, this was low yield, this was high yield because of XYZ, it could be because there was, you know, a lot of moisture there great temperatures, it could be bad yield because of a disease being present, or drought. If I know that and informs my decision, if all I know is it was low yielding. But I don't know why it's very difficult to make any decisions on what varieties to keep. Sometimes I can see that because there's a disease there. And I can say, okay, obviously there's a disease, let's see which lines still yield high, because it means they were able to tolerate or resist that disease. You know, when I get that data, and I look at it, I'm like, wow, what went on there, because it looked like a good environment. But here, we get these low yields. It's really not super useful, unless I kind of know the why. So my perfect environment really is, I know the why I know what happened there be a good be a bad, be it ugly, then it really informs my decision.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:16

So say you got blank check from USDA, if you want it to know the why of that environment, what would that look like to really get at the why?

ARRON CARTER 33:23

Yeah, so definitely be all the genotyping we can on the varieties, it would be all the phenotypes we can get. So that being from the visual that I can see to as much as we can get with sensors, and everything we can't see. And then that third, like you asked about was the environment typing, like, give me all the environmental information we can on that, whether that be weather data, you know, wind, precipitation, solar radiation, right, everything that's going on there. And then being able to put all of that into this prediction model, you know, which takes a few years to get enough information and enough varieties to like, be confident in your predictions. But once you get 1000s of individuals in there and multiple years and environments, within those years, those predictions are very powerful. So it doesn't take away what you're seeing again, in the field. But it just adds all this extra information to it to help you. So you know, that's what I would really do with the blank check. Take all this information we've got and build together these models, which again, is kind of the hard part, right? We're sitting here talking about plant breeding. And you know, I'm the expert in plant breeding, and yet I'm telling you, we need to figure out how to run all these statistical models and figure out all this environmental data and do all this computer programming, you know, so it really is about pulling together experts from all these different fields to help you understand because like I say, I'm I'm not the expert in those but there are people out there who are so you know, plant breeding if there's one thing I've learned it's really about collaborations and getting all these experts from these different fields to help you understand what's going on.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:07

Can you talk a little bit about collaboration with the growers side of things, and maybe the growing consultants, crop consultants and things?

ARRON CARTER 35:13

Yeah. So I mean, we have a great relationship with our growers in the state. They're ultimately our stakeholders, right. And they have a checkoff system where they give money back that goes into research and education. So a portion of that comes and helps fund my program. So you know, we really interact with them closely, because, again, you know, I'm using their money, and I want to give them a product back, that's going to be beneficial to them. So we're talking a lot about what kind of are the future trends? And what do we see coming up in the future? And what are we dealing with right now, and what might we deal with in five years, so we can start building varieties that are going to meet that, you know, you can't respond instantly to a new disease in a year, right, it's gonna take me 10 years to develop something. So if we can look forward and be like, Wow, our weather patterns are changing, such that we may get this disease that we've never seen before. Okay, well, let's start me know, maybe getting that resistance into our program. Right now, a lot of our trials are on, you know, an acre of land and we grow on their fields, so worked very closely with them. Also, with the seed companies, with the crop advisors, with the chemical companies, you know, we're always talking with them about our different varieties, and you know, what resistances, they have, so they know like, Okay, this disease comes, this one's resistant, but you know, we might need to watch it for this other disease, because it's just kind of moderately resistant. And so it kind of helps them understand to what's going on with the individual variety. So a lot of it is about informing the growers in the stakeholders about the varieties, and really the ins and outs of them all the different attributes. So they again, kind of know what to look for.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:58

So talking about diseases, well, what specific pathogens or diseases are you're looking at, are you exploring, and how does your process differ when you're dealing with disease, tolerance, pathogen resistance, as opposed to other types of characteristics that you're developing?

ARRON CARTER 37:14

There's a number of diseases that we deal with across the state. And some of it depends on your cropping system and your rotation, sometimes just latitude up in the northern part of the state where they've had snow on the ground since November 6, going on two months of snow cover and probably have another two months, we've got to pay attention to that for the growers up there. across the entire state, there's a full year fungal disease called stripe rust. It's a global pathogen. And you know, we deal with it here. So we've got to kind of pay attention to that. Remember, there's a couple of soil borne diseases that we deal with as well. There's various other ones, those that I mentioned, are kind of the annual, yearly most widespread, you know, there's a few pockets here and there with some viral diseases that we pay attention to as well. They're just not widespread in the state. You know, when you look at that with any other trait, that's just what it is. It's another trait, right? So you kind of have your scale of must haves with snow mold, there's no option, it's either resistant or susceptible, you can't spray something on it, that's economical anyway, right, there's no way to control it. So you know, that's kind of like a half do for the growers up there. If you don't have that tolerance, they aren't going to grow it as a variety, you know, and then there's other ones like some of the foliar diseases, it's like, well, it doesn't have to be 100% resistant. But you know, you want it to be fairly stable. But if something happens, and a grower needs to spray it, they could. But like I say we try and eliminate that if we can, but that's one where we can kind of go to a moderately resistant variety and still have it acceptable for the growers, you know, we would never go susceptible and be like, Yeah, you gotta spray a five times, but it'll be right. You know, but it might be something we're like, Okay, this is one might, you might have to watch a little bit and in a severe year, you might need a spray, but like I said, we try and keep it on that resistant, moderately resistant side. Again, you know, with your experience and talking to the growers, you kind of understand what they're acceptable with and what levels of tolerance are acceptable with and, you know, they may say like, okay, yeah, okay, if I have to watch it, that's fine. Just don't give me super susceptible or sometimes it's nope, if it's not resistant, no way we're doing this. So yeah, it's just this sliding scale. When I teach plant breeding at the university, I kind of tell the students this, they'll ask me questions, and it always starts with Well, it depends, you know, because there's usually no one answer for one thing, you know, it's always changing based on your region or the disease you're dealing with or something.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:51

We have a few minutes left. I just wanted to get your thoughts on the future of plant breeding, or specifically within winter wheat where you hope it'll go? Where do you think It'll go the next 5-10 or so years or even beyond?

ARRON CARTER 40:04

With plant breeding and wheat breeding in general, it really is going to be looking at these predictive performance and the predictive modeling. Everything that I've seen in all the research that I've read, and that I've done personally with my graduate students say that it's helpful, right. And that's really what you're trying to do with plant breeding is just bias your population. Like I say, you know, you just want it so that more of the lines that you're testing have that potential in there, because it's the worst when you grow out and grow 1000 lines, and you throw away 80% of them, because they were susceptible to a disease, right? Well, shoot, I just wasted all this time. Now, I'm only looking at 200 lines instead of 1000. Right. So if you can make this predictive performance, where you're like, Hey, these are all going to be all stars. Now really pick the best out of those, it's really going to push that upper limit of where we can go. Because if you look at trends in a lot of crop breeding, we're making about a 1-2% gain every year. Right? So yeah, we're making improvements. But if you then look at the predictions of well, you know, how many people are going to have to feed on less land, the 1% gain isn't cutting it. And so that's really where I think this predictive modeling will go in where again, we'll be able to test more lines that have these favorable characteristics that are the elite varieties. And by testing more of those, you're gonna find those ones that aren't beating yield by 1 or 2%. They're beating it by four or 5%. And then we're, again starting to look at those traits that we haven't selected on before. So can we make varieties more water use efficient, more Photosynthetically efficient. And as we do that, I think we'll also see the gains move up faster as well, you know, the combination of the prediction and looking at some of these traits we've never been able to look at before, I think we'll be able to see increased gains. So that's kind of where I see it going, you know, 10 years from now, I may look back and be like, Well, that was wrong, but you know, you like like most things you do, you know, you take all the information you got with you and make your best guess and, you know, go forward with it. And like I say the research I've seen coming out points in that direction.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:24

Any final thoughts? And where can those in our audience find out more about your research?

ARRON CARTER 42:30

Yeah, so if you want to find out more about my research, you know, the best thing to do is just look up my faculty page at Washington State University, you know, it's pretty easy right now just Google somebody's name, and usually find out everything you want about them. So you know, that's the best place to go, you know, it lists publications of this my research that I'm doing the varieties we've developed, so you can kind of see what my program is doing research on. So that's the best way to find out information, of course, my emails there. So if people have questions, I'm always happy to answer them or, you know, give them my thoughts on a subject. But ya know, I just appreciate the time here talking with you today. And the closing thought, like I've said is plant breeding is really this interdisciplinary field that's combining all these different levels of expertise and developing a variety. And I'm just really excited about the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:22

Well, thanks again, Arron for stopping by and joining us. I know I learned a lot and it's super fascinating for me. So thank you again. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Peter Tereszkiewicz is a PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina. His current research focuses on coastal dunes and understanding how seasonal vegetation such as dune grasses and sediment interactions affect dune growth and post-storm recovery.

Links to learn more about Peter:

• Article about Peter's research
• Peter on Research Gate

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The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 0:08

Yeah, in the moments leading up to it, you know, walking out of the field site, there was so much wind blowing above that threshold of motion. You're just watching sheets of the beach, deflate, right? Deflation is this process where we have the winnowing away of finer material. And that removal of mass causes the surface to as the name implies deflate, right lower down. But I've never seen it happen this rapidly in front of my very eyes. I mean, it is happening faster than I could possibly measure it with the modern tools that we have.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:35

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is Pete Tereszkiewicz PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina. His current research focuses on coastal dunes and understanding how seasonal vegetation such as dune grasses, and sediment interactions affect dune growth and post Storm Recovery. So Pete, thanks so much for being here.

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 1:08

Yeah, thanks for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:10

Alright. So we'd like to start off with a little bit of background, so can you just let us know about your background, how you got into this field of doing research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 1:20

Yeah, I think a lot of people in the environmental sciences, you know, it's sort of dumb luck that you have that one class that sort of clicks, you know, in undergrad and for me, it was coastal geomorphology. And I was fortunate to I took it at a time where I was also kind of getting into surfing. So the ability to do research, but also enjoy being in the same environment for recreation was very much there. And so, you know, I was hook line and sinker from semester one, and that led on to a undergraduate thesis that then pushed me into a master's program, and then finally into the Ph. D program. Um, so it's very organic growth. You know, I didn't finish high school and was like I'm gonna go into doing research, you know, and get a PhD. And that that wasn't the way it worked out. For me, it's pretty much you know, by happenstance and being the right people at the right time. And the dune side of things is pretty much new, my undergrad and Master's was more focused on engineered structures and how those modify shoreline change. And then I kind of wanted to make a small pivot and turn around the other direction. Look at the dunes for my PhD research, just to kind of balance out and I'm really glad I did.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:19

Awesome. Yeah, I know, we've had quite a few guests who have talked about, like you said, just that, you know, happenstance, like they started in one side and kind of move to the other. Yeah, like you said, there's a class or something like that. I don't know if we've had any who have said, surfing has been their catalyst for moving into, into their research field. So that's definitely a first tier. So just to start us off, and just for the late people in the audience, can you give us just kind of a quick intro into why why dunes are so important for us and for beach ecology environment?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 2:51

Yeah, so if we think about the ecological services that the dune itself can provide, it's very much, or it functions very similar to like a levee would, right. So they're really good at being the first line of defense during storm events, and tend to take a lot of that initial surge and beating that storms can provide. And so if you look at that protective service that is available, you know, if you have a strong established Ford in front of your residence, you're probably going to receive much or far lesser impacts from that storm than if you had say, no Dune, or a small dune or dunes are discontinuous, you know, and not pieced together very well. So the biggest benefit is definitely the protective surface it provides during storm events, and not even just storms, you know, it could just be a really high tide or just really big wave event, right, any of those the dunes gonna be able to stand in the way and help out with that erosion.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:41

That was my next question here is can you tell us a little bit about wind and water and other forces that affect beach dune creation, deformation, erosion, all that kind of stuff?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 3:51

So when we're thinking about dunes and how they're formed on there's two real main forces at work, right, we have the the sheer velocity of the wind. So how fast the wind is blowing, how long the wind is blowing for at that speed. Then on the other hand, we have the resisting force of the sediment, you know, the sand will move whenever that resisting force is exceeded by the wind, when it's actually able to physically pick up the particles and move them. When that happens is very site specific, you know, you're dealing with different mineralogy's, which is differences in density, grain shape comes into play, of course, size. And so all those sites specifics or nuances really make beaches behave individually when we think about resiliency and how they're going to behave and that dune building process. You know, I love when sand starts moving on a beach, you know, so I can talk about this for hours.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:42

Well, that's, that's fine. We got we got plenty of time and we'll we'll be covering a lot of this. So with that background, can you just introduce us into some of the projects you're working on or your main project that you're working on for a PhD research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 4:53

Yeah, so as you mentioned in the intro, you know, my work is dealing with understanding the role that vegetation density and seasonal changes in that, right as they move from winter into the spring and summer months, what that means for volumetric change within the dune. And when initially trying to tackle this question, you know, the first thing you do is you hit the books, you check out the literature, you see what's been done, or what is being done in the field. And a lot of those existing methods, you know, being quadratic analysis, which we kind of borrowed from biology and ecology, you could do frontal area and optical porosity and which are photographing the vegetation and you know, trying to pull out, you know, how much area the wind is experiencing, or you could use most recently drone photogrammetry, right, and pulling out by flying drones, vegetation coverage from that perspective. But all of those existing methodologies are contingent on you going to the beach, which is fine. It's a great method, it works. You know, it's one way of answering the problem. But what I was really curious about is, what can we put out there in situ to monitor for these longer periods of time, you know, to be at one point over the vegetation in the dune and monitor that growth and that emergence during the spring and summer months? What does that look like? And then how does that maybe tie into the volumetric change signal that we're seeing? And so yeah, that's why I chose the METER NDVI-SRS sensors. And yeah, it's been incredibly interesting to work with them out in that environment. There's something else that question I didn't answer.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:22

Well, I have. No, I mean, I'm, I'm interested because you're talking about volumetric change. And my first thought was, Is this something where it's actually measuring that volumetric change? Or are there proxies for estimating that change?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 6:37

Yeah, so the drone flights are definitely the main methodology that I'm using to calculate volumetric change. But you know, also, in the field of view of the sensors, I've installed erosion pins, which are just like tiny little sticks, you know, and you go out there, they're very rudimentary, you measure them right in time one, and then the next visit, you measure them again, and you have some sort of indicator of how much change occurred got on. So that's just in the field of view to have a sort of check resource. There were some issues with those just really noisy signals. And I think a lot of this just comes down to, you know, the flow and the eddies that are forming around the individual reads of the vegetation. And there's something I didn't I didn't foresee being a problem, but it doesn't make enough sense to where, you know, I can say, hang my hat on and say, Yeah, that's exactly what's going on in the dune, and I think it's just this microscale process he's coming through,

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:27

How do you deal with messy data in your specific research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 7:32

I think the way I've been trained by my my advisor, and I think it goes for a lot of scientists out there is, you know, we, we don't really smooth the data too much. It's just not, you know, what you get back from the natural environment like that, that is what you have. And, you know, if you're dealing with something where you have all this wave data, and you want to pull out tides, and you down sample that's one thing, but, you know, looking at a noisy environmental signal, you know, I think what we tend to fall back on is just how many standard deviations is it off by or what is the variance? And then does the variance of that particular signal outweigh? You know, sort of the resolution of the change that we might see? And if that's the case, then it's got to go. Right. But you know, still learning, right? Every data sets unique and different, and poses different challenges.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:16

As you're out there. How long is your field season when you're doing this research when you're taking these measurements or going out to the dunes themselves?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 8:24

Yeah, so I installed all my equipment out there, January 10, this past year, and they were out there up until hurricane Ian, but for the dissertation work on just because of the compressed timeline, I only present up until about August, that particular chapter, but you know, the full blown publication will have work all the way up until hurricane Ian happened and those instrument were pulled.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:47

Right, right. And that's definitely something interesting. I definitely want to touch on hurricane Ian, for those who are listening. We're recording this in October of 2022. And hurricane Ian, which peaked at a category four hurricane was, yeah, pretty devastating. And it passed right by where Pete was doing his research. So we'll get into that here in a little bit. I did want to come back, you'd mentioned using NDVI and PRI sensors. Can you just do a quick explainer about how those kinds of sensors work and what you do with them within your research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 9:20

Yeah, sure. So both the NDVI and PRI-SRS sensors are a combination of your hemispherical or upward facing sensor that gets the changes within the natural environment. If it's cloudy one day and sunny the next right, you want to count for that, then you have a field stop sensor which is looking down on top your vegetation. So NDVI has been used widely in the remote sensing community, I would say I think since the 70s, for getting vegetation density, mid density changes, and can also be used for like Leaf Area Index and other indices like that. And then PRI has been recently shown to be a really good indicator of vegetation stress. And so when thinking about using these are my two main questions that you touched on the intro duction is how do seasonal changes in vegetation density, you know, affect volumetric change, that's the NDVI sensor, then in turn being that these dunes are existing on this, really, I mean, just crazy interface between land and sea that's exposed to, you know, frequent storm events, high tides, drought, other sorts of, you know, disturbances: you know, they get hit with a lot of stress. And I really was curious to see if a stressing phenomena occurred, what would that PRI signal look like? Right? Because the benefit of having the sensors out there is that I'm getting an hourly record of this change.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:36

Right? Is that something where you where you need that kind of granularity? So you're talking about hour per hour type of recordings? Would it be better to have something even quicker than that? Or what are the issues with that kind of granularity?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 10:47

Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to the scale I chose for my field study, and a lot of, you know, recorded hourly, because it's easier to take in more data and then down sample versus, you know, obviously go the other way. And so by going hourly, what I'm able to do is I'm able to take a number of readings around noon, and then average those out. And that's my one value for the day, a number of our datasets, at least the ones tied to vegetation growth, come down to a daily recording a daily value. And so because of that, yeah, only a day is what came out of it and the data. But yeah, that granularity was just decided on based on other instruments at play and trying to compare, you know, apples to apples, but in terms of if smaller resolution is needed, I wouldn't think so. But I'm also not a ecologist or biologist, you know, I'm like, I'm borrowing some really cool toys, they have to try to get my question that within coastal geomorphology, right, I can't fully answer that question.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:43

Right. So how have the results looked so far with this project?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 11:49

Yeah, the coolest thing that's come out of it as an inflection point, right, actually being able to see that you know, and I'm sure your listeners that are either in the agricultural field or you know, in biology fields that use these sensors already. Yeah, I get an inflection point every spring like we know this exists, but Right, but as I mentioned earlier, right, we, in the coastal and Aeolian world, we didn't have this sort of resolution in situ, looking at a plant to see that inflection point. So if my field visits were, before the inflection point, and then after, I just averaged that out, right? Why that the timing of that flexion point matters. And when I say inflection point here, I guess I should describe as I've been looking at the data a lot, please. But it's around like March 22. There's this explosion of growth almost going from, you know, straight line to logarithmically changing daily. And so why that really matters is the timing of that inflection point, when the plants start biting out or blooming out as we move into this warmer months. How does that relate to when the winds are blowing at a speed that they can move sediment? Right, and the occurrence of those two variables? Are they in tandem? Or are they not? Because I think, and I can't fully answer his question yet, but I think that's what really gets at why systems or some systems are resilient and recover much faster than others. You know, having worked on Pensacola Beach, as well as one South Carolina's coastline, there's a huge difference in how these systems recover, you know, Pensacola might take 10 years to recover to a certain state that it won't take South Carolina a year, year and a half to and why is that? And that's kind of a little bit more background into why I sort of chose this question for my dissertation work.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:32

With all this going on, what are some of the other special challenges that you're facing and doing this kind of research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 13:39

Yeah, I guess I'll start back at the beginning. I was fortunate to be a Grant A. Harris fellow and 2020 which was awesome you know, that announcement came in right before the first major lockdown came and the big challenge here I was you know, scrambling to get the shipping address changed to my house you nervous about that equipment actually getting to me right because the supply chain was in upheaval. And so that definitely pose a bit of an issue. And then once I had that equipment delivered, you know where to test it out, like everyone else was growing potato plants in my backyard. So that's what I tried the sensors out on you know, and learn really fast that if your canopy is producing all sorts of shadows in your field of view, the sensors really don't like that. But you know, obviously that didn't really matter for the dissertation work because the beach there is no tree canopy over the top of the sensor. So right, it wasn't too much of an issue. But uh, yes, that was definitely one of the challenges. The next one is definitely choosing the location of the sensors. And I think a lot of field scientists out there can relate to this where you build these experiments for months and two years potentially. And then it's you know, it's it's game time, right? You got everything ready to go, you hit the beach, you're deploying things you go and smooth right? But before you can actually start that process of installation, you need to look at the landscape again and verify that we're going to put them makes the most sense To answer your questions, for me unfortunately, as I mentioned, this is a system that's typically disturbed by nor'easters, you know, high tides and storms. And so naturally when I went out there, like maybe a few days before I got hit with a nor'easter, and it just really decimated the site, because it wasn't just any nor'easter it was, it was one that was a real jerk, and he sat offshore, and just pumped waves during multiple title cycles, right. So you have localized, you know, sea level rise from the high tide, right, and then you have waves coming in on top of that. And then next tidal cycle, same thing, next one. So it really did number and scarpt my dunes, which is where you're removing volume from the front or the toe of the dune. It can result in what looks like a cliff. And so he has a lot of scarping across the site and removed a lot of sediment deposited what's known as RAC, which is like the vegetative remnants of former dune grasses or more species, you know, and it gets sort of balled up and placed on top of the surface. And so that change the initial game plan strategy, right, that had built up over multiple years for this deployment. And so when thinking about sensors that are trying to measure, you know, vegetation growth and health, you know, I didn't know if I was putting my sensors on top of vegetation that was so stressed, it wasn't going to come back in the spring, or, you know, if it was a viable candidate. And so I kind of just rolled the dice on it made the best educated guess I could, you know, got some right got others, not as ideal. But you know, the way I look at is this was a pilot study, in a lot of ways of, you know, the sensors that have been traditionally used in agriculture haven't fully been vetted in a sandy environment, you know, with grasses that aren't necessarily planted a certain way, right. And so there's a lot of curveballs that are going to be thrown at it. And that's what led to a lot of bench testing before even deployed these things. There's a whole multiple months of just tripping the system down to its core variables of grain size or moisture content, and what different elevations of the sensor overbear sand looks like, and is that signal trustable, or can I actually use this data, just looking at the clean no growth of vegetation kind of in the mix of that so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:04

Yeah, with all of that going on, I do want to come back to your COVID lab, you'd mentioned dealing with with COVID restrictions, and, you know, traveling and social distancing, and all those kinds of things, and trying to do things in your backyard. But you also created some indoor test beds as well. Can you tell us a little bit about trying to imitate dune conditions indoors?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 17:25

Yeah. So for those bench tests, I ended up building a basically a sandbox, right? So like, really brought me back to childhood, obviously, I'm like playing his massive sandbox. But but that was mainly done in order to, like I said, stripped down the natural environment, like what about the beach is different from an agricultural field, you know? And number one, that thing that stood out was grain size, right? And then not just one type of grain size, but how does it sensor respond across multiple grain sizes from the very fine that builds up the dunes to very coarse and you know, chunky gravel? Right? How is how's that signal coming back? Is it affected by this or not, and then with the Sandbox is also able to, you know, do different tests with moisture content. And so for that, I had my sandbox did the dry run, took a reading I think I used the I use the ZL2 for that, which is like little handheld Bluetooth data logger that you guys have, that way I can get quick, rapid readings. Because if you think about you adding moisture, you really can't wait 20 minutes, because the sun is evaporating that off, right. So see, I added that will take a reading and then with a little pump like pesticide sprayer, add more moisture on top of it. And then the whole time taking gravimetric moisture scrape samples, which is essentially, just to have some, you know, bonafide metric of this is how much moisture was within that sandbox at that period of time. And that process took a number of iterations just because, you know, I thought I saturated the surface. And then when I got all the gravimetric moisture samples back, it ended up only being like, maybe like 5%, back at it, you know, so he really tried to get the pump sprayer go. And you know, it was really fun, fun period of time, you know, just really trying to throw the book at the sensors and just see at what point the reading has more noise than I feel, you know, trusted that can actually go in the field and perform. But yeah, everything came back from that less than 3% of the operational index range, which is I mean, pretty, pretty incredible. And the one that was like the highest was the most unrealistic in which you're changing the sensor out and each data logger port, you know, and that wouldn't happen, but maybe once while we just want to see in case for some reason there was a massive failure because of doing scarping and how to replace all the sensors, what error could that possibly introduce? And so really you're looking at the on the order of less than 2% of you know, the whole index which is I mean I was surprised I just knew the different grain sizes we're going to you know throw a wrench in the whole plan but now you know I mentioned indoor I did try to use them indoor but that did not work out too. Well was very noisy so I had to kind of move everything outside which, which was probably for the better, you know, got to hang out with the sensors and get some good vitamin D. And it's a good excuse to be outside. Of course, it Jhula looks whenever we're back on campus testing some stuff out, you know, and everyone's walking, you know, on campus to and from class, and is this guy with the sandbox? You know, kind of reading a book? Well, it's just looking at their sand, you know, these downward facing sensors, it just didn't make any sense. No one asked questions, but you know, they're probably thinking like, that is the weirdest thing.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:28

So I mean, that seems like just an immensely time intensive process, manually spraying things, checking things over and over, you said there multiple iterations, like how long does this process take overall?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 20:39

Man, just the experiments, I would say probably about three and a half to four months, especially the the moisture content, I would say took the longest just because, as I mentioned, that you don't really know until you get the oven results back, right. So if you're too low, or you know, maybe you missed this range in the middle, right. So in order to make a complete data set, it just took a lot of time, a lot of lab work, as well as field work in order to get that figured out. And that doesn't include the time to build the sensor mounts, you know, different set of time involved, you know, but but like I tell people, it's like, this is the science to get to the science. Yeah. Right. We're only as good as the measurements we have. And if we don't know what those measurements are, then, you know, the confidence isn't quite where it could be, you know, if we just do all this background testing before,

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:39

yeah. Could you just Yeah, run us through? Like, what types of discoveries or trends you'd been seeing with with that data? Specifically? You talked about grain size and other things. But yeah, can you just give us a brief recap of of what you you found in doing those experiments?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 21:42

Yeah, the synopsis of it all is that it was a really flat line, which is good, right? It's a very, the sensors are incredibly stable, depending on if you are changing grain size, or moisture content, or the instrument height over bare sand. So yeah, it was a really boring result. But that's okay. I'm okay with that with, you know, whenever you're dealing with validation studies like that, right? Obviously, at that point in time, in my academic career, I was ramping up for comprehensive exams, and like, I had this fuel project ready to go and everything was coming together. And so initially, you know, you don't you don't think about the benefits of it, you're like, this is very frustrating and inconvenient. You know, why now? Right. But but it really gave me a lot of time to slow things down. Think through the science. And I think it's what led to like really strong experiments. Otherwise, I would have been compressed for time when I've done half these experiments, and then I would have always wondered, right, so me, I think the benefit there was knowing more time for experiments, but also more time to just read in general, I think that's a big, a big part of you know, that that extra time that we kind of got,

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:47

I wanted to come back to talking about hurricane Ian, I wanted to just kind of get a ground level view about how you deal with in your research in your field of study. I mean, hurricanes are one of the central impacting forces in coastal geomorphology. And how do you work around or work with hurricanes, tropical storms, or other major weather events like that?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 23:09

Sure. Yeah. I feel like in our field, it certainly is a factor. I wouldn't say we can ever plan on them. But we better make sure we have a contingency plan. If they come on, I think it's the best way to put it. Yeah, no. So for, for planning purposes. I know like whenever I first installed in December, I'm looking at the landscape I'm looking at where I'm at which I'm operating within a what's known as a wash over plane. So this is where it's a flat, sandy area where years ago, a storm came and blew through the dune system kind of spread this this sand apron, if you will, across the landscape. So there's very little resistance there. And that's why you know, high tides with flooded or strong nor'easter with flooded going into this project, I kind of knew I was like, if there is a storm, there's a good chance it's going to, you know, destroy the dune system that's here, or the one that's trying to recover and bounce back. And so, December through to June, I had a lot of time to think about, okay, what is my, you know, threshold for pulling instruments versus not? And what does that look like? You know, how many people do I need? How much heads up? Can I guess, be expecting, I gotta have a couple of days to make this decision? Or is it going to be a six hour decision I have to make then how does that change sort of like my plan of attack? And so yeah, I think a lot of it going in, it's just that contingency plan of what needs to happen. But the frustrating thing with these storms is even when it looks like there's a potential they might hit, that track shifts so much, and you're only as good as the information you're given. And you know, obviously, like NOAA and National Weather Service does a phenomenal job and they give us the best possible prediction they can provide. But there's just so many variables at play, then the track can shift dramatically. And that's what happened with the second landfall of VN. Yeah, one of my questions was like, Well, how do these students respond to vegetation stress, right. And so when I made the call to go out on the Thursday before the storm to pull down my met station because I had other instruments out there that were not mine, you know, and I'm trying to graduate. So if I destroyed my committee members net radiometer, it's probably not going to over very well. So I wasn't making an emergency visit for that. But you know that with the vegetation sensors, I really had to think about leaving or not, right, and, you know, I think a lot of field scientists do this mental calculus of is the data I'm going to get, or the potential potentially get worth more than the risk of losing the equipment. And so that really drives your decision to leave or pull it out. At the time of the storm was projected to hit South of Charleston, which knowing this coastline, it means that, you know, all we get is higher waves, some more wind, and you know, we still get the surge, but not nearly as bad as they would experience it in Charleston area. And so looking at being out there, the day before landfall was made, it was really impressive how much energy was already in that system. I mean, the winds are whipping already. And it was kind of neat, there's like a cold front, I believe, of kind of pressing it offshore and squeezing some moisture out so that I feel like enhance some of the winds that we were experiencing up in that part. But uh, yeah, in the moments leading up to it, you know, walking out of the field site, there was so much wind blowing above that threshold of motion, you're just watching sheets of the beach, deflate, right? Deflation is this process where we have the winnowing away of finer material. And that removal of mass causes the surface to the naming flies deflate, right, lower down. But I've never seen it happen this rapidly in front of my very eyes. I mean, it was happening faster than I could possibly measure it with the modern tools that we have, you know, it's really incredible see, but in that process, looking at my instrument nodes, because I kind of haven't set up where I have these three dunes are more or less coalescing varying degrees of vegetation coverage. And so I split up and I had two ZL6 Data Loggers, and one was kind of further back and one was closer, you know, towards the ocean, the one that's closer towards the ocean, there was so much sediment, it actually buried all the vegetation that was within the field of view. So that had already occurred. And so for me looking at that as like, well look, thinking back to my research question, it's like, why don't even see the vegetation, you know, and so, in the data loggers about to get buried by sand, it's like, I don't think it's a good idea to leave this one in place. But the other one is further back further away from the ocean storms gonna hit South Charleston, so there's the chance to get starved. There's a lot of mass ahead of that station. And so I feel pretty good about where it's at. I reinforced it and I left it. 6pm That night, when I got home, the trek shifted, it was a number of miles. Yeah. And so the center of the I actually was half a mile away from my study site, which means that my dunes went through the northeastern corner of the eyewall, which is the strongest winds the most intense part of the storm, you know, because it's centrifugal force. And so, yeah, yeah, that's what it looked like when I got out there a couple days after it was basically all the sand was just stripped from the dunes and pushed back so that same Over watch plane I mentioned earlier, a brand new formation of that occurred. The sensors are still out there, they're buried, I have to find them but but it was one of the things as a game-time decision, you know, in my defense if it would have hit South and I've seen the move south to just as much and then you don't get any data, right. So it was a risk and I took it didn't didn't go too well. But I didn't lose everything. But the opportunity to see what that vegetation stress to tropical systems is was just too appealing to not try Right, right. So and that's Oh, that's ultimately what the PRI sensors were out there for anyway so they were doing their job you know, it's just the storm at that magnitude. I mean incredible force of nature and that was the only the second for what is just a cat one I can't imagine the cat four I think you know a lot of researchers in my field we do kind of chase after these storms whenever they're kind of in our backyard just because there's so much information we can learn from it. And so I've been on in several survey crews where we go up before and then after and you know calculate erosion and shoreline change but I think being at this site for like the eight months prior watching it grow watching establish you know, and the vegetation really come into its own and stop sand from moving and building up his dunes then coming back right after the storm and seeing it obliterated Yeah, that was powerful. I did not expect that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:26

Like you're saying it's kind of the flip side of the same coin of tornado storm chasers where you guys are just kind of standing in one spot but dealing with the same thing about how do we measure the impacts of these major weather events without yeah losing all our equipment or you know finding the right spot or to move them out of the right spot in order to figure out what we want to see what we really want to be able to record there. How long then does it take for a dune like that to recover from a major storm events such as you know, a major hurricane might be just a matter of months or is it years you know, can you give us a general ballpark timeline of those kinds of situations?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 30:03

Oh, I wish I could. Yeah, it's it's incredibly site specific. But just to kind of clue you into some of the variables that we're looking for, you know, what could make a stronger system is number one, you have to have some form of we call roughness. So roughness is just anything that could slow down, the wind decrease its momentum in which it can no longer carry the sediment, right and that, and that process of decreasing its momentum means that it's no longer able to carry the sand particles, it falls out in terms of deposition. And that kind of jump starts the process. So that's number one, something has stopped the wind when it is carrying sand. But even stepping back, though, you need sand, right, you need a sediment source. And so depending on the magnitude of your storm, that sand gets relocated, and it can go in one or two directions, one of which would be like in the case of my study site, it was blown back through to the backside of the barrier, the barrier island, if it gets pushed too far into the marsh and is now underneath the water level, then that sand is more or less lost, because I don't care how hard that wind blows, it's not going to pull it out of the water and back on the surface. Right. And then other direction in which the sand can go is offshore. These storms are of such high magnitude, you know that it's pulling the sand and and sort of grinding it off the beach and can shove it far offshore toward the normal waves that typically act within a climate aren't able to bring it back to the coasts. And typically you'll see beaches will have like what we call like a winter and a summer profile where the wintertime it's, you know, it's a steeper Beach, because there's more wave energy. And it's pretty normal for those waves to just take that sand, move it offshore, and then it builds up the bars, which the surfers like, right serves much better as well as a cleaner. But then as we move into the summer months, there tend to be these lower waves, but they're sort of like bringing these bars and bringing the sediment back to the surface. And so we get this more gradual profile that builds out wider, more room for people that want to come to the beach for tourism or, you know, Sunday, that sort of thing. And so this process normally happens, but hurricanes can be on such a high magnitude that they take the sand off the beach, but they move it beyond where it can be recovered in the summer months, you know, from this normal processes. And so whenever that happens, you know, then you need to call in some sort of human intervention, I guess needs to take place, right? Whether it be the Army Corps of Engineers or some other dredging operation, beach nourishment, something along those lines, a soft management practice kind of brings that sediment back. And I'll say that roughness, you know, in my case, it's vegetation. But you know, it could be a sand fence, it could be bundle, a hay, anything that can slow it down. roughness, we got sediment, ultimately winds, you know, the angle at which the wind is going to arrive to the coast that governs change and transport, because it's all about boundary layer adjustment and how the wind is essentially getting used to the surface it's moving across, which takes time, you know, and so yeah, having ample space for that boundary layer modification to occur. I think that's the main ones. And of course, you got precipitation, which you know, turns transport on and off doing really is this sort of like analog result of transport and depositional processes, the interaction of when sands moving and when it stops, and then that ultimately is what a dune is.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:09

So along with that, as a Dune is forming, or starting form. Can you explain the process of how grasses begin to take hold? And how long does that or how long can it take for you know, grasses to take hold within a dune and become embedded and flourish there?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 33:24

Yeah, man this is, what a cool question. The reason why I say is because I think what I initially pitched to METER a few years ago, was only looking at those three dunes that are now destroyed. That was like the main focus. But when I pulled it to my study site back in January, this past year and installed everything, seeing how much RAC right remember, it's the vegetative remnants kind of balled up on shore, was on the field site, we kind of pivoted a little bit and said, Well, let's look at this too, because RAC isn't just dead debris, it's typically because it's been scoured and mined from a dune, it tends to have vegetative remnants that are reproductive so either be rhizomes or seeds. And also to it's unique because it's also a roughness element, right, it's able to extract the momentum from the wind and facilitate deposition, which is what a dune needs. And so I kind of pivoted a little bit and then also, you know, threw some erosion pins inside the rack and then photograph them did vegetative counts per rack piles, and I divided the study area where it looked like it was more influenced by Aeolian activity versus Inundation from tides. And I had a control set as well. And yeah, it really came out of this. It really highlighted the role that RAC has in that recovery that an initial disturbance event levels, the whole dune system, there's nothing out there, but these lesser events are able to float in RAC and maybe it's just a high tide deposit a RAC pile. Now you have roughness on the surface, as your winds start to blow your infilling this rock pile and then causing it to really jumpstart colonization and emergence within the system. And dune grass species are really interesting and that they like burial or a lot of them do not all of them, but a lot of them do. And so there's a stimulus that happens of sand now bares a rock pile where the vegetative matter is, or reproductive components are, right, and then now you have a burial response, which then causes that plant to want to grow, you know, through the Rockpile through the sediment, and then that growth now causes it to have a bigger presence to the wind field, which facilitates further deposition. Right. And so this process continues over time until eventually you get to do not have it right, this form is able to modify the landscape and modify the flow, and in a lot of cases to its favor towards slowing down that when and aiding in that growth.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:39

So are there other types of plants that can help in this beyond dune grasses?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 35:46

Yeah, yeah, some of the work I've done recently has been looking at the role of driftwood kind of in the system, right? It's something that's not necessarily alive, like dune grasses, but its benefit in terms of nutrients is this long term source of nutrients, right, as it breaks down slower because of its size, and its mass, you know, but it kind of helps that system of establishment. And so I know it's not really a plant per say, everything else that's going to be on the surface is going to be some form of Dune grass. Okay, so she's, like, bitter panicum, or American beach grass or sea oats. They're all kind of within a similar class.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:22

That was my question. So are there any issues with beach degradation, say outside beyond your region of research there?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 36:31

Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of that kind of comes down to the underlying geology of the region. And what I mean by that, as your beach slope is much steeper on the West Coast, right there is on the east coast or the Gulf Coast. And because of that, if we think about things like sea level rise, or like localized sea level rise, because the storms, the same amount of change vertically means two different things, because of that difference in geometry when we think about slope. And so I think that's why we see a little bit more erosion, maybe more visible, perhaps, you know, on the on the East Coast and Gulf Coast. But yeah, not saying that original thinker on the West Coast, it definitely does. It's just it looks a little different because of that legacy geologic framework. And also in a number of places, you know, you have kind of negative sea level rise values, because of the isostatic rebounding rises, glaciers pushed back 1000s of years prior, you know, that land is still bouncing back up. And so

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:25

I have heard of, of beach grasses being imported elsewhere introduced other places to protect beach dunes and other places. Is there any risk of beach grasses becoming invasive species in these new areas?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 37:40

Yeah, this is we're seeing a lot of this on the West Coast right now, I haven't done research into it myself. But I have several colleagues who do, I don't remember if it was introduced by the Fish and Wildlife, or if by some management agency or not, or if it just naturally floated across, but European beach grass is really aggressive at growing tall and fast. And so they're seeing over there is that yeah, it's growing tall and fast, which means that it's sort of cutting off the sediment supply to the native species behind those regions, and is becoming a real issue in terms of natural biodiversity. Right. And then in terms of other invasive species, there has been a lot of work done on it. What I don't remember though, is if those were intentionally planted or not, I don't know. But we will we also see though dunes is the sort of invasion of Centipede grass, right, as we have these homes and properties along the coasts, you know, obviously you want a centipede lawn yard. And so by planting that sometimes it also will crawl out onto the dune. And I don't think it poses as much of an issue in terms of like out competing, just because dune grasses are incredibly resilient to salty air to long periods of drought. You know, it's like full sun exposure. And so yeah, they kind of they can hold their own, I guess against that. And I did misspeak earlier, there are succulents or succulent type species that do pop up here on the East Coast, there's gonna be sea rocket, but they're kind of like one hit wonders, you know, they'll pop up a little bit of roughness, you know, to the surface, and then they're gone, you know, so they do exist, and they are, you know, very beneficial for initiating some of that initial deposition.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:10

As we kind of wrap things up here, I'd love for you to just explain to our audience about how can your research help the world at large? Or what can we as a society learn from the result of what you're finding out?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 39:23

Yeah, I think I think a lot of where the benefit of my research as it stands right now is going to go is to offering this new methodology this new lens to see vegetation data through from the site in situ perspective, right, as I mentioned earlier, these inflection points. I really think there's a lot of strength in understanding the timing of that Mergence with you know, local conditions of wind patterns, and you know, if it's the rainy season or not, and how these different variables interact with one another in terms of being able to put a number of different study sites or different locations around the country, on the same playing field right the way in which we can discuss Do it down to these core variables and measure resiliency or get out, you know, what is it take this speech X number of years to recover, whereas this one can do it half the time, because ultimately that sort of information tells us which systems are efficient. And if we know where efficiency lies, and the natural world, then how do we take what mother's already trying to do and help it out a little bit, if I know what the ideal case is, then I can make some really powerful coastal management decisions in order to help out and give it that critical piece that might otherwise be missing. Now, obviously, we can't like, you know, make a ton of wind blow all the time, right there. There are limitations to it, but but I do hope that it will kind of shed some more light into those variable interactions that leads to resiliency,

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:46

along those same lines to is what can we as a public do to help preserve dunes and promote their recovery?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 40:56

Well, definitely don't walk on them. Okay, all right. It goes without saying, I mean, we've had sign campaigns for years now. And that has really helped very much. But, but yeah, definitely, because whenever you walk on the dunes, you know, it's obviously going to, it really hurts the rhizomes that are underneath, and they're pretty fragile on from that sort of repeated trampling, you know, I think a lot of its advocacy going to the beach, and just taking a second to notice the dunes, I feel like a lot of us get sucked into going to the beach, for the beach. And so once we get there, you know, we're looking out towards the waves, but, you know, like, if you turn around and look, that's the barrier that's preventing your house from potentially flooding during the next major storm, you know, doing little things, like if you have beach RAC that washes up on your shore, you know, and maybe you're a homeowner, or maybe you're just visiting, but you can move that RAC into towards the dune line towards the toe of the dune. And then to help it build it out, make it thicker and wider, help improve your grade on its own. So there's little things like that you can do but yeah, I think the biggest thing is just just take a second notice them, it's amazing how little recognition they get. And I always whenever I teach Physical Geography on on the campus, you know, I always, whenever I get to my coastal geomorphology section, I show a photo of the beach, you know, and I have my class, okay, label everything you can see on a piece of paper in this photo, only about 30% of them, notice the dune and it's just I think that's a real kind of indicator to where we're at as a society, you know,

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:18

final question, we always like to try to get any fun, exciting or crazy stories, anything else that you'd like to share along those lines?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 42:28

I always say that if you're a field researcher you kind of have this sort of soft spot for type two fun you know, type two funs where you know, nothing's going to plan you know, you ran out of water or it's harder than you're expecting or you get caught in a sudden rainstorm you know, when I was going down to go collect that equipment in advance of the storm out there and the winds whipping and it's also I'm taking all sorts of photos and videos just like really taken in the change occurring before my eyes bow when I finally got the first load of equipment completed and first load because it took me four days to set everything up and only had or the weather window kept getting shorter, but only had on the order about maybe like three hours to get it all down. So you know moving, pretty quick pace. But I underestimated how high the storm surge that was already coming in was going to offset the high tide prediction. And so by the time I carts loaded up with 1000s of dollars worth of equipment I looked down the coast and I realized that I'm not going to make it because Because literally the the beaches go you know, it's covered up by water it's not gone you know, it's covered by water and Okay, well that's fine. I'll just you know, Hang Hang tight on top of the dune you know, because I know that my Overwatch plan is going to flood now when I couldn't pass it was still an hour from high tide. So that's when your gears start turning. You're like oh, that's probably not going to bode very well. No, I post up on a on top of a dune hopefully waiting out the storm surge and it's like initial flooding event in advance of the storm. And then underneath my tarp and the winds whipping next to metal and all this equipment trying to stay dry. Yeah, check the radar just to see what's going on. And yeah, it's definitely the outer bands of Ian and I was like well, this is too close for comfort. Right? Yeah. But you know you're questioning life decisions and all that all that stuff at that point in time. But uh, but yeah, I mean, I had to get that equipment. There's no no way around it. So yeah, I'm waiting out there and checking the radar and waiting for the tide to go down and watching the whole system to fleet I would say it was definitely a intimate experience with how the air force plane was going to fare in that particular storm event but yeah, it's definitely the closest I've ever been to a storm or I've never been out there before I literally got stranded and how to wait it out. But as already is only like six hours.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:36

That's all make good.

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 44:37

Yeah, I was fortunate though is that I think that like I said, I'm pretty sure that they said there's a cold front that was butting up against Ian and in that process, it was squeezing out a lot of that moisture and so because of that, I wasn't sitting underneath of what looks like a lot of rain on the radar, you know, outer bands of this massive system. So I'm very fortunate for that but it was just a matter of waiting for the water to go down, as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:02

Well, any other final things you'd like to share with anybody any final statements or suggestions or plugs or anything like that?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 45:11

No, no, I was just gonna say, um, if anyone listening wants to, you know, get a hold of me about research or anything along those lines, um, you can find my email address on the department websites, just petert@email.sc.edu. And yeah, no, this has been great. Thanks again, for all that METER does. And I've been a fan of the podcast since it first dropped. So it's been really cool to get the offer to be on here.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:34

Thank you so much, Pete for taking time to share your research with us. As always, super fascinating. And if you in the audience have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That's all for now. Stay safe, and we'll catch you next time on We Measure the World!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

David DuBois, PhD, is the state climatologist for New Mexico, director of the New Mexico Climate Center, and college associate professor at New Mexico State University. He also serves as the state coordinator for the New Mexico Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS).

Links to learn more about Dr. David DuBois:

DuBois' curriculum vitae

DuBois' website

DuBois' LinkedIn

DuBois' Twitter

DuBois' ResearchGate

New Mexico Climate Center

NMSU Air Quality Research

ZiaMet Weather Station Network

CoCoRaHS - Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello, everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

DAVID DUBOIS 0:08

How do we adapt to urban heat island plus with climate change those on top of each other? And then we've had some really near record breaking temperatures as well as other places like last year seeing it in the northwest. What do we do from the climate community side? And how do we help out with those programs in terms of cooling and how to think of the social issues of people who don't have access to air conditioning, which there are quite a few actually, when it's like 107 outside, it's 107 inside to you know if you have, you know, respiratory problem. That's a big red flag.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:44

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is David Dubois state climatologist for New Mexico, Director of the New Mexico Climate Center, and associate professor at New Mexico State University. And he's here to talk about climate observation and research in the state of New Mexico. So Dave, thanks so much for being here.

DAVID DUBOIS 1:15

Thanks for inviting me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:16

We wanted to talk about several of your projects and research interests. But first, can you tell us just a little bit about your background and how you became involved in climate research? And then you know, ultimately becoming climatologist for the great state of New Mexico?

DAVID DUBOIS 1:31

Sure. Yeah. Me glad to. Yeah, so I've been a state climatologist since 2010. And I was prior to that I was with the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada, enjoyed working in more air quality air pollution for about seven years before that, you know, I worked in Reno as well. So I had a really a lot of interest in air quality and um dealing with mainly on how weather and climate affect air quality pollution, dust, ozone, are big big topics, especially here and in the West when we get the high ozone from urban areas, as well as wildfire smoke. So I've had a lot of interest in both topics, actually. And then when this position opened up, right around 2010, I was just like great, because my family is actually from New Mexico. And I just think that's a great opportunity to come back and enjoy being close to family in the great state of New Mexico. And I really enjoy working here as the state climatologist and I get to do a lot of different things as a lot of state climatologist do I think every office is, has a very unique role as well as what kinds of things that they work on. And then how the state climate offices either in a university or state agency or some other agency, and I didn't really know that much about it until I got here actually kind of learned by by doing. I have a lot of great colleagues from our my neighboring states as well as actually the whole country we meet usually once a year. And so I learned over time, and this is my just finishing my 11th year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:15

Yeah, and as you mentioned, being state climatologist I'm sure you have several hats that you need to wear in different situations and settings and a lot of varied projects that you help oversee or consult on or otherwise, one of those projects that we'd love to start off and get into if you can give us a little background into the ZiaMet agricultural weather station network.

DAVID DUBOIS 3:38

Yeah, yeah, as many states have, they have weather station networks and um some are more developed than others. And some have been out there for 30 years or more, and some are pretty new. And, and so I came on board in New Mexico and we had a few stations. On my at that point, I wouldn't call it a Mesonet yet, but it was basically a network of weather stations. At our ag science centers, those are NMSU off campus locations which mainly dealing with local agricultural issues. And so we had weather stations there to kind of support their research. And I've looked at other states, and they have that kind of network as well as filling the gaps between like National Weather Service, Co Op sites, airports, SNOTEL, any other federal networks out there, as well as other private networks. It's been my goal ever since I started really to get funding as well as building a network not only the physical weather station hardware, but also the network of people to help with that. It's not just putting a bunch of hardware out in the field. It's working with counties, soil conservation districts, extension, you know, building that network to help with that. And just recently, you know, we've been working with state legislature to get that off the ground. We really haven't had very much opposition It's mainly been the lack of funds has been the opposition, but that is that has actually changed recently.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:06

We've talked with with other people in other states who are setting up their own, you know, Mesonets and others and and especially at with a project the scale, especially with with New Mexico being as large as it is, and covering such varied Geography and climate. Sometimes there might be the sense that getting buy in or getting funding might be a pretty difficult process. Are you saying that it hasn't been as difficult as you were assuming? I'm sure that there have have been the ups and downs in that whole process? Right?

DAVID DUBOIS 5:37

Yeah, actually, if you were to ask that same question. Probably two years ago, I would say it's almost impossible not well impossible but it's really hard. It's relatively easy to get soft money, a research project and built in weather station and then say, okay, we're gonna we're gonna work in this region, and we're going to put a new station and, you know, put new sensors in. And as research projects goes, we all know, there are they have a start and stop date. And sometimes they're a year sometimes they're as long as five years. And so there's that there's that sustainability issue when you're dealing with soft money. When you're dealing with something that is inherently long term in nature, like weather stations, you know, we you know, as climatologist, we treasure, long periods of record, you know, if we can get datasets that that go decades, those are really important. So it's that, how do we support that station with visiting with doing maintenance, QA, sensor replacements, and have somebody look at the data on a regular basis, visiting the site, just to just to make sure everything's okay, there's not vines growing over and frogs making their house inside rain gauges, things like that, that go on all the time. If you don't look at the station, nobody takes care of it. So it's that over time, like I said, it's been fairly easy to get funding for shorts short term, but it's that longevity is so how do we get long term sustaining funds to keep things going, you know, in the past, we've used locals with our university to help out, can you go by the station every month, check the rain gauge, make sure the weeds aren't covering things and replace the battery on a regular basis, things like that. But a lot of times there's no funding associated with it's more of their volunteer helping out, that's still valuable is to having that. But also we need that funding long term to keep things going, you know, when things fail, you know, either a flood or a wildfire, lightning, I mean, a lot of things that go wrong, and just just lifetime of the sensors, we got to put that into our in some kind of budget. And that's what's been really hard. We got our funding going through stakeholders, meaning folks who use the data, they were really interesting having more data, because you know, co-op network is sparse, especially in the West, we don't replace the co-op observers. And those are the long term observers out there sometimes have been several generations, sometimes we lose those and then there's no local data that they can use, knowing that we existed here now as the key is to let people know that the state climate office does exist. We have a state climatologist and or somebody actually willing and able to go to bat and to do this. That's, that's key. That's an unknown. Another is make sure you're known throughout the communities. Otherwise, people don't even know who to contact and getting that buyout and say, hey, you know, we we are here, we can do this. We just need help, and making it a high priority and status in like state agencies or even eventually into a legislative bill. And that's kind of how we got started. And it's been several years and process. It wasn't just like boom, there. It took a lot of work and getting people in the National Weather Service. Forecast Offices have been really key in that and so if you haven't, if you're interested in doing this is getting them on board and getting to know them and partnering with them in getting support and with New Mexico we've been working with the drought community to get okay where to where are our gaps in knowledge of drought where we have and so I mean we've used CoCoRaHS to help with that. But what we really need that that automated or another co-op stations or we can get a Mesonet station and that's that's going to be the big, a big deal.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:30

Would you say that you've you've had any other champions of the projects within both private and public sector or even within you know, government agencies or legislature?

DAVID DUBOIS 9:40

One service has been our key champion. We have three forecast offices that serve New Mexico we got Midland, Albuquerque and Santa Teresa, which is near El Paso. And all three have been, you know, so yeah, we need we need more data. And also working with water agencies has been key, like our state engineers office, because they have a lot that's in a lot of the states. And in this area, drought monitoring, and especially supporting the US Drought Monitor comes from the water agencies, like ours does Arizona as well. So having them on board and getting support letters and letting people know that there's a there's a need and speaking up and talking about it. And even though it may not result in funding, and that side is just building that collaboration, we're here. This is what we're doing. Who uses the data, can you use the data? That's really key.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:37

Before we get too deep into discussing the project itself, I was interested in the name ZiaMets and where that came from. Can you talk about that a little bit?

DAVID DUBOIS 10:42

When I first started here, we I had some students, and I said, Well, let's have a contest. Let's, you know, put some names in a hat. And let's talk about it in um and then we actually had several of us. We agreed on that on ZMA. Keziah is sort of the symbol of New Mexico. And it's actually a Pueblo, a tribal nation in New Mexico, but it's been it's been adopted is sort of the symbol for New Mexico. It's part of our New Mexico flag, Zia symbol. And it was sort of represents, since we're a statewide network, we want to make make it look like New Mexico. And we came up, we also came up with a logo, we continue to use that logo in our outreach.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:34

That's great. No, I knew about the the, you know, the Zia people and Zia Pueblo, but I didn't know about the the symbol aspect of it. So that's really cool. What with the project of this ZiaMet network? What were the New Mexico specific problems that inspired the project or New Mexico specific goals that you're seeking to, you know, accomplish?

DAVID DUBOIS 11:54

Yeah, so so some of our big users are the agricultural community in it. And it's not only the cropland, which they use our data, a lot of it for planting as well as compute evapotranspiration (ET). So we've got a couple methods to calculate ET. And we've been developing some products for like irrigation scheduling based off of Penman-Monteith calculations. So that's one that's one avenue, where it's used as well as some of the other water users like Bureau of Reclamation, is another user. The other part of that is drought that then that's probably the big kicker to get us funding was, we don't have enough information about mainly Precipitation (Precip). Precip is sparse, and very localized specially when we get, you know, a 1/3 to a 40% of our annual rainfall, precipitation from summer monsoons. It's like spotty, here and there. And as well as many other western states that our radar is, doesn't cover everywhere really well. And there's some real mountain blocks that the radar doesn't really see it sees it but it's like a 10,000 or more feet above the ground, and in a lot of times, underestimate what's actually there. So the the drought community has really been our big user right now. And it's really I've always used the word drought when I'm putting in an abstract or a legislative bill language. And, you know, emergency management comes in as well, you know, disasters, which can come in all seasons in New Mexico as well as other places, you know, with ice storms, snow, and a lot of other places in the southwest, we get dust storms and dust storms, we have to have that high wind component as well as the drought combination and disturbed soils. And that sort of that getting getting more in situ measurements of that is has been key in the National Weather Service (NWS) has been really keen on that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:54

Much of the western North America is in the middle of a mega drought. How is New Mexico been affected by drought? You know, how is it currently affected by drought,

DAVID DUBOIS 14:02

Our agricultural users in the past have dipped into surface water from the Rio Grande, Pecos River, Cimarron, New Mexico has high elevations to the North and it goes slopes down lower elevation to the south and southeast. And so there's water flowing from north to south. We get a lot of water from Colorado, we dip a little bit into the Colorado River system, the basin and so we end with an extended drought like pretty much been in this one since around around 1999 or so. And we really see that if you ever visit New Mexico, you know visit some of the reservoir especially some of the bigger ones like elephant view, we're down to like 7% of capacity. You know and we've only go up to like 30 or 40% That's kind of the sign for you know the becoming more arid in the area. That water is big deal as well as the drying of soils higher temperatures, even though you get More precipt evaporates fast. And as well as having spring dry season, you know, having more dust storms, you know, that's, that's, that's a big deal here. And it's impacted a lot of folks. And it's, we've been doing a lot of work in that area using in situ, as well as remote sensing.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:33

So you talked about your in situ measurements, what are the kinds of setups that you have at these various weather stations?

DAVID DUBOIS 15:26

Yeah, so we got several, several types, we have a project right now with the New Mexico Department of Transportation in there, they've been concerned with accidents. And there've actually been, unfortunately, been some fatalities on the interstates, this is i-10, because of dust it's basically just you can't see the visibility goes practically down to zero, you barely see one car length for a minute or two. And that's when we see the accidents and then so they've been really working over the last, you know; 5-6-7 years on how to mitigate that hazard. They've called up our office to add more meteorological measurements. So you know, looking at winds and they they've also added in their own roadway information system that gets real time data. We've also put in a particulate measurements, aerosol concentrations, as well as particle counters, you know, that collect data on a minute averages, we have several devastations on one of the problem areas in western New Mexico to basically document and to know how severe and we also use cameras. So we use time lapse cameras to provide that semi quantitative information, we collect an image every 10 seconds. So we get a sense of like movies of dust storms, and we've got about six years of 10 minute data to get a sense of the dynamics, how dust storms behave, how far you can see we use like, you know, the fences, the barbed wire fences count how many posts can you see in Mmm, it's really bad, you can can't even see the next post. And it's actually it's gotten that bad in some places. And then it kind of pegs out our, our optical dust measurements at times. And we've been starting to use soil moisture measurements, you know, every soil is different and underneath the stations, but it's sort of that, you know, if it does rain, a 10th of an inch, or even a 100th of an inch, how long does it take for that to dry out the evaporation, soil evaporation process to see dust again. And we found that evaporation is really rapid. And it takes just a days rain and then it's ready for dust emission the next day and some some cases. So it does it's not really you know, wetting, the ground doesn't really help a lot, in some cases, because of that, that heating that diurnal heating, intense heating. So it's that learning process, you know, for us as a aerosol weathers person, climate person, it's that, you know, so we talked to the soil people about that and say, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But but actually haven't data to support them.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:05

So with this network, are you trying to get into weather and climate prediction and forecasting, as opposed to just seeing what is happening at one time at one spot?

DAVID DUBOIS 18:15

that has been on my mind over time is once you get enough data in, and it's sort of like question is how much is enough? You know, it's is getting enough dust storm events to create some statistics. And also, we've been asking around about using machine learning methods, training these systems to identify when they occur, and then knowing when when we use like cameras, we know for sure that dust occurs. Now what did the data look like before that, you know, what was the preceding; 10 minutes? Hour? Several hours before that, can we see any pattern emerging, and that's kind of the direction we're heading. We just started dabbling into that with classifying some of the imagery using some machine learning methods. That's a whole other, that's out of my skill area, you know, with the computer science aspect to that. I think the future is using those kinds of methods to help out I know, there's there's ways to, to look at deterministic methods, you know, sort of looking at like a High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRR) forecast model, combined with radar and other in situ Mesonets, you know, that that that has a definite role. But I think that's complementary is using the data approach coming in from the data, what does the data seeing as opposed to looking at Mesoscale models, you know, like the Dwarf model, and I think there's, there's roles for both.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:41

Yeah, yeah. I had a question about dealing with variability. So for our audience who have never been to New Mexico, it is not all desert. Like you might have seen on TV or in film. It does have a great deal of topographic, geographic, and climatological variability you have, it's moving from the Great Plains into the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Plateau, there are deserts, hot and cold deserts. But does this present more of a challenge to you? Or is it something where you're saying, Yes, let's go let's figure out what's going on in New Mexico with the great variability that we do see there?

DAVID DUBOIS 20:16

Just of note that there are no saguaro's in New Mexico. You know, that's a lot of times I see pictures of the desert with a wily coyote with the saguaros cactus, there are no saguaros in New Mexico, I mean there are people who put them in their front yards from Arizona. But anyway, I thought I would mention that because we never owned a cactus. But yeah, you're right. You know, we've got eight climate divisions and in Mexico, for all the way from Alpine to the lower elevations to desert Chihuahuan desert to the basically looks like Southern Great Plains, to Texas. We dip into little bit of the severe weather into eastern New Mexico, not as much as Great Plains, but we had tornadoes come close to our weather stations. And I've looked on the radars like oh, there's, there's a tornado about a mile away from our station. So we don't get very many of those in New Mexico, we have different types of weather hazards. But you know, when like, right now we're looking into snow. While our highest weather station is at 10,000 feet above sea levels, you know, we get quite a bit of variability, we dip into the Mexican monsoon in the summer, northeast part of the state very much looks like the Texas panhandle at sometimes when we get these backdoor cold runs dipping in and goes below zero Fahrenheit. We just had a meeting last week to look at dust on snow that basically accelerates the melt out of snowpack in the spring in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. And so the dust sources are in Arizona and New Mexico primarily. And so you know, when we see a dry signature drought years, when coupled with a lot of storm tracks heading over that area over the four corners, we get those events, that's another challenge, we get, you know, to neighboring state that we're impacting it, which actually impacts us because it changes the hydrology of our water surface water that flows down to the southern part of the state. So it's a feedback mechanism that we're seeing in especially concerning with a changing climate. If we see more drying out of our soils and coupled with land use practices that may encourage more disturbance.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:28

I was going to ask you, where are you seeing that New Mexico is vulnerable?

DAVID DUBOIS 22:33

Right now we're dealing with a Double Dip La Nina. And it sort of gives us a taste of what some of our climate models are showing as a potential futures. And so it's sort of that, okay, we're seeing this really dry signal warming, early melt out less snow, more rain type of scenarios in our inner mountain stream, you know, our headwaters to some of our rivers. And when I give talks, I talk about that, you know, we're seeing this signal. Now, this current one right now is from La Nina. Plus, on top of that a warming signal from changing climate. We just finished the report, we as a bunch of folks and academics for the interstate stream commission in New Mexico to look at a 50 year water plan, we kind of put our heads together and say, Yeah, this is what the climate is going to be looking like when we get these Latinas, you know, it's not exactly but it's that kind of signal we're seeing. And it basically brings out the vulnerabilities of our systems in, you know, with, especially with agriculture, you know, we've we've, a lot of our agricultural policies and practices came about when we had a much wetter climate in the 80s, 90s, when we actually filled the Elephant Butte reservoir to its 2 million acre a feet. And now we're just barely less than 10% of that, seeing that, you know, those vulnerabilities pop up a cones in the south and chilies and other crops, you know, and have to rely on groundwater, you know, and so there's a lot of challenges with that, as well as a lawsuit that New Mexico is in right now. There's Legal Policy, environmental, and social issues all come together. And that's kind of climate change wrapped up is all those together. It's not just science, it's how we react and what do we do? And it's building those adaptation plans, you know, so how do we adapt to this? Do we need to change crops? You know, those big questions, you know, it's livelihoods, and we've been doing things and cultures, you know, work with some tribal groups, and it's sort of that, you know, how do we view this in terms of the tribal view, you know, indigenous knowledge and digging into what we've learned in the past? We need to look at that again. And seeing how do we do this as a 21st century society, you know, with things that were different than 100 years ago or 200 years ago, but we started They have knowledge of what things could look like in the climate community says, Yeah, this is very likely this is what's going to happen. So we better figure out the vulnerabilities of how this works, you know, with whether it be drying soils, being able to struggle more raising cattle in certain areas. Is that feasible in certain areas? Are we going to have to deal more with hazards on dust storms in these areas? Is the health community going to really be alerted when these events occur, you know, not only for dust, but wildfire, smoke is the big deal. All over the West, as you know, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, it's not going away. Sounds like it's going to be increasing. So those are vulnerabilities. It's it's, it's multi threaded, and probably one of our biggest challenges is that, you know, we can put together climate scenarios and downscale and have fun with all those, but it ends up what are we going to do with that information?

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:57

So you mentioned this double dip and La Nina and other climactic effects on weather patterns; are you seeing that within the monsoons, with the effects on their seasonality or their intensity of those weather events?

DAVID DUBOIS 26:11

Well we really haven't seen a noticeable signal in the monsoon yet, however, because of the warming temperatures, I think that needs to be looked at a little more in terms of things like flash drought, and things quickly involving drought. Because of high temperatures, those are on our watch list, we need to really look at it over time, and to see how much change there but we haven't really seen that yet in terms of loss of precipitation, but it's that don't warming temperature to hunt that trends above average, like we've been seeing this in urban areas, you know, we work a lot with in urban heat, and how it affects people. And that's a big area, I think that we're working with our Risa program with university Arizona in New Mexico here, claim is on. So how do we adapt to urban heat island plus climate change those on top of each other? And then, you know, we've had some really near record breaking temperatures, as well as other places like last year, seeing it in the northwest, what do we do from the climate community side of how do we help out with those programs in terms of cooling, and how to think of the social issues of people who don't have access to air conditioning, which there are quite a few actually, when it's like 107 outside, it's 107 inside to you know, if you're have, you know, a respiratory problem, that's a big red flag, especially if it's a multi day event, you know, and they're living in an area where there's no relief at all pavement and concrete, very little trees, so that you don't get you don't even get shade, you know, other than your house, you know, those are the kinds of issues that are really popping up now and looking at on their future. And we needed to address those now. And we have to use sensors inside people's houses, and as well as outside urban heat island. How bad is it, as well as the other things that go on to exasperate like ozone? You know, on top of high temperatures?

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:08

How do you get around working with urban heat islands in arid environments? I mean, you can't really just xeriscape your way out of it. You know, and and if your your concern if you're trying to plant trees, well then that brings in the whole idea of water use and water scarcity. What are your thoughts on that?

DAVID DUBOIS 28:25

We modified the microclimates by adding, you know, all these surfaces that radiate heat store heat differently than the natural environment. And, and so the lot of the city's sustainability directors and other cities have brought in ideas on more trees. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's sort of you know, it has to have the right kind of trees who are adapted to more arid environments, as opposed to ones you can bring in from Mississippi, which look great, but you have to have a lot of water to keep those going, and so, and the bottom line is you have to have the community buy in on this as well, you know, the city can do things and we got to have to buy in from the community members and to help out and to support these things, because it's public money. I live in Las Cruces, and we have issues with urban heat island here and it's everybody's, their backyard or front yard, you know that it adds up, you know. One lawn is not big deal, but if you have 20-30,000 lawns and backyards, it makes a difference. What tools do we have? If we enacted this for new building having shade or xericape how much does this make a difference in the overall microclimate of your city? How can we utilize sensors and remote sensing to say, is there any changes? What's our bound? How much change in temperature can we do for amount of effort? It translates into dollars, whether it's the city doing it or elders, so those are some really big questions and a lot of times we don't even know some of the answers. Right now. We don't really know how much things change inch, you know, read some articles and are even local here we looked at changing the albedo of some of the surfaces, you know, it's gonna cost more. But is that really worth it? Is the albedo really changed the environment, the radiative balance in that neighborhood, or does it just impact, a meter or two from the road? Does it really go into the houses you know, that larger scale and how much will it take if we wanted to use that kind of technology? Or is it that's just one piece, we need to involve a lot more than that? I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of things we have to do. And not just one thing, there's no silver bullet for these things. And we have to track them. So we need, we've been talking with a lot of folks, and there's a need for more. You know, we've been putting Mesonet stations out of the urban heat island. But I think there is a there's a role for actually having networks that that measure the urban heat islands that are urban in nature in special purpose for monitoring the heat that we eat. If you're sitting at a bus stop or walking in or near a park, I think there's a need for having those datasets to know what's our baseline. Now, there's going to be heavily influenced by the urbanized areas. But it's data.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:13

New Mexico is home to a relatively large indigenous Native American population. How have your efforts gone in including tribal leaders or tribal governments into the climate discussion as a whole in New Mexico.

DAVID DUBOIS 31:28

So we've got numerous tribes in New Mexico and we have one in El Paso, we've partnered with several tribal agencies, their department natural resource, and even the agriculture. When I first started here, we engaged tribal, Navajo Nation, as well as some of the Apache, Mescalero, as well as Jicarilla and you know, we've helped them and volunteered our time, you know, science fairs, and just kind of getting ourselves known. And, you know, just letting people know, you know, we have an ally with the state climate office, we partnered a lot with like the Southwest Climate hub as USDA southwest climate hubs. And they've also been great partners and getting the word out, we've got a drought Learning Network program with tribal governments, and then working also with South Central Climate Science adaptation Center in Oklahoma, you know, partnering with them as well. And there's a lot of activity going on in tribal work and climate and air quality, you know, they have the same issues. They have their own governments, sovereign nations, but they have needs as well that we can we can help out it's a two way road, because if they have data, we could put a data point where I know what, with how much precipitation or the temperatures are in that area, if they can share the data. You know, we use that in some of our drought monitoring workgroup for the state of New Mexico and getting that information from tribes. It's been really helpful.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:28

That kind of flows into the next section talking about CoCoRaHS and this idea of citizen science network that's going on. Can you discuss a little bit about CoCoRaHS and what it is, and its main drivers and goals?

DAVID DUBOIS 31:34

So if you're not familiar with CoCoRaHS, it just stands for Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow network. And it's um got started up in Fort Collins, Colorado, a number of years ago, and we started doing CoCoRaHS right around 2005. It's a citizen science, anybody can participate. And it's precipitation. It's all well, it's all we do is measuring rain, hail and snow. And it's a daily measurement is pretty much same time that Co Op observers take their data. And it's, you know, a $40 ring gauge. That's the investment other than your time to go out there and measure rain, hail and snow. Over time, we've started off small, you know, we've really hit the recruitment wagon and did a lot of outreach. You know, I took it over, as a state coordinator, from Leann DeMuse, who's really got it going from 2005. We just kept on going and not looking back. We've got the National Weather Service Forecast Offices as also regional coordinators. And then we've been trying to get county coordinators, we got 33 counties in New Mexico. And so it's grown. We're on the order of 500 observers, and we've got about 1000 registered more than actually, in and on when we get monsoon pops up. We can get up to 600 people across New Mexico to enter their data. And it's not only when it rains but also when it doesn't rain. So that's one of the big things that CoCoRaHS is as a byproduct is is drought. We tell people we have we call them zero heroes, because if they report when there's no rain in the southwest, that's really important because we need to know how long what's the time between the last last rainfall, you know, we can get like 90 days, some years hit 90 days between the last rain, you know, we can tell, and for the National Weather Service their eyes and ears for what goes on, and a lot of them are Skywarn trained. So they get them really involved in weather. You know, we've gotten a lot of a lot of retirees and key partners and CoCoRaHS. And in recently with, you know, in New Mexico, we've got a lot of range open range. So a lot of our ranchers are key CoCoRaHS observers and a really appreciate them, because they have they're in some of the more sparse areas, we got a lot of people in urban areas, which is great. It's one of the densest networks. I've seen long term, but we really treasure those who are out out in, you know, their nearest neighbor is 20 miles.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:50

How would interested individuals get involved with CoCoRaHS?

DAVID DUBOIS 35:54

Yeah, so joining CoCoRaHS is free. We have a great website CoCoRaHS.org it's CoCoRaHS.org. And there's a link on the upper right, it says join. And I'll just fill out just a few things, you know, your email, your name, your location, and then get a gauge. That's pretty much all you need to do. And then there's a there's some videos or nerves a PowerPoint, that kind of gives you that what and how and things like that. But it's really simple. We've been getting county extension agents to do this. We've got soil water conservation districts helping out with this. So it's not only citizens, but it's also some government agencies. We even had a newspaper participate in CoCoRaHS. So getting their own data in their parking lot. So there's there's no excuse. Yeah,

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:44

that's right. I was interested in coming back to to dust pollution, you had mentioned some of the mitigative measures that might be employed to help with dust pollution. I was wondering if you could go into a bit more detail about preventative and mitigative measures when it comes to to dust?

DAVID DUBOIS 37:02

Yeah, so the recipe for these dust storms, of course, you've got the environmental, lack of precipitation, high winds. But then there's also the soil component, you know, dry soils as well as disturbance level. You know, as I go out and survey some of our, our weather stations to do maintenance or some of our dust control area projects. It's amazing. Depending on the type of management, the land cover management makes a big difference. I won't mention any names or anything but like sort of this areas where I can see on one side of the fence has been over grazed. And then on the other side of the fence is they've they've limited animal interaction and letting the grass grow up when the wind blows. You can see the dust coming off that overgrazed area, large quantities in very little or none coming off of the protective cover, where there's some vegetation on it not saying anything about the negatives of animals or anything, but it's sort of how do we manage that to minimize dust in certain areas. I've done some tours and some ranches where they've addressed that knowing that there's wind erosion, which is a loss of the organic layers on the top, they really wanted to keep the soil down. So they changed their management of how the grass grows and moving them around moving animals around letting the grass grow up, and then going, you know, moving them. So there's like a lot of different ways of doing that. It all depends on you know, who's doing it, it's a difficult problem to manage. You know, we've seen small areas that actually gone into desertification. And I've toured China, and other places where it's actually that it looks very similar to it. It's like dunes, you know, shoveled down almost a meter and it's just sand. And it's not where we used to be. Right, yeah, you know, gradually you reach down to the soil, in some of the areas where the sand is built up as high as the barbed wire fences is going to take a lot of work to bring that down to bring soil quality to suit to hold vegetation again. I've toured those places, and it's, I've actually seen those come up very quickly in some areas. Especially in Great Southern Great Plains. We have a listserv for droughts in occasionally we'll get pictures of, you know, the panhandle of Oklahoma and or southern Kansas where there was no cover ground cover on some pivot irrigation areas, and that has popped up in that little little patch. You know, so we're seeing that, you know, the Dust Bowl, and there's one acre. Yeah, yeah, they can come up, come up pretty quickly. There's all kinds of solutions, but it's a matter of, you know, doing them and we talked about and then the health communities and bringing people in, you know, we've got a lot of tools and resources out there, but it's ultimately the line managers. Whoever's managing is as the key. Right, right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:10

You mentioned in passing a while ago Haboobs for those that aren't familiar with the term, can you describe what they are really quickly?

DAVID DUBOIS 40:20

Yeah, so haboob is just an Arabic word. Nothing fancy. It's basically you've probably seen pictures of them. It's a wall of dust. If you haven't never seen that, go watch the same movies.

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:34

Right? Yeah, the stereotypical duster, right? Yeah.

DAVID DUBOIS 40:38

You know, this wall of dust coming through. And, you know, Phoenix is probably famous for one of the more famous places in the US for, for these walls of dusts. And they're, they're basically from convective thunderstorms out there. The outflow from the thunderstorms creates this high wind gusts front basically blows over a Roadable area, and it's a clearly defined wall of dust, and it could be 1000 feet high. And you can see them on radar that you can see the outflow boundary and it's, if you're there, you can see it, there's a wall and it's kind of emanates out radially from the thunderstorm. And so we get these every summer. Phoenix's are famous for him, but we've seen him in southern New Mexico, we are in our time lapse network, they occur pretty often, actually, in the range lands when there's lots of disturbed areas, you kind of classify them as like a dry microburst. And then sometimes there's a wet microburst or even rain right after these. So it's that you can classify them very narrowly within a kilometer. But they can also be large. And like the, there's a, they get on, like on the Southern Great Plains, you can get these haboobs that are more from frontal, their outflow, or they're more frontal systems, and those are big third, like county wide, or even several counties, you know, the kind of traditional, the black and white pictures of the dust bowls, different types, different classification, then the Phoenix kinds.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:13

Okay, final subjects, and this is one that we talk about quite often, or at least we try to on this podcast, and that's dealing with public education and outreach. What are some of the methods that you've seen as being successful or maybe not as successful? I know that you're relatively active on social media, with the climate office and other things, sometimes it seems that it becomes, you know, just an echo chamber, and everybody's retweeting each other as opposed to really reading the word outside of, of our own community. So I'm just wondering, your thoughts on on that?

DAVID DUBOIS 42:47

Where do people get their information, that's kind of where we started from, and it ranging in topics from climate change, to just weather, you know, forecasts, to outlooks, you know, for agricultural communities, to kids, you know, that whole spectrum, the whole ages, age groups, and, you know, we didn't do any fancy polls or anything like that. But we, I usually just like, kind of ask people, when I'm out and about, and that's kind of one of the things is just getting out out in the office, you know, and it's been hard to pass a year and a half or so with COVID. But most of us have mastered zoom. Whether you like it or not, it is a tool, you know, I can, you know, instantly talk to somebody and across the state where it's a seven hour drive, they may not like to be on Zoom, but it's a way to talk to people, and it's that contact getting into face to face meetings now. But whether you're online or in person, it's you know, getting to know people and their what are they struggling with? What are they're happy about? What are the issues and just talking about climate and weather in agriculture, you know, we talked about the freezes. And when the last frost or the when this first freeze is going to be in, you know, the extremes are another big thing. So there's, there's a lot of things to get to icebreakers to get conversation started, you know, I don't almost never talk directly about climate change first, you know, I always like to kind of get a even ground and in terms of, you know, what are you seeing, you know, what has it been, like, how has this year been? And if there are producers, what kind of things have they've seen compared to other years? And, and we may not even get to climate change on, you know, in some of the conversations and, and I think that's good. I think that's, I mean, we may get it if we're to that point where I've maybe talked to him a little longer to get a sense of where they are, I'll I'll likely bring up climate change and I don't want to alienate people and because it has turned into a politicized topic, and so I'd rather talk more about what big on their radar what's impacting them, what are they concerned about? And then I like to eventually talk about ways they can help. And a lot of people said, yeah, how can I help? You know, what, what can I do? And then I'll direct them toward resources or if they're gung ho, I'd say yeah CoCoRaHS you know, there's, there's a way to take your own measurements and report and be part of the community of observers, as part of the volunteer network in drought has been, has been a really good icebreaker these days. You know, I talk a lot people in northern New Mexico with very different experiences than southern New Mexico all there are some things in common. You know, social media has played a big role in that, you know, we've got several Twitter accounts, I have nm climate, and then I have a student doing CoCoRaHS nm_CoCoRaHS. We, and we try to my students been really good about it, but probably even much better than I have in pushing with in CoCoRaHS observations through their followers. And we've also started Instagram just kind of pushing a bunch of pictures and go out doing station maintenance for Ziamet. I'll post a picture just to let them know that there's a station in this part of this county. And we're out there maintaining these things, changing the rain, gauge oil and when were out there we'll post pictures of dust storms and haboobs and outflow and things like that just as a way to to engage people talk more about and it's really helped out. Sometimes it will follow a lot of the media outlets and they'll they'll tag and then get a radio interview or TV or just a newspaper article. Even if it's only a paragraph. That's great. We're talking about CoCoRaHS. I'll bring that up. And then maybe even Ziamet, you know, as I know, there's another way to get data. You know, we're trying to connect people with the weather.gov community to say, here's your here's this great source of weather information for forecast.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:58

Okay, our time is up for today. Thank you again, Dave, for joining us. And we really appreciate you taking time to talk to us. And it definitely has been a really interesting conversation on climate change and weather observation and environmental research there in the state of New Mexico. And if you in the audience have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That's all for now. Stay safe, and we'll catch you next time on We Measure the World

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Jaclyn Fiola is a hydropedologist and PhD candidate at Virginia Tech's School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and winner of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture (ASEV) Presidents’ Award for Scholarship in Enology and Viticulture.

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Video about Jaclyn's research

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello, everybody, and Welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists,

JACLYN FIOLA 0:08

vineyard growers, tend to be cutting edge technology users, and they keep up with the scientific literature. And you know, they'll ask me about this article they just found that was published in a scientific journal. And yeah, they're always looking for new ways to try to increase their wine quality. Many, well, I won't say many years ago, but for a while, we thought that the best way to increase your fruit quality was just to limit the amount of fruit. And so if you cut off most of the fruit and just left a little bit for the vine ripened, that would be the best quality.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:44

Right, right.

JACLYN FIOLA 0:45

But in recent years, we've, we've really found that that's not the case necessarily.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:51

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmospheric continuum. Today's guest is Jaclyn Fiola, hydropedologist and PhD candidate at Virginia Tech school of plant and Environmental Sciences. Her current research involves the influence of soil and vineyards in the US Mid Atlantic. She is broadly interested in soil management of specialty crops, soil physical properties, and soil health, and soil and horticulture pedagogy. Today, she's here to talk to us about her vineyard research. So Jaclyn, thanks so much for being here.

JACLYN FIOLA 1:32

Thanks for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:33

First off, give us a little background into how you got into the sciences or how you got into your field here.

JACLYN FIOLA 1:39

Sure. I started out as a plant science major in as an undergraduate student at University of Maryland. And I thought I wanted to be a plant breeder. Because I liked maths, I liked science, and people told me I should, you know, go into science. And I took a soils class and sort of fell in love with it, and decided I wanted to be a soil scientist. But I also wanted to use my background in horticulture. And so I heard about this thing called terroir, which is this French concept that the place and the soil where a vineyard is where grapes are grown affects the taste of the wine. And I just thought it was really, really cool. And so I ended up double majoring in plant science and soil science, and then coming to grad school specifically for that topic. And so I've spent the past seven years researching how soil influences grapes, and a little bit of how soil influences wine. And so that's how I ended up here at Virginia Tech.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:51

That's super interesting. So with that history, I mean, that's probably a new term for most of our listeners, terroir. Do you know the history behind that at all, I assume, coming from France, and they've been working with vineyards and winemaking for, you know, for hundreds, if not 1000s of years, do you know where that term came from, or just kind of the history about how that science of the soil and the environment affecting grapes and wine came about?

JACLYN FIOLA 3:15

Yeah, it's actually a pretty old concept. It goes back to two ancient monks, I think in in like the middle ages, in that area of Europe, in Italy, in France. And they, they noticed that where they were growing grapes, affected how it tasted. And so you know, if you grew grapes, at the bottom of the hill, they tasted slightly different than if you grew them at the top of the hill, or, you know, down in some field versus somewhere else that the wine that they were making, because it used to be the monks and religious people who were making the wine back then it affected the taste of the wine. And so through the ages, it sort of developed into this term, I think the actual term terroir refers to land. And there's not quite a direct translation into English, but it refers to soil in the land. But it also is affected, you know, by climate. So the taste of the wine, the effects of the wine are affected by climate, culture, even you know, what variety of grape, are you growing? Does it grow? Well, in your climate? Do people want to eat that? And, you know, what are they eating? So certain places have different types of foods, their diets are slightly different. And so the wine sort of evolved with the culture and the food and certain minds parallel with certain foods. And so it's been a concept for like you said, hundreds, if not 1000s of years, and it's, it's fascinating.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:51

That is, that's super cool. And maybe we will be able to touch back on that a little bit later, as we get into the discussion here. So you got into vineyard Your project was there a step by step process. So you talked about wanting to be interested in plant breeding, and then you got into soil and then into vineyards and vineyard management. What what caught your eye about vineyards and vineyard management at the beginning there.

JACLYN FIOLA 5:13

I like vineyards and working with vineyards because it's there's a lot of science to it. There's farming and agriculture, but there's also a certain amount of art or luck. And that's especially true here on the east coast, where our climate is, I want to say unpredictable, but it's also variable from year to year. And so it makes something like growing grapes and making good wine very challenging, right. And so we're facing a lot of challenges here that they don't necessarily have in famous wine growing regions, like in Napa Valley or in California somewhere. And I was drawn to that just because it, it's a young industry here, they have a lot of problems. And I felt like with my expertise in soils, I could help them address some of those problems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:10

Right? So I myself and not a wine connoisseur. So does this come into play, then when we hear about like a good year, or a good vintage or things like that, if we're talking about you know, the idea and techniques that go into making good grapes or good wines comes from the environment. But humans in the past didn't have as much technology or at least techniques to be able to mitigate for environmental factors. Is this something that modern technology might be able to help with in trying to minimize, like you said, the variability within the environment.

JACLYN FIOLA 6:44

To a certain extent, modern technology can help with that. One of our actually probably our largest concern, definitely on the East Coast, probably everywhere in the world is winter injury of grapevines. So if it gets too cold, or you know, there's an ice storm or something that can devastate a vineyard, it can kill vines, you can lose crop. And that's where technology has really helped. We put when machines, in vineyards, we've learned where to put them on the slope to sort of aid in cold air drainage, just the warmer part of the slope. And some technology has really helped with that. What technology hasn't yet really helped with is the rain. And so on the East Coast, we actually get too much rain here, because in vineyards, there's certain times of the year where you want rain, and there's certain times of the years you don't. And so in the mid atlantic here in Virginia, we talk about 2017 and 2019 as good years because we had sort of a cool, moist kind of spring, and then a dry summer. And then 2018 If you go to any vineyard, or on the East Coast, you'll you know, if you ask for 2018 Fred, they'll just laugh. Just because it was considered a bad year, because it was very rainy, we had our hurricane in the fall, and none of our technology so far has been able to predict hurricanes.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:28

So let's talk about and I do want to come back to that idea of how things are different over there on the east coast of the United States compared to you know, the West Coast or even elsewhere in the world. We've kind of talked in a broad sense, but what are some of the more specific problems or questions that you're trying to address with your researcher?

JACLYN FIOLA 8:47

Sure, I'm, again looking at vineyards from the soil up, which is different than a lot of people look at them. But through the soil, we're looking at different soil management that we can do to sort of help mitigate the effects of that excess rainfall. And so we're looking at strategies to try to make the water go away or make the water drain faster, but only during certain times of the year when you don't want water. And like I said we're hoping that that will affect the wine quality and so affect the fruit quality and then finally the wine quality.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:28

So it sounds like vineyard management is a pretty tricky business there that right depending on what variety that you're growing and what is the final purpose you know, are these table grapes are these wine, grapes, other things like that. Can you talk a little bit about plant stress and especially when and when not to stress a vineyard or just kind of the reasoning behind deliberate stressing of your grapes.

JACLYN FIOLA 9:51

Yeah, plant stress is a an interesting topic. Because in vineyards, we intentionally try to stress the grapes. But again only at certain times of year. Um and so usually in the spring when the flowers and the baby fruit are developing, we don't want to stress it. But at fruit set, which is sort of once the fruit is developed, it's been pollinated. And it's about to start developing as a fruit, that's what we call fruit set. That's when you want to start stressing it, because you want the grape vine to put most of its energy into ripening that fruit instead of just growing more grape vine. And so if the grape vine has access to a lot of water, a lot of nutrients, warm weather, it tends to just grow a whole bunch of leaves and vines, and the fruit may not ripen the way we want it to. And so if you stress it at that point, so if you limit the amount of water, maybe limit the amount of nutrients then the vine to personify it gets stressed. And it's like, oh, I need to put all of my effort into reproduction instead of just growing leaves. And that's, that's how we get the best quality fruit.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:14

Let's talk a little bit about some of the techniques than that you are have been testing out and researching to help with this issue of excess water and excess water availability to the plants. You've talked about their ideas of compacting soils, there's ideas of adding ground cover to compete or water uptake. And then also some less natural means such as using polymers or stearic acid or other things like that, can you go into a little bit more detail about those techniques that you've been trying out?

JACLYN FIOLA 11:43

Yeah, we've been throwing whatever we can at these vineyards to try to make a difference. The traditional ways of getting water out of vineyards include, you know, putting in tile drains and drains in the soil to try to make it drain better. But that's really expensive. And you can't time it. Like I was saying we it's just specific times of year where we really want to stress the grape vines. Cover crops have been pretty well researched on this side of the country. And they actually do a pretty good job. If you plant them right under the vines, they compete with the vines for water and can kind of help limit the growth of the vines. And so they put their energy into the into ripening the berries. But again, that's a lot of management, you can have issues with, you know, little animals living in the cover crops and humidity issues, and then you have to mow them, or cut them somehow you don't want to hit the vines. So it's sort of a challenge. And so we thought, what if we can just prevent the water from getting into the soil in the first place. And that's where we we've been looking into the soil stabilizers, which were developed by the transportation industry to use on dirt roads, and like the edges of highways where they're trying to plant grass, right. So when there's like bare soil, they spray these on them to prevent erosion, to like hold seeds down so that you know grass seeds can germinate. But also on dirt roads, they spray these so that the road is stronger, and the rain just washes off of it and doesn't cause erosion and doesn't make it muddy. And so we thought vineyards are usually on sloping land anyway. Just because they want that extra runoff. They they want the drainage. Okay, and so, yeah, we thought we would try these different substances in vineyards and stearic acid is a natural version of that. It's just naturally repels water. And so we included that as one of our treatments as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:01

We're over here on the eastern side of Washington. And as you drive around Eastern Washington up here in the northwest of the drier parts of the Northwest, you see vineyards along with orchards and other things, but, but you do see vineyards on Yeah, on slopes and hill slopes, it never crossed my mind that Oh yeah. They're probably trying to help with drainage to help out with that. That's super cool to understand. So can you go into a bit more detail about stearic acid specifically, that seems really interesting to have these additives? Because a lot of times in the growers or plant researchers or other things they're interested in surfactants that will help increase soil infiltration, but this is just the opposite. Can you explain a little bit about about stearic acid and what it tries to do?

JACLYN FIOLA 14:01

Sure, so like I said stearic acid is is naturally occurring. You often get it in soils after wildfires, some of like the charcoal and and the stuff that's left over is water repellent and one of those is this long chained. Acid stearic acid that just naturally repels water. And then the the other soil stabilizers we're using are just co polymers. So similar, you know, long chains of change molecules that just naturally repel water. And like you said, most of the time in agriculture, we're trying to increase infiltration. And in vineyards, there are times when we would want to do that. But the benefit of these substances, hopefully, is that we can control the timing when they're applied. And then if there's an issue, you know, if we're in a drought, or if we need water to get to the vines, we can do something about it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:44

Right, right. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about the timing of application, like you said, there's within the various seasons in the growing stages that you would need to apply it. But then also, is there a necessary removal of that as well, for the next season? Does that become an issue?

JACLYN FIOLA 15:58

We're not sure yet! That's a great question! And that's one of our research questions is: How long do these last and vineyards because, you know, in vineyards, you still have tractors going up and down the roads, and you have workers walking on it. And, you know, we have a lot of rain here. So how much rain does it take to wash this away eventually, and we still don't know the answer to that we have some results. But so far, we we think that they're lasting at least a couple of weeks, if not a couple of months. And so the thought is to apply these right after fruit set, like I said, so once we see those little tiny green berries, and we want to start stressing the vines, we can apply it and then we think the efficacy, the water repellency sort of decreases about the time when we want it to which is when the very start to change color. So usually that's late summer about right now, actually in August in Virginia. And so if the if the soil is still shedding water, if the materials are still working, and the vines are too stressed, you can go through and till under the vines, just go through with a hoe and, you know, make sure that water can get under, or you can turn on your irrigation and just overwhelm the system and make sure that the vines are getting some amount of water with kind

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:31

of the the wetter environments. You mentioned irrigation, out here in the arid West irrigation is a big deal right? I would assume it's not as much back east, I would assume there's still some but but maybe not as much with it being as humid and wet an environment. Is that a correct assumption?

JACLYN FIOLA 17:46

You're absolutely correct, most vineyards here do not have any irrigation installed, a few do and young vines, especially in their first couple of seasons often do need some amount of irrigation. So for those, if anyone wants to start a vineyard on the East Coast, I do recommend putting an irrigation just in case for your young vines. And if there ever happens to be a really bad drought. But in general, we're completely rain fed, which is what makes it challenging because on the west coast and in dry areas, sorry, in dry areas, where they're they're growing grapes. If you want to stress the vines and give them less water, you can just turn off your irrigation and then turn it back on when you want them to have water versus here where we're totally dependent on rain. We can't just turn it off.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:39

Right, right. Yeah, there are pros and cons to both right. So in dealing with trying to figure out the amounts of you know, infiltration and water availability, and those kinds of things, what are what are some of the measurements that you're looking at, to really tell you and where you can gauge you know, higher low infiltration and water content, water availability, that kind of thing?

JACLYN FIOLA 19:06

Well, the first thing we do is characterize the soil. And so soils will have different capacities to hold the water and different different rates at which the rain will go into them. And so in our study, we we've looked at soils with different textures, we looked at sandy soils, which rain will go into them very quickly, but it tends to drain out pretty quickly as well. And so it doesn't hold on to that water that the vines can then access later. Versus a lot of our sites in the mid atlantic tend to be pretty clay-ey. And so water might not infiltrate as quickly into the soil, but once it does, it tends to stick around for a while. And so that's one of our big questions. So we've installed some of METER. Water volumetric water content sensors so, so the amount of water in the soil, and we've monitored that over time to see what the water content of the soil is doing. And then the big thing we measure is infiltration rate. And so we've used a couple of different methods for that, including those fun little Mini Disk Infiltrometers, that METER makes, I love them, so they're adorable. And we've done a bunch of measurements of that. And so just on the soil surface will measure how long it takes for water to move through the surface of the soil into the subsurface.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:37

What are some of the challenges in trying to take these measurements? Is there an issue with the number of measurements or where you're taking them from? Do you have things that are installed all throughout the season? Are you doing spot checking? You know, how does that that working out for you?

JACLYN FIOLA 20:51

field research is always challenging. Every time I go out in the field, I feel like there's some challenge that I wasn't expecting. We've had our our wires cut a couple times by mowers in the vineyard activity. So that's been challenging to try to keep them just in the field. The other thing I mentioned that vineyards tend to be on sloping lands, measuring infiltration on a slope is much more difficult than measuring it on flat. And so we've sort of had to set up these apparatus ring stands and all this fancy equipment to try to get infiltration measures on this, these little slopes. But then we also have, you know, we have to watch the weather and the spray, schedule the vineyards and try to make sure we're not entering the vineyard when it's just been sprayed. And we want the soil to be a little bit moist when we do the measurements and not too dry. But so trying to get the proper timing to do the measurements is challenging. And then doing enough of them and within a certain amount of period or a certain timeframe, just because you don't want to measure one soil in the morning and one soil in the afternoon. Because even that temperature difference might affect measurements we're getting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:15

So what are some of the results that you're seeing from your various projects here?

JACLYN FIOLA 22:21

We've actually had really good results, one of the soil stabilizers has been excellent at reducing infiltration. And so we've we figured out just how to use it in a hand sprayer. So we have a backpack sprayer where you mix water and this material, and then we just sprayed it under the vines and sort of saturated the soil with it and then it it cures. That's I guess, their term for what these do. And it actually turns purple, which is fun. And then once it's cured it, it's completely clear. And the same with the stearic acid. So that actually comes in like a powder or flaky form. And then we dissolve it with water and some soap, and then just spray it under the vines. And the stearic acid just we've had some trouble with the rate, we're not quite sure how much to apply. So we're still working on that. But some of the commercial stabilizers have done really well at preventing infiltration. And we've seen that in the the soils data, the soil water content data as well. The challenge we had last year was, as soon as we applied our treatments, we immediately went into a drought. And so we didn't, we harvested fruit and we checked the quality and looked at fruit chemistry to see if we had made a difference by using these things. And there was there were no differences. And we're pretty sure it's because there was no rain, right or about two or three weeks after we applied them. And so we're repeating the experiment this year. And again, the stabilizers are doing what they're supposed to at the proper time. They're preventing infiltration of rainwater and so we're hoping we'll see some differences in the fruit chemistry this year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:17

Cool. Well, good luck with that!

JACLYN FIOLA 24:19

Thank you!

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:21

It's always tough like, like you said, you are at the mercy of the environment and mercy of that, that years of precipitation and and other things.

JACLYN FIOLA 24:31

Yeah, with grapes. We only get one chance per year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:34

Right. Yeah yep!

JACLYN FIOLA 24:36

It's a challenge.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:37

That's probably extending your research out, potentially.

JACLYN FIOLA 24:40

Yeah, but it's fun. You know, I get to work with vineyards and vineyards tend to be great cooperators they're usually really curious and what we're doing

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:49

And maybe this is something you can speak to a little bit as well but I mean usually these vineyards are a pretty large cash crop for a lot of these vineyard managers and and other larger or companies and other things like that. So I would assume that they would be wanting to invest a bit more into, you know, r&d when it comes to vineyard management and the various new technologies that might be coming out to help them increase their crop yield, or how good that vintage might be.

JACLYN FIOLA 25:16

Yeah, absolutely. vineyard growers tend to be cutting edge technology users, and they keep up with the scientific literature. And you know, they'll ask me about this article they just found that was published in a scientific journal. And yeah, they're always looking for new ways to try to increase their wine quality. Many, well, I won't say many years ago, but for a while, we thought that the best way to increase your fruit quality was just to limit the amount of fruit. And so if you cut off most of the fruit and just left a little bit, for the vine to ripen, that would be the best quality. Right? Right. But in recent years, we've, we've really found that that's not the case, necessarily, that you know, getting a good balance between the amount of fruit and the amount of, of green stuff that leaves in the vines is really what gets the quality to be higher. And so looking at the soil, and the varieties and matching the variety to the site, and the soil types are really important. And growers are definitely interested in having those conversations and, you know, testing things, a lot of growers will have their own little research plot where they're testing new varieties, right, and new management techniques. And so, being in viticulture, right now is is really fun, especially here on the East Coast.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:38

That's cool. That's super fascinating. So what are some of the, I guess practical things that you might be able to suggest to vineyard managers about how they can improve the quality of their products.

JACLYN FIOLA 26:53

We're still working on the soil stabilizers, but it looks like they're, they're definitely working. My my usual advice to, to growers is to keep the soil covered. And so growing cover crops or grass between rows, something that is going to compete for water, hopefully at the proper times of the year, and prevent erosion of the soil. And you can also get, like some negative effects of erosion, even on drainage, you can get like little reels and you know, topography of the soil where it holds water. So you really want to, to be kind. The other big thing that we've been trying to work on is making the vineyards more uniform. And so one small vineyard we usually call a block. So block has like all the same variety of it's managed the same way and in that one block of vineyard. And so within one vineyard block, you can still have variation. And if you're managing it the same way, you might have, you know, different ripening different amounts of growth in vines on the north side versus the south side. And so you can change your soil management within that one block of vineyard to try to make it more uniform. And so that helps with harvest, it helps with management, it's slightly less labor, if you can get really good at it. And so managing your soil properly and strategically, can can really help improve your wine quality and your bottom line.

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:41

We've got a PhD candidate who's been working with vineyards for a couple of for a few years coming up against a tradition of 1000s of years; you mentioned that you felt that growers in the grape world seem to be on the cutting edge of technology. Have you come up against any difficulties in introducing new technologies or anything that where your research and your findings are kind of butting heads with tradition.

JACLYN FIOLA 29:07

You know, I haven't really experienced that too much, at least on the east coast here. And that's one of the benefits of being in a young industry is that we don't have sort of the rules that some other industries may have. We have a few varieties that are very popular, but you know, we don't have to grow certain types of grapes in this region. And in my experience, the growers have been pretty receptive. Traditionally, in you know, the East Coast and the West Coast of the US. You would just have bare soil under the vineyards, the whole vineyard would be bare except for the grape vines. But we've really come a long way. And you know, putting a cover crop putting grass in the aisle rows, you know, to kind of improve soil health and and prevent soil erosion, right. And that's really been adopted in the the East Coast. And it's starting, at least most of the time in the West Coast, we're not just seeing completely bare landscapes with with grape vines planted in them. And so yes, there's a huge tradition of, of wine growing. And Virginia specifically, was the first place in the US where we started growing vineyards. Because Thomas Jefferson was trying to grow grapes, he failed. But he tried and so we have a long history in Virginia of trying to make wine. And in general, everyone seems to be very receptive to new ideas and trying out new things.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:47

That's good to hear. I was gonna ask also, like, Do you have any special or specific techniques that you're using to help educate growers in the field?

JACLYN FIOLA 30:54

While we do a lot of field days here in Virginia, Virginia Cooperative Extension, which is joint between Virginia Tech and Virginia State University has a bunch of extension specialists and extension agents who can help out in vineyards. And so I've talked to a bunch of them about my research and findings. And we'll have demonstrations and commercial vineyards. The Viticulture industry tends to be very cooperative. Everyone, you know, shares ideas. They're not competing the way some industries are. And so growers will have meetings, sometimes informal industry meetings, and then there's the more formal conferences, where we'll share ideas. I also have a website. It's called soilsom.com like soils, Somalia.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:45

Okay, all right,

JACLYN FIOLA 31:46

Where I mostly share pictures of vineyard soils, because that's. And then social media is a big thing that I keep in touch with the growers I'm working with as well as different vineyard and soil experts around the around the world.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:04

Do you see any applications for what you were finding and your research in Viticulture, having any application to the world of agriculture at large?

JACLYN FIOLA 32:16

Yes, I think so. vineyard research is definitely unique in that we're trying to limit water at certain times of the year. But certain other specialty crops are like that as well, Hops have very interesting soil requirements so does cannabis and hemp, which are relatively new crops over here. But even in orchards with apples and pears and peaches, I think it can be useful. And just soil management in general has been changing as we're trying to, you know, sequester carbon and keep our soil health and soil quality really up. And so I think soil management for good water management and nutrient management is is always pretty important.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:06

Any fun or interesting stories from the field or elsewhere? Do you have any stories of the unexpected, there always seems to be, especially with field research and other things where you got one day and like nothing works, it turns out to be like a Friday the 13th type of situation where just everything goes wrong, or anything funny or exciting?

JACLYN FIOLA 33:25

So one time we were working in a vineyard, and we were trying to measure bulk density of the soil. So like how compact the soil was. And usually you do that with soil cores. And so there's a little core that you pound into the soil and then you dig it out. But these vineyard soils are so rocky that we couldn't get it to work. And so it was me and my undergraduate helper, we were, you know, jumping on this hammer, trying to get some soil out of the ground, and we just couldn't so we ended up using like a butter knife to try to get the rocks out of the soil and measure like the volume of this hole that we had dug and then ended up spilling water all over ourselves. But it was fine because it was a hot day so it was nice. But doing anything in vineyards is remarkably challenging. And we often have the vineyard owners come out and end up helping us try to get the soil samples out of the ground, just because it's so difficult. Doing doing soils research is always challenging, but soils and vineyards are very, very challenging.

BRAD NEWBOLD 34:45

What's your research are you doing blocks that are privately owned are these research vineyards from the university.

JACLYN FIOLA 34:53

Most of my research has been in commercial vineyards I've just reached out to people in the industry and said, Hey, can I come do some research at your vineyard? And so far everyone has said, Yes, we did do some testing of the soil stabilizers and infiltration in the lab and just in a field near the university on university land, but all the vineyard work I've done has been in commercial vineyards.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:22

That's good to hear. It seems that at least with vineyard management, and viticulture, that there is a good collaboration between researchers and growers themselves, like we mentioned earlier, sometimes depending on the crop or depending on the region or location, you might buttheads between current researchers and growers who have that tradition and things that have worked for them, you know, for dozens, if not decades, or hundreds of years, depending on on the place and the the crop. What do you see in the future for viticulture research and vineyard management?

JACLYN FIOLA 35:52

I think the future is very bright for vineyard research. And we've just sort of scratched the surface on soil management, because not many people are doing that kind of research. And so I think there's a ton more research to do on soil management, but also cover crops and nutrient management. One thing that's come up recently is sulfur management and vineyards. There's a lot of sulfur that we apply in pesticides and fungicides, right, right. But we're also not getting as much sulfur deposition from the air as we used to. And so that's something that's come up because we don't have good guidelines for growers to use for applying sulfur fertilizer and whether or not it's needed, right. Some of my other research for my PhD has been on potassium, and how much potassium the vines need and how to measure it in the soil and how to measure it in the vines. And so there's a lot of really basic research as well as really applied research on, you know, how we can improve our wine quality and try to minimize the effects of those bad years. And so we can figure out how to, you know, reduce the rain, how to, you know, recover from a hurricane or prevent a hurricane. All of that would be really, really useful. And I think there's a lot of room for more research in the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:24

Great. Anything else that you'd like to add or share with the audience when it comes to your research or viticulture at large?

JACLYN FIOLA 37:32

Well, I'm very grateful to all of my cooperating vineyards, and to my group here at Virginia Tech, with my advisor, Dr. Stewart, and very grateful to METER for providing a bunch of the equipment I've been using for the past couple years. I was the winner of one of the fellowships that provided me some of this equipment that I've used over and over and it's been invaluable to my research. So thank you to METER thank you to the vineyards and everyone who's helped with my research.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:02

Right. Well, thank you, Jaclyn. Our time is up it looks like, um yeah just thanks again Jaclyn, for taking time to share your research with us. It's been super fascinating. And for our audience. If you have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That's all for now. Stay safe, and we'll catch you next time on We Measure the World

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Bruce Bugbee, PhD, is a professor of Crop Physiology, director of the Crop Physiology Laboratory at Utah State University, and the president of Apogee Instruments, Inc.

His work includes collaborating with NASA to develop closed life-support systems for long-term space missions. He’s been involved with the development of crop-growing systems for future life on the Moon, in addition to in-orbit or in-space shuttles. He’s worked on projects for Mars farming, including the use of fiber optics for indoor lighting, And as a part of this research, he was involved in the creation of the NASA Space Technology Research Institute’s Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (or CUBES).

Dr. Bugbee also has long been a critic of the use of indoor farming as a means of solving food shortages, due to the large amount of electricity needed to provide light for photosynthesis. His recent work in this area has included studies into the efficacy of LED lights for indoor growing. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Links to learn more about Dr. Bruce Bugbee:

Dr. Bugbee's curriculum vitae

Dr. Bugbee's AMA on reddit

Dr. Bugbee's ResearchGate

Dr. Bugbee's LinkedIn

Dr. Bugbee's opinions on the science of Farming Mars

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Colin Campbell, PhD, is a research scientist and the head of research and development at METER Group, Inc. USA.

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Leo Rivera operates as a research scientist and director of Client Success at METER Group. He earned his undergraduate degree in Agriculture Systems Management at Texas A&M University, where he also got his Master’s degree in Soil Science. There he helped develop an infiltration system for measuring hydraulic conductivity used by the NRCS in Texas. Currently, Leo is the force behind application development in METER’s hydrology instrumentation including the SATURO, HYPROP and WP4C. He also works in R&D to explore new instrumentation for water and nutrient movement in soil.

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Cristine Morgan, PhD, is the chief scientific officer at the Soil Health Institute (SHI) in North Carolina, where she develops scientific strategy and implementation for soil health research.

Links to learn more about Dr. Morgan and SHI:

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Dr. Morgan's ResearchGate

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

CRISTINE MORGAN 0:07

We all live and die by soil, literally. I think we just have to remind people that it's about your quality of life. It's about the food that you eat. It's about the safety and welfare of your children, you know, start there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:24

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest, Dr. Christine Morgan, is widely recognized as one of the premier soil scientists in the US and is currently serving as the chief scientific officer at the Soil Health Institute in North Carolina. She was formerly a professor of soil science at Texas A&M University, where she received numerous awards for teaching and research. She has served on the board of directors for the Soil Science Society of America, is Editor in Chief for the global soil science journal, Geoderma, and founding editor of the journal Soil Security. Dr. Morgan received her Bachelor's in plant and environmental soil sciences from Texas A&M University, and her master's and doctorate in soil science from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Today, she's here to talk to us about soil health and the impact that it has on us as a society. So Christine, thank you so much for being here.

CRISTINE MORGAN 1:29

Thank you. Happy to be here.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:31

All right. So first, we wanted to start off just by getting a little bit of your background. What got you interested in science in general, and then more specifically, soil science?

CRISTINE MORGAN 1:40

Well, I've always been interested in science. My parents are both scientists, but they're biological scientists. And I always thought that science wasn't going to be my gig, it was going to be law school. So I started out at Texas A&M University, prepared to go to law school, but I figured that since I wasn't so great at taking tests that I would get a science degree, and that would help me get into law school a lot easier. And after the first semester, you know, chemistry, taking the basic science classes, I did pretty well. And I was bragging to my brother who was older than me. So you know, there's always sibling sibling rivalry. I was just bragging about how well I did. And he said that I did so well, because I didn't take any hard classes. And so I just remember that Christmas, looking him in the eye and saying, Tell me the hardest class you took. And he said, there was this introductory soil science class taught by Murray Milford. And so I said, okay, and I went back, and I changed my schedule. And I added that class to my spring semester, I took that soil science class, and I fell in love. My parents were scientists, my mother is a plant scientist, my father an entomologist. I just thought I knew everything there was about science. To this day, I always tease my grad students and people I engaged with that you don't find soil science—soil science find you. And I think it's actually the case, because nobody knows about soil science.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:06

Right.

CRISTINE MORGAN 3:06

But I just love the fact that if you liked physics, if you liked chemistry, if you liked biology, there's something to study in soil science. So you could still like do the hardcore science, but then also apply it to something that's just so relevant to life on Earth.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:23

Was there any interest then in going the direction of like, environmental law?

CRISTINE MORGAN 3:28

I wanted to run the EPA.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:28

Oh, really?

CRISTINE MORGAN 3:28

Yeah. I don't know why I had just decided that the EPA was waiting for me. But yeah, and that's actually why I went into soil physics, because I was just so interested in water, clean water. What happened when water fell on the ground? Like, where did it go? And what did it do? And how did it make friends? And that just totally intrigued me. And that ended up being what I did study and in my PhD was just what happens to water when it hits the ground.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:03

So as an undergrad, we've heard that you got into soil judging and soil judging team there. How did that happen? First of all, for those of us who might not know what soil judging is, can you explain a little bit that and then how you got interested in that?

CRISTINE MORGAN 4:16

Yeah. So judging is originally a very uniquely American thing, by the way. I think it came from 4-H, FFA, these ag schools. And the idea that you know, you were training future farmers. It's a thing where you go out, and you go to a place, and you study the landscapes and how the soils formed on the landscape, and they dig pits and you walk into, you know, these little divots into the ground, and you look at the soil profiles, and you have to describe what you see. And then you have to make interpretations that are appropriate for building homes, farming, and just figure out what that soil is best used for. And that's what you're graded on. So I thought it was a joke to be honest. When I changed my major, Tom Hallmark, who was advisor said, Well, you know, we have this thing called soil judging and I'm looking around going, Are you kidding me? Is that how, how nerdy and backward and agriculturally can you get? And, but then I went out and I did and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so much fun, and you get to miss school for a whole week. You get to travel somewhere and get dirty. I mean, oh my gosh, I loved it. In fact, when I came back to Texas A&M as faculty, after Tom Hallmark retired, I became the coach. My Australian counterpart, and I ran the first international soil judging contest. And the thing about that was so interesting is that we brought together soil scientists, faculty, that, you know, at one time in their life like me, they had fallen in love with soils by looking at soils in the field. But they had become scientists in the work behind computers and in labs with dried ground soils. But it was so amazing to see that spark. We were actually teaching them how to be coaches of soil judging, how to play the game, right? Like, here's the game, here are the rules, this is how you do it. It was really reinvigorating. As faculty at A&M, I taught a lot of field soil science. But it was really something to take people out that were my age, older, later in their careers, and just see that spark happen again. When we did the international contest, it was like all the faculty became 25 years old again. We had a great time being soil nerds doing this weird thing.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:42

You mentioned Tom Hallmark as the faculty advisor to that team. How else did did he help you in your early studies as a mentor? And other things?

CRISTINE MORGAN 6:51

Yeah, just he taught me soil science, like, as I have traveled around the world, and met many pedologists, which a pedologist is someone who studies soil, I realized that I think I got the best world-class training in identifying and describing soils across landscapes. I had no idea how lucky I was to have someone like that teach me. But the other thing that he did is he was my undergraduate mentor. And then I went off to graduate school. And when I came back to Texas A&M, he was my faculty mentor. And it was very interesting because there's not a lot of women in soil science. And when I started my career in 2004, I was the only female tenure track faculty at Texas A&M and soil and crop sciences. Tom really helped me understand the culture of going into a science where men were my peers, like, of course, I'd always been a student, but it was different becoming faculty. And he really was that friend that taught me the cultural norms so that I could thrive.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:57

So from then you said, you moved on to Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience there working with Dr. John Norman, and your research there?

CRISTINE MORGAN 8:08

So when I was an undergraduate, I was really good in chemistry. And so I thought, if I went to graduate school, I better pick something that I was bad in so that I could get better at it. So I chose soil physics. Also, it had to do a lot with water movement. I was so intimidated and so frightened of being a soil physicist, like, what is that? Right? Like, the physics word is a very intimidating word. I couldn't have picked a better mentor to, you know, push me through that path and make me take classes that I had never thought that I was capable of doing. But John is also very interesting. He just he taught me a philosophy of science that I think that not everybody gets. He taught me that the hard problems were the fun ones to go after, and not to be scared of them. And so I thought there was a way to do science, right, the scientific method, and that you do these steps and these steps and these steps. And I remember one time, I was trying to understand something, and John's like, well, I think you've read enough papers about it. Let's not read too many more papers. You know, when you get an idea, and you're interested in something, you need to read the papers to know what other people have done. He said that you don't need to read so many papers to think that what other people have done was the right way to do it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:08

Right.

CRISTINE MORGAN 8:11

And so he always pushed that in me. I think that that made me a different kind of soil scientist than I probably would have been under, you know, any other kind of mentoring. And hopefully, I did the same for my students as well. Learning how to be uncomfortable was something that I learned a lot in graduate school, how to be unsure, not know the answers, not be afraid to investigate something just because you don't know how to investigate it. And just kind of be a bit intrepid. Of course, we could also talk about all the biophysical equations that I learned.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:02

Right, yeah, how's your math now?

CRISTINE MORGAN 10:03

Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I was always just amazed in biophysics in general, how, you know, there's things that you observe. And then there's an equation that describes that observation. And then you play with the equation and then all it's doing is like reinforcing what you've already touched, felt, or smelt. I found that so liberating. I remember, I was taking biophysics, and I was riding my bike into school, and I was thinking about the boundary layers and all and the wind. And I thought, oh my gosh, I could calculate that if I wanted to. That was so empowering. So I think probably this idea that to investigate something you don't understand, but how empowering it is to be able to write an equation and describe something that you observe. Wow. That just makes you feel like you can do science.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:55

Right, exactly. Yeah, that idea that you can look around the natural world, like you said, there's there's something that can help describe or explain this phenomenon.

CRISTINE MORGAN 11:04

There's math to it, right? And I'm not a good math person. But to see an equation and recognize, oh my gosh, that describes something like, you know, the fact that metal and Styrofoam can be the same temperature, but feel different. And like, I know how I know how to calculate that feeling. Yeah, John Norman had us do these crazy equations. I remember the one equation, he put an iceberg in Lake Mendota. And we were supposed to calculate, given the wind speed, how fast this iceberg was going to hit a pier.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:04

Wow.

CRISTINE MORGAN 11:16

And I remember looking at that equation going, no way I'm smart enough to do that. And then I sat down and did it. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I can do that. And, you know, I never had to do anything quite like that in my science. But just knowing internally that I could do that just kind of gives you that ability to think and it's just liberating.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:03

Alright, so along with that, can you tell us about your work with spectroscopy?

CRISTINE MORGAN 12:07

Yeah, soil spectroscopy. So that's another link between University of Wisconsin and even some people that are now employed at METER. When I came to Texas A&M, one of the former students that I had gone to school with in Wisconsin David Brown and I had always talked about like, go into the field. I'm a field soil scientist. I am not a lab soil scientist. I will get behind a computer and model, but first, I have to be inspired with something out in the field. And what I was interested in doing is modeling water movement across the soil. So here, we come back down and still interested, what happens when the water hits the ground. One of the things is is that these models need information. And so I really got into sensors and figuring out how we could use sensors in the field without pulling soil samples and bringing them back to the lab, how we could get this information in the field. And that led me to spectroscopy. I would say I tenured on spectroscopy, because that was my first project that I developed on my own at Texas A&M. And what I did different is that a lot of soil scientists were looking at pulling soil samples, bringing them to the lab, drying them, grinding them, preparing them, and then scanning them with visible near infrared spectroscopy. And I had zero interest in that. And I thought, hmm, if we can do it in the lab, why couldn't we do it in the field? And of course, everyone said, well, because the soil is not ground. And because there's all these different water contents. And I had a friend, a colleague, that was really pushing me to investigate this. And I thought, well, if I'm going to investigate it, I'm going to investigate it for something I would use it for. And I took it to the field. And my colleagues told me that I was crazy, and that I was being too risky with my tenure. But I thought, you know, what, if I don't get tenure because this doesn't work, then I don't want tenure, I want to go do something fun and useful. And so I did my very first master student, I took it to the field, and we scanned soils outside in the raw. And it turned out that it worked. And then I ended up working with some colleagues that were really better at what they would call math's, not math, but math's. They were at University of Sydney. And we found some neat algorithms, where we could even erase the effect of water content and in situ -ness from infield scans. And I've worked on that ever since. You know when you start a tenure track position that they always say get a 10 year goal. And my 10 year goal was to have an instrument that you can go out to the field and just push it straight into the ground and measure clay content in organic carbon. And I did it at 12 years. And I was so excited and we patented it and I actually still at the Soil Health Institute work on a project to get this thing to work for carbon markets. So I have never spent every year of my career working on it because, you know, funding cycles go up and down. But it's always kind of been my baby. And something that I know works, the real challenge is to get it commercial, which is something that you of course, METER works on a lot. It's a trick, like, it's a trick to think about something that might work. I mean, I think that's a skill set. Another huge skill set in science for me has been getting it to work in real life. And, you know, I kind of did that as a scientist at Texas A&M, like, okay, here's an idea. Let's see if we can come up with the experimental design to show that it works. And there's actually some art and science to that. But now, I think what I am learning is, okay, yeah, so it works. But for it to be used, someone has to be able to pull it off the shelf. And that transition from proof of concept, it works, the stats are great, to getting it so that anybody could pull it off the shelf and read a user manual. Oh my gosh, that is not easy. I'm very lucky now at the Soil Health Institute to be around people that know how to do that. So that's kind of been a fun thing with leaving academia to get engaged more in the private sector with really, really brilliant minds.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:25

Can you explain a little bit about the Soil Health Institute in general, its purposes, how it came to be, and then how you got involved with them at first.

CRISTINE MORGAN 16:33

Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation founded the Soil Health Institute with original commitment to get it up and running. And the idea to safeguard, enhance the vitality and productivity of soils. The strategy for that was to develop a research agenda to bring soil scientists together to agree on things like how do you measure soil health? How do we get those measurements into the commercial world, and practically, because there's so many different ways to look at measure soil health, and that was kind of the foundational movement of the Institute. And when I joined, there was a project on that. And since I've joined, we do a lot of work with translating soil science knowledge, but also doing our own fundamental research. But it's all really focused on how do we get good soil science out of the scientific world and into that translational world where it's a tool that people use to better manage their resources?

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:29

And how did you get involved in soil health? So you've moved from wanting to be pre-law or law school into soil science, soil physics, and now soil health. How did that come to be?

CRISTINE MORGAN 17:39

Yeah. In spectroscopy, I started developing a relationship with a couple folks at University of Sydney. And one of them is Alex McBratney, who's a pedometrician, which is another kind of soil scientist, I'm also considered a pedometrician. And we were working on spectroscopy, but then we just started working on other things together. And one of the concepts that we started developing and talking about together was this idea of soil security. And soil security kind of has these five dimensions where we think about like, what the soil is capable of doing, like its genetics, how the soil is managed, so the condition of the soil, how it's responding to anthropogenic activity, but then and that's soil science, right, but then beyond that, is, you know, How do humans connect to soil? How does policy connect to soil? How does the economics connect to soil? And so the five dimensions are, you know, the soil condition and the soil capacity, but then also the economics, the sociology, and the policy and the governance. And when I started kind of developing those ideas and trying to talk to people about it, I realized that soil science had really not done a good job of developing relationships with these other types of, you know, there were a lot of one off relationships, but not like a real body of knowledge. In doing that, I started working with a sociologist and an economist at Texas A&M University, and I had never really worked with farmers before. And so I started working with land managers, and trying to understand how they think about soil. And I just got really passionate about it. And I probably was on my way of setting up a Soil Security Institute at Texas A&M. But then the opportunity arose to work at the Soil Health Institute. And what I saw was this institute was this nonprofit research extension translational kind of unit. It was kind of like the vehicle was already built. It just needed a driver. And so I brought a lot of those soil security ideas to the Soil Health Institute. And that was really my interest was just like, hey, 15 years I've done a lot of work and science where I thought it was practical and thought it had a lot of application, but I had never really done a very good job of crossing that threshold into application. And so that was going to be my new challenge in life, I had met my 12 year goal or whatever, and soil security was that next goal. And I just decided that perhaps academia was not the vessel that I needed to be navigating

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:16

Right. How would you then define a soil that is in good health? Is that from place to place? Is that from soil type to soil type? I mean, from a human, you know, well-being perspective, we talked about our, you know, human health, you know, divided up into our physical health, our social and emotional health, all those kinds of things. Even our financial health. And, you know, and so there's, we really need to look at I think we're kind of doing a better job now at looking at things holistically, is that how you approach soil health as well? And how would you characterize it soils that are in good health?

CRISTINE MORGAN 21:01

Honestly, when I started the Soil Health Institute, I heard this common criticism from soil scientists saying, well, we don't know what soil health is. And I thought, really, because you know, when you're healthy, like, why is this complicated? This is the way I think about it. A healthy soil has the highest capacity to function well, to do things that it needs to do, right. And in agriculture, it's growing biomass. But it's also providing those external ecosystem services to society, right? Cleaning our water, cycling nutrients, doing the things. I look at a soil and say, could this do a better job of what we're needing it to do for society? Every soil can be healthy, but there's kind of this world of soil science, they think about quality, and the soil quality world was about soils that can maximally produce something like agricultural clients. So now you're thinking of these Midwestern, gorgeous, deep loess, mollisols we call them, soils that are so productive, right. And that's a high quality soil versus a, you know, a soil in the tropics, or in the southeastern United States, maybe it's lower quality. I think the soil health kind of concept is a little bit different. We're like, well, that well, rich, mollisol can be healthy. And this clapped out weathered, southeastern soil can also be very healthy. They are going to have different production capacities, and you're going to treat them differently, but they can both be healthy. And so when we're thinking, when I think about measuring and assessing and monitoring soil health, it's a very place-based question. And that's soils, that's pedology, right? So we're all the way back to my soil judging world, where you're looking across the landscape and understanding where the soils vary, why they vary, and what their different capabilities are. So I think it's kind of nice, you know, it's all kind of circular. And it's the same in all of soil science. I think that's the beauty of soil science is that, you know, like earlier, I said, there's chemistry, physics and biology. But there's also place, and that makes it complicated, but also makes it like alive and a challenge.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:21

You've mentioned that there is this relationship between humans and the soil. What is then the impact on I guess, both for good and bad between soil with good health versus poor health? And yeah, how does that work with us?

CRISTINE MORGAN 23:32

Economically, if the soil is in poor health, we have to burn fossil fuels to create inputs to help that soil do what we need it to do. So that's more fertilizers, more weed control, more this, more that, more plowing, more that, you know. And so in my thinking, is when our soils are healthier, we don't have to put so much into them. And part of it is our time, you know, we interviewed over a hundred farmers in the Midwest. And we were looking at partial budget economics of these farmers that had successfully adopted soil health management practices. But the number one thing they kept saying at the beginning of the interviews is, since I've been practicing these practices, I have more time for birthday parties. I attend more graduations. I'm there with my children and my grandchildren. And I think that's soil health and human health right there, right that there's not a lot of people, not a lot of farmers in our population, but they're, you know, they're some of the highest suicide rates. But if we can, you know, if soil health makes them healthier and enjoying their life more, oh my gosh, that's a great soil health human health story. But so then also it's economics. We've shown that farmers that practice these soil health practices, on average are making about fifty dollars more an acre, and it's just less inputs and a lot of it's their time. So I think soil health equals human social health, human economic health, and of course, our biophysical health, because we are relying on the soils, to cleanse our environment, help us adapt to climate change, and ultimately grow our soil and give us water to drink. So it's pretty important. For my generation of soil science, soil scientists that come after me, and soil scientists before me, much of the study that we've done in our agricultural soils are on degraded soils. And so one of the things that we have to think about is the soils that we think are normal are degraded. And that normal is not healthy. And that is such a hard thing to think about, but when you see soils that are being managed well, after you've studied for so long soils that have been plowed and treated pretty roughly, it's even more inspiring, because they're resilient, and they're alive, and they can improve. And I never really thought about that. But you think about farmers too, farmers, for two generations, at least, have farmed degraded soils, and they think that's normal. So these rich mollisols that are feeding us are actually degraded, and they're still just performing wonderfully for us. Right? So it's this kind of this strange juxtaposition that we're in is that we don't even recognize how degraded our soils are, unless you're on marginal soils. And then then you recognize it. And I want to credit David Lamb who's a soil scientist and one of our soil health trainers at the Institute that pointed that out to me. And now it just sticks with me, every time I look at a soil it's like, is this normal? Should this be normal? Is this what it should be looking like?

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:55

What are some of the best ways or best practices methods that you've found to measure soil health? What are the criteria that you look for in a soil with good health?

CRISTINE MORGAN 27:04

Yeah, so that was one of the very first questions that the Soil Health Institute has tried to answer. So we embarked on this project that we affectionately call NAPESHM, which is a strange acronym, but it's the North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements, NAPESHM. And we looked at 124 long term research sites, so they had controls and treatments of soil management in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. And what we did is we went and sampled all of these soils in the spring before agricultural management started happening on them. And we measured over like 30 soil health and soil characteristics. And we looked at those measurements, we've recently published I think we have five papers that are being published right now in the peer reviewed literature that provides information on how we evaluated that. And then we have another paper that is actually in my email that I need to review and get out. And it's more of a synthesis paper, where we're going to recommend for measuring and monitoring soil health at scale. So I'm talking about across the 300 million acres of agricultural soil that we need to measure soil carbon concentration, aggregate stability, and this potential carbon mineralization, which is like a 24 hour incubation test where we look at respiration from the soil. And that those three things really cover indicators for water cycling, carbon cycling, and nutrient cycling. They don't cover everything. And certainly, if you were to study soils, you might want to measure more things. But just a very minimal set of things that you can measure and get the physical, chemical, and biological health indicators of the soil. But the important thing is that those are three simple. One you can measure with your smartphone. So that's kind of cool. And if I have my way two three, all three!, you'll be able to measure with your smartphone in the next five years. But I think the other important thing to remember about that is even though we have these three simple measurements, farmers, crop consultants, agronomists are still going to make these measurements and then ask, How do I know this soil is healthy? And that's kind of where we're embarking now. And it's a big initiative at the soil health institute and of mine, you know, we start talking about those 10 year goals, right. So my next 10 year goal is to develop for the United States and perhaps for the rest of the world is this concept of soil health targets where we group soils into where we think they have similar soil health potential, and then we measure them at different management states so that we have brackets of like how degraded the soil can look, how healthy it can look, so that a farmer could go and take their measurements and kind of track their soil health and know, you know, maybe like on another iPhone app, where you click, I've measured my soil. Now what here's the GPS, oh, this is how healthy your soil is today. And this is how healthy your soil could be. How cool would that be?

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:21

That would be super cool.

CRISTINE MORGAN 30:22

Maybe my 12 year goal is that all those measurements can be made with your phone. And then maybe we'll do a 15 year goal that you could evaluate those measurements with your phone.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:33

What other initiatives do you have going on besides this North American project?

CRISTINE MORGAN 30:37

Well, we have a really cool project right now. We're calling it the US regenerative cotton fund. It's founded by Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation. And they are working with they have made a $5 million dollar commitment over the next five years to get this fund started, where we're working with cotton farmers. And we're working with education on soil health, for their locally relevant soil health practices, doing the economics so they could see what the costs and benefits are of adoption. And then also the soil health targets concept for these cotton soils across the Cotton Belt of the United States. So that's a really exciting thing where we're at Soil Health Institute, we've done economics, we've done we're working on targets, we've done training, and now we're able to like pull it all together in this comprehensive package to hopefully move the needle. And we're working with other groups. I think, actually, I think we had a press release today, that VF Foundation has joined the fund. And we're hoping that others will be interested in joining the fund and moving the needle and working together. We feel like we're like that technical end to help, you know, in the cotton space, the retailers and brands to meet their goals and help farmers become I guess healthier, right? Help farming become healthier. And, of course, I'm a soil junkie. And at the end of the day, I tell everybody, like I can talk about farmers, I can talk about sustainability goals. I can talk about carbon, but really what I'm interested in is soil. And so I tell everybody, I have this, I have a conflict of interest that I'm really just interested in the soil at the end of the day. But I think that we can all come together and think about what we think is important. And honestly, that is why I'm a soil scientist, because I think that pretty much everybody whether they know it or not have a fundamental interest in healthier soils.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:48

So you talked about some of the organizations that you've been collaborating with. Are there others that the Soil Health Institute are working with on other projects?

CRISTINE MORGAN 32:55

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so with the cotton project, I mean, we work with Cotton Incorporated, which is kind of the the R&D arm of cotton commodity. We work with extension of the State Extension specialists, extension agents trying to get them information they need and resources they need to do their job, and also get information from them that we can help also understand and disseminate. But other larger partners, we work with Truterra, the conservation arm of Land of Lakes and Winfield United. And I think they touch roughly like half of the corn growing acres in the United States. It's a nice federation of crop consultants. And so we're really working with them with the targets concept trying to--I'm trying to--understand you know what the business case is for that ag consultant to understand soil health. But specifically we have a project right now with Truterra. Truterra has sold carbon credits to Microsoft. I think it's the only one in the United States that Microsoft has been engaged in. And so we're kind of that engine to help with the sampling strategy and the quantification of those carbon credits. So that's a partnership. It's a lot of fun. Again, I love that partnership. Because first of all, the people at Truterra are smart, and they're creative, and they're focused and they are farmer-centric. And you know, so I'm a soil scientist, our team are soil scientists. And there's this beautiful tension of wanting to do the good. We all want to do good science, but they've got to take it to scale. And that is such a challenge. And it's so invigorating. And I'd say my best ideas have come in the last two years working with Truterra and just going, how fast? what? No, we have to do it this way. Okay, maybe we could do it that way. You know, it's been very invigorating. So that's been a great partnership. Yeah, we work with McCain's potatoes. And so we've kind of moved off into Canada with Canadian and American cotton potato farmers. That's a challenge. I don't know much about potatoes, but I'm learning. Another really big project that we have is with DMI, which is Dairy Management Inc. Our project is funded by FFAR and also a bunch of dairy retailers. It's called the Dairy Soil and Water Regeneration Project. And so we're working on dairy farmers, and it's part of DMI's greater net zero initiative. And so we're working with dairy farmers at the farm gate, at the farm field, trying to figure out what are the management practices that we can use both in dealing with the manure, and then dealing with the soil health to optimize water quality. And of course, with the net zero initiative, soil health and soil carbon sequestration. So that's also a huge learning curve, like taking soil science out to the dairy and working with ARS and with agricultural land grants with this project, so it is continental. It is so challenging to do things at the continental scale and at this business scale. But I think that's where science is, I think that's where ag science is right now. We need to be challenged. We need to get out there. Translate what we know.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:27

I think along with that so you talked about your transition from from academia into the private sector, what are what are some of the things that academia does well when it comes to soil science, and what some of the things that maybe the private sector might be more beneficial for?

CRISTINE MORGAN 36:40

Well, academia is very set up for the fundamental, you know, knowledge search, right? The fundamental research. The other thing of academia is, so we're training the future. I missed that. I missed that so much, I miss interacting with the 18 to 25 year old group, because they're so elastic, and they're so creative, and they're so confounding somedays. But I do so I think academic institutions, I mean, they're doing, they're training our future. They're doing the fundamental research. And it's just a breeding ground for some really intelligent people getting really well trained. So I think that that's what academia does very, very well. I think my interest, as I've stated before, at the Soil Health Institute, is the translation. I just saw so much happening around soil science and soil management, and there were no soil scientists present. And I've just thought, I need to be there. I want to be there, someone's got to be there. Okay, it's me, let's go. And so I think that's where I felt very hindered being an academic, that I couldn't be there that the reward system, I was not going to be rewarded for being at the table, trying to inform decision making, that you know, the reward in academia is the publication and the grant, and the training the students and you know, that component, but I was really finding myself wanting to agree, yeah, I'll be at that roundtable and I'll be the sole scientist there. I'll try to get our our knowledge translated and out there. And so, you know, I just thought, Okay, I think in the nonprofit world, and in the business world, you know, of course, in the business world, it's all about scaling the knowledge, right, and making it applicable. And I think in the nonprofit world, it's about being at the table, and trying to help folks. You know, we publish papers, actually, it is our goal, to continue to publish in the peer reviewed literature, so that we have that credibility that our decisions are supported by science. But certainly, our number one goal is impact. And that's been interesting, it's like, how do you quantify impact, right? And that's a different game than it was in academia as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:03

Right. Oftentimes, there's this disconnect between scientists in general and the public at large. What are some ways that soil scientists might be able to be more productive in translating their work and sharing that with the public, helping promote, you know, adoption of best practices, especially when it comes to soil health?

CRISTINE MORGAN 39:23

One of the things that I have done that's been successful is just sharing my enthusiasm, you know, that gets people asking questions and interested because they're like, why are you so interested in dirt? But on a more complicated in a more thoughtful level, what I have learned to do is dig deep. I'm an empathetic person, which I think helps in my communication. But I've also learned from my work with the sociologist and with my graduate student, Diane Abagnale, who did a lot of sociology of science translation. You've got to think about, who are you talking to? And what's important for them. What do they want to know? When I'm talking to a farmer, I don't necessarily talk about like all the geeky soil stuff, well, sometimes I do. But ultimately what I want to say to that farmer is like you change your practices, your soil will be able to capture two more inches of water for your crop, right? The farmer knows what to do with that information. And so but it's not intuitive to us in soils, we have our jargon, right? I want to talk about saturated hydraulic conductivity. But the farmer wants to know how many more inches of water am I going to capture? In soil science, sometimes we talk about soil health, just to give an example, we want to talk about how much more yield you'll get. But there are so many factors that go into yield. That's not where we want to communicate. That's not where we should be communicating. I cannot guarantee a farmer more yield. But I can guarantee a farmer two more inches of water. And I'm gonna let the farmer do what the farmer needs to do with that information. And so I think that's the same when we're talking to nonprofits. How do we quantify environmental equity, with improvement in soil health, right? They want to know, how am I improving environmental equity for this group of people that I'm concerned about? How am I going to improve the water quality of the water that goes into the Mississippi River? And so when you're a soil scientist, or whatever science, you got to get out of your jargon, you got to get out of your head, and you go, Okay, today, I'm talking to Walmart Foundation. What does Walmart Foundation care about clean water? How can I articulate... My goal, as I've always said, is I love soil, and I'm a geek. But I can't go in and talk to Walmart Foundation about how I love soil--I've got to go and talk to Walmart Foundation about how better soil management improves water quality. Maybe when you're talking to a senator, you need to talk about how better soil health gets him more votes, because ultimately, these days, that seems to be what they're interested in, right? You just have to dig a little bit deeper, be a little bit empathetic and just think, almost transactional, what does this person need to know what nugget of information are they going to take home that they can make an actual decision on? And so I hope that even though they're saying, Christine, you're very enthusiastic. I hope that really they're saying is like, two inches of water. I'm gonna go think about that one.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:33

There's a lot of politicization of science in general, how can we avoid, you know, politicizing soil science or even de-politicizing it if it gets to that point?

CRISTINE MORGAN 42:46

Well, first thing I'm going to say, is if a politician, I have learned, decides to politicize something, they're going to be pretty effective at it. But what you can do is, again, think about who you're talking to, and how they'd benefit. It's something that we all have to rely on. Right. And usually governments deal with those kinds of things. They use in the use and care of natural resources is generally a government conversation. But on the other side of the politics of the government, why is it a government conversation? It's the tragedy of the commons, right? We all live and die by soil, literally. I think we just have to remind people that it's about your quality of life, it's about the food that you eat, it's about the safety and welfare of your children, you know, start there. And the amazing thing is, I can find the most politicized subject matter and talk to somebody who's on the other side of me, and I guarantee you will agree on 95% of that subject matter. It's the 5% that's polarizing, right? And so you just got to dig into that 95% and agree that there's a common goal, and then decide how you could work together towards that common goal. I mean, all politics, all statesmanship works that way, and I think as a scientist, you know, I would love to just say, Oh, I just stick to the facts. But you know, that's such a lazy approach. And it doesn't work. We know, the facts don't always save us.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:20

You had talked earlier about first getting into soil science, and really seeing it as being a male-dominated specialty and field. That's, it seems to be progressing a bit more away from that, what more can we do to help create need for more women in science, or for other groups who are less represented?

CRISTINE MORGAN 44:41

Mentorship and role modeling. You know, it's the same with farmers, getting farmers to adopt, ultimately, it's a social question, right? And, you know, just like, when I talk to a farmer, when I want to incite a farmer to think about changing their practices to improve soil health, my best bet is finding a farmer that has done it and have that farmer do the talking for me. And I think it's the same way with, you know, inclusion and getting underrepresented peoples into a science is that you have to have them represented. And you have to have those folks in leadership. So they have to see a path. And then of course, it's not easy. I was just in a situation where I was on a judging panel, was the only female. And we were judging a bunch of startups. One of those, these were great startups, one of them had a multi, more than one gender, on their leadership and governance. And I just thought, oh my gosh, we still have a long way to go. But, you know, as someone who was aware of that, and you know, I've talked about it, and I've brought it up. And I think that those are the thing, we just have to have those conversations. And I think we just have to role model. For instance, one of the things we've done the Soil Health Institute, I told you how I missed the 18 to 25 crowd. So we've started a summer intern program, and we recruit only from 1890 land grant institutions. And, you know, we're learning, we're not perfect, but we're learning how to do it. And two of our interns from last year, we've hired. Right, because that's how you do it, you find them, you have to look. And my point before was with the one of the startup companies that had integrated, I was speaking to one of the people there and I said, I noticed this about your leadership. And the gentleman said, Thank you for recognizing that. We have worked hard, we have been purposeful in doing this. And I think that's the thing, when you're in an area where there's a group of people that are underrepresented, you've had the leadership has to make a decision, and you have to be purposeful. It doesn't happen by default. It just doesn't. Because we're humans. It just doesn't. So anyway, I thought, and I think it's changing. When I was at Texas A&M, when I started, I was the only female tenure track faculty. There's many now. And when I actually left Texas A&M, I was the balancer. But before I left, there were more women tenure track faculty in soil science than there were men. When I left, then it was fifty-fifty again, but you know, and that happened in 15 years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 47:34

Right.

CRISTINE MORGAN 47:35

But it was purposeful.

BRAD NEWBOLD 47:36

Right. Yeah. I think that's that's part of it. It does need to be purposeful, or else, you know, just the momentum, the inertia of, you know, previous years is just going to kind of keep that ball rolling.

CRISTINE MORGAN 47:48

You know, it's a silly story. But I remember when I was faculty, I was probably, I don't know, 10 years in, and I was walking, it was late at night, and I was walking down the hallway. And there was a female graduate student, and she said, Hey, Dr. Morgan, I've always wanted to tell you something and since no one's around to tell you this. I said, Hey, what's that? She goes, I think it is so wonderful to see a female scientist that likes to wear pretty shoes. And I said, Well, I do like to wear pretty shoes. She goes, that just gives me joy, because I don't feel so self conscious when I want to wear pretty shoes. And I thought, oh my gosh, I never even thought about that. But there you go, right. Like there was a precedent. And she could see herself there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:32

Right. Yeah.

CRISTINE MORGAN 48:34

And so just because she liked pretty shoes, she could still be a scientist. How cool was that? You know, and of course, there's a million perturbations of that story. And that's what we need more.

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:44

I mean, you don't have to dress like you're going to the field every day to be a soil scientist. Right?

CRISTINE MORGAN 48:48

Right. I think that was her point. She's like, I like shoes. And I didn't know if that was socially acceptable. Thank you for making that socially acceptable.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:00

So what then does the future of soil health look like?

CRISTINE MORGAN 49:05

The next generation of soil scientists studies soils that are not degraded, that when a soil scientist walks across an agricultural field, and they see a degraded soil, that that's not normal. I think that would be cool. The other big component about soil health that I would like to see in the future is that anybody that eats food, knows what soil is, and recognizes that their food comes from soil. And I think that gets back to that soil security concept of connectivity, and that we just do a better job of relating to people, the importance of soil in their life. We know more about space than we know about soil science. In my career. I have known two astrophysicists that have become soil scientists and they said that soil science is way harder,

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:56

Really?

CRISTINE MORGAN 49:56

You can't peer into the soil and a lot of my work has been about developing sensors and tools and concepts and models to peer into the soil without digging it up.

BRAD NEWBOLD 50:08

Right. You talked about that connection between regular individuals and the food that they eat, that it goes back to the soil, right? What else can we do, maybe at community level or even, you know, up to a global scale, to promote soil health, from our own sphere of influences?

CRISTINE MORGAN 50:24

I think the best way that we can influence--anybody can influence improvement of how we treat our soils is (a) minimize your consumption. Because soil is a natural resource, and we are depending on all of our natural resources. And you know, the consumer society is something that worries me a little bit. And then the other thing is, you know, share your insights. When you know, you think about soil and food and where your food comes from, and where your clean water comes from. Yeah, that's a hard one. You know, being an educator, I always go back to education and you know, K through 12 education. And when I was at Texas A&M, you know, all pre COVID, I went into my kids' school, I always volunteered every year science teacher, I could come in and talk about soil, and about half of them would take me up on it. And I even started a soil judging team with my daughter's second grade class. I was so cool. Those kids know how to get dirty. Yeah. Yes. Until you've seen six ponytail girls in rubber boots out in the field with clipboards, hand texturing soil, you haven't lived. Yeah, I think sharing education. And you know, you can always donate to the Soil Health Institute as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 51:55

Alright. Thank you so much, Cristine, for taking time to share your passion and your projects with us. And if you in the audience have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter at METER_ENV. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on "We Measure the World."

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Kevin Hyde, PhD, is the manager for the Montana Mesonet at the Montana Climate Office.

Links to learn more about Kevin Hyde and the Montana Mesonet project:

Kevin's LinkedIn

Montana Mesonet website

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The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Mason Stahl is the James M. Kenney Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Geosciences and Environmental Science, Policy and Engineering program. His research spans the fields of hydrogeology, geochemistry and water resources. I study how perturbations to the environment influence elemental cycling and the quality of our water resources. A main focus of my research has been on improving our understanding of the hydrologic and biogeochemical factors that result in the mobilization of naturally occurring arsenic from sediments into groundwater, which is a problem that threatens the health of millions of people around the world. One of the primary goals of my research is to help answer questions about how groundwater and surface water quality will change in response to natural and anthropogenic changes to the environment and what this means for the health of people and the environment.

Neil Hansen, PhD, is an environmental science professor at Brigham Young University.

Links to learn more about Dr. Neil Hansen:

Neil's curriculum vitae and publications

Neil's LinkedIn

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The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:01

Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

NEIL HANSEN 0:09

One funny story I'll tell you, I mean, Ryan Christiansen our hardcore operators awesome. He loves the science as much as we do. And he likes it well enough that when we come up to work, he'll let us borrow some golf carts from his golf course to go out into the field to collect our soil samples. One day, we were out there with a team of students. We collected 100 soil samples, measured soil water content down to four feet. And on the same day, one of my other students flew a drone that he got a great imagery, and it's a bear field that hadn't been planted yet. It wasn't till we got home and started looking at the drone imagery. We saw all these circular crazy golf course golf cart paths that these students had just been having a blast on. Running these golf carts all over this 50 acre field. I was not paying attention, I guess I probably wouldn't call them out on it. But the aerial imagery revealed their, you know, having a little fun out there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:06

That's just a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. To stay current on applied Environmental Research measurement methods and thanks for joining us. Today's guest is Dr. Neil Hansen, Professor of Environmental Science at Brigham Young University. His research and teaching focus on water use and conservation in agricultural and natural systems. And his work includes areas such as dryland and limited irrigation agro ecosystems, and land management for water quality protection. He has published his work in several peer reviewed journals, including the Journal of Environmental Quality, and Soil Science Society of America Journal. Today, he's here to talk to us about some of his many interesting research projects. So welcome, Neil.

NEIL HANSEN 2:00

Hey, thanks for including me, this will be fun.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:03

Just to let us get to know you a little bit, how did you decide to become an environmental scientists? So yeah, what peaked your interest in that subject?

NEIL HANSEN 2:12

Yeah, great question. And, you know, it's interesting to look backwards in your life and look at those kinds of pivotal moments that you didn't recognize at the time would be really influential in decisions you make. As a young man, my grandfather was a cattle rancher in arid part of the state of Utah here in the United States. And my job as a young man was to walk along the perimeter fence of this mountain range lands as pasture and repair the fence. And as a young man, it was just overwhelmingly incredible to see how a natural environment on one side of that fence differed in the way it looked from the more managed environment on the inside of that fence. Now, this was a mountain pasture, but I know now that he was doing things like herbicide applications from an airplane, aerial seeding. And the changes in that ecosystem was so dramatic, right to the fence line. It really just peaked an interest in me and How do humans manage the natural resources that we have? And how does that management, you know, alter the way nature works, and that kind of was a pivotal moment for me that I pursued throughout my education. My education took a twist towards agricultural scientists. I had several influential scientists that I knew in agriculture, studied soil science. And then, at one point in my career in my graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, that theme of kind of managed and natural ecosystems came back to play for me, we started looking at tillage practices, movement of nutrients in the landscape. Minnesota is known as the land of 10,000 Lakes, which is an under estimate. It's a glacial landscape with, you know, lots of natural lakes, they play an important part of the economy for recreation and fishing. They're all bounded by agricultural lands. And those two economic interests were really struggling to coexist. The agricultural impacts were negatively affecting the water quality and the fisheries and environment was kind of at odds with agriculture. And I had the chance for almost a decade to work in the middle there. How do we, how do we coexist? How do we manage our landscapes in a way that can can benefit both of those groups? And so it's kind of a long story, but just some really interesting opportunities in my life that led me towards that interest of environmental science and managed and natural ecosystems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:08

I think that's, that's a theme that we've seen so far, even just in the several episodes that we've recorded, trying to find that balance between those that might have different opinions on land management, like what to do with, with the land, what to do with these lakes, what to do with this ecosystem.

NEIL HANSEN 5:26

Yeah, that goes back into the basic philosophies of a conservation ethic versus a preservation ethic. And the idea of conservation ethic is that you're trying to utilize landscapes and resources to meet needs and economic growth, and conserve those resources versus a preservation ethic that's more of a hands off, you know, let nature be what it is on its own. And yeah, those have constantly been the source of a lot of dialogue.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:00

Yeah. So I'm sure we'll get into more of that as we go along and talking about your various research projects here. Let's start off with your project that you did with farm water use in eastern Colorado. Yeah, can you just start off introduce us to that project? And what was the problem, I guess, that you were trying to solve there?

NEIL HANSEN 6:22

Really interesting and ongoing challenge. And yeah, this was focused in Colorado, but it's really a global issue. And that is the competition for a limited water supply, and a lot of places in the world and Colorado at the time, urban growth was demanding more water for for municipal use. And for homeowners, and the development of new water supplies, it's really not a possibility anymore, all the available water is claimed and utilized. And so to make water available for those urban areas, they looked at the older water, right holders, typically agricultural irrigators. They're in Colorado, the irrigation is out on the eastern plains of the state, whereas the population centers at the what they call the Front Range, they're at the base of the Rocky Mountains. So there was what they refer to as buy and dry, people would buy agricultural land with the intent of taking the water rights associated with that land, repurposing it to urban use, and then leave that agricultural land dry. So that buy and dry became quite a contentious issue in the state. And it still is, in a lot of ways. For the rural areas that depend on agriculture for their economy, that buy and dry was really devastating to the rural economy. So, that's what led to this really interesting project that I had a chance to be a part of one of the municipal areas that needed water was an area called Parker Water, it's a suburb of Denver. Parker, really was interested in trying to get the water in a way that was more sustainable in a way more supportive of those rural areas. They did purchase quite a bit of land on the eastern plains. But then they went to the landowners, the former landowners, they leased some of the land back. And they came to me. I was working at the University at the time and several others on our team and said, can we work together to find a model where we can take some of the water but keep these farmers viable? Keep their profit, you know, coming and keep the the economy going? Where so can we find a model that meets everybody's needs? I had been working mostly at that time, in support of dryland farmers without irrigation, and you'd often hear a dryland farmer say, if I only had one rainfall in the second week of August, I could have made it. And that really weighed on my mind and like if these irrigation systems that they want to take some water away, move it to the city, can you keep enough water behind to give it those critical irrigations during key growth stages of the crop and make that an economically viable system? So that's what we set out to do. We worked with a large group of local farmers. We asked them, hey, if you wanted to cut your water use in half or in some cases, we had a quota. We said, you know, no more than 10 inches of applied irrigation. It's a little less than half of what you're used to doing. What would you do? And we got a list of 30 different ideas or more, and then we put them out in a research trial. This was a multi year trial. It included crop rotations, irrigation practices, within without fallowing of landscapes. And it was fun. We worked with growers, we worked with the cities, we have some of the funnest things. We're walking through those research plots with municipal water suppliers, water attorneys, farmers, and just having a conversation about the challenges that we're facing about meeting changing water demands in the world. So yeah, really cool project. And kind of one of the key outcomes was that there were opportunities. There were, among those 30, there were eight or ten really good options that involves maybe different crops, different irrigation strategies, different rotations, that were economically viable, and significantly reduce the water use.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:49

When we're talking about dryland farming, there's a lot of tradition that goes into what they do is multiple lifetimes in generations of experience. Were there things that you learned, I guess, from both sides? What did they learn from you? And what did you learn from them?

NEIL HANSEN 11:05

One grower that we were working with was a producer of confections, sunflower seeds. These are sunflower seeds that you buy, and they're salty, and you chew on them, they're delicious. That producer was pretty influential in helping us develop one of our strategies that we tested, and showed us that sunflower was really flexible in how it would respond to irrigation. We put his test recommendations to the trial. And the basic idea was, let that sunflower kind of experience some water stress early in its growth, but when it's starting to develop the flower, give it plenty of water. And this was almost laughable that we would get these three foot tall sunflower plants with a great big sunflower head on it full of seeds. The ones that we had been irrigating in a more, I guess, traditional way, or what we thought you would do, you know, irrigating throughout the growth cycle, they were tall, and they had little tiny heads on them. And so it really showed that, you know, if you if you know, the biology of the plant you're working with and the crop and its sensitivity to water, you can get more crop per drop, right. That was kind of our theme is more crop per drop. And that was a really telling story for us. Now, a lot of growers out there weren't growing sunflower, but that principle still held. Now, on the flip side, I want to say that the one of the most interesting challenges that we faced was not an irrigation challenge or a plant biology challenge. But it was policy, the state of Colorado that's tasked with overseeing these water transfers, if you move water from ag to urban, the basic policy was that they wanted to be able to drive by in a pickup and see that that sprinkler was parked and turned off and the padlock on the pump. And these a lot of these systems that we were proposing didn't have that criteria. They were they were irrigating a couple of times during the year or they had an irrigated crop in a rotation with a dryland crop. And so this really kind of pushed the policy side to say, hey, how do we how do we make sure that it's working because you can't transfer the water and use it? Or it's not gonna work. And so that was one of the challenges that we had to work with is how can you monitor and document and show that the water consumption is what you said it would be?

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:50

In several locales, especially within the western United States where you've talked about water rights, and that it's kind of a use it or lose it type of situation, from year to year. Is that the same kind of situation that you're dealing with there in eastern Colorado?

NEIL HANSEN 14:03

Yeah, absolutely. What they refer to as the prior appropriations doctrine. Water Rights are dependent on a beneficial use, that that water has been put to and the history of how it's been used. And so yeah, that mentality of use it or lose, it is prevalent, and it's a challenge. But state governments, Colorado is a great example of looking at alternative approaches to water banking, or, you know, making it possible for farmers to conserve water and benefit from it. And the idea of having a farmer and irrigator in kind of a relationship with a municipal water user is really cool because the municipal water user has the potential to pay up front for the water, potentially giving the farmer some of those operation costs that a farmer often needs you know, you got to buy your for fertilizer and your seed. And before you get the money for that investment, if you can get that check and avoid having to take a big loan from the bank, because of the water arrangement with the municipality, that really adds some stability to the production system that's really powerful. So, again, I think our project was instrumental in getting the irrigators and the policymakers and the water attorneys all talking to each other. And they came up with approaches that could work.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:32

A lot of times science and research, they can divide individuals or groups. So I think this is a good example of about how your research and science in general, especially in this case, with environmental science, can actually bring groups together and begin a fruitful discussion to move forward.

NEIL HANSEN 15:50

We definitely saw that and these were groups that did have a lot of tension in them. Those first couple of meetings, the people from the urban areas were out on the farm. And before you knew it, the farmers were feeling like that they were being targeted. And so they start shooting that No, you guys use it wastewater on golf courses, and the farmers would shoot back and forth with them. But inevitably, after spending a couple of hours together, the conversations turned to much more productive, helpful understanding each other kind of, and yeah, the science was sitting in the middle of that. And the science hopefully provides some solid answers. But I think it also provided a framework for those discussions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:38

That's great. Were there any other interesting results that came out from that project?

NEIL HANSEN 16:45

Well, there's one it's the water management is super complicated. If you, if you see, like, take a ditch company, you know, a big group of farmers, if they were to adopt some of these water conserving irrigation practices that we developed, they're changing the timing of water diversions out of the rivers and canals and into the farm. The quantities, the timing, the amounts, the big challenge that was something a lot of people don't think about is how that would affect the return flow back to the river system. A lot of those irrigation systems are inefficient. If they're doing flood irrigation, for example, some of that water makes its way back through the aquifer and into the river system. Somebody downstream has a water right to that return flow. And so when you start altering the irrigation practices on pretty large areas, you have to, you're required by law and these systems to mimic the historical return flow patterns. So not only did these farmers that were entering into these water trading agreements have to track the application of water. They had to document how the return flow was being impacted. And some really interesting things were developed, including some what they call returns, blanking on the name of it right now. But these were storage ponds, essentially, you take some of that water that you're no longer putting through your sprinkler and stick it into a retention pond, and let that slowly infiltrate to the groundwater to mimic the historic return flows that the water rights system depends on.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:32

Interesting. I assume that there's probably lots of other ways around that. But that's really interesting

NEIL HANSEN 18:40

Other constructed wetland type area,

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:42

right? Yeah.

NEIL HANSEN 18:43

And what was cool is they had other benefits, right? I mean, they were benefiting wildlife habitat. So in this case, you were trying to solve one challenge. And you end up having solutions to other problems, habitat, riparian area kind of thing. So

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:00

right, and especially throughout the world, we're trying to get groups involved in green architecture and city planning. So being able to mimic a wetland in this way benefits not only just right there in that area, but elsewhere. Would they bring in different materials? Was it for materials? Or would they take the actual natural soils and layer them as they would in the normal environment?

NEIL HANSEN 19:22

Yeah, some of both. I mean, some of these wetlands had historically been in place, and really the way that water had been diverted and moved away from them had left them dry for many years. So in a lot of ways you could use former wetlands and kind of recreate them without a lot of manipulation. But there were examples to where more earth moving was happening and creating those really, really pretty neat systems, but they do illustrate the complexity of these water systems that water is managed and moved and quantified and manipulated in these river systems in a really big way.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:03

All right, so let's move on to another project of yours, the BYU turf farm. Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about that project, how it started, how it came to be and everything?

NEIL HANSEN 20:15

When I came to BYU, I really didn't have any experience with turf grass. My colleague, Dr. Brian Hopkins is kind of the one that leaves out on the scientists, but on these projects on turf, but my expertise and interest in irrigation improvements, smart irrigation systems, using sensors to improve irrigation, mostly I'd done that in an agricultural setting just seemed like a good collaboration to jump in. And Brian and I, we teamed up with Colin Campbell at METER. We started kind of simple, actually, we had some existing turf plots that we instrumented with volumetric water content sensors and water potential sensors. And for quite a little while, we just tracked what was happening with the way they were being irrigated. It didn't take us very long to figure out that the irrigation was excessive. We worked with our local grounds managers here and kind of work towards creating a system that looked at the sensors, used sensor information. And at the same time, the health of the turf improved. And it again, it just triggered us that, hey, there's things that we could need to be doing here, because we live in the middle of a pretty big urban area with a lot of irrigated turf grass. So that first little venture into this cooperative project that developed led us to control of irrigation on replicated small plots of turf grass that we can manipulate and manage in different ways, all with the goal of trying to figure out what can we do, from a management standpoint, to maintain the turf with, you know, the least consumption of water possible, fertilizer, and water? It turns out to be a really interesting story. When you have the right amount of nitrogen, things work pretty well. But what often happens in a, especially in a homeowner setting is if a little is good, a lot's a lot better, right. And so we see a lot of grass, it gets quite an excess of nitrogen fertilizer. And for the homeowner, maybe the outcome of hey, my grass is greener than yours, and it greened up earlier in the spring. And it's, you know, that can maybe reword that, that nitrogen fertilizer, but what we've learned is when you put a lot of nitrogen on, you get a lot of above ground growth, it drives water use up, and then what you don't see is below ground, it's reducing the depth of root growth. And when that happens, you created a scenario where it's hard to keep up with the irrigation in a hot dry summer in an arid place. And so you start putting more and more water on, you're only really feeding a shallow four or five inch root zone. And the other thing that happens when you do that is you're pushing the nitrogen fertilizer out of the root zone, which means you need more. So you get into this negative spiral in those two management, input management where you're driving water use up, you're making it harder to irrigate. So we set out to, it's not a super complicated study, but to try to come up with more of an optimized combination of irrigation quantity, nitrogen fertilizer rates and timings, to, you know, keep turf grasses a viable landscape option in an arid place, but minimize the water consumption.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:50

You'd mentioned earlier that you're looking at water content, water potential. Were there other measurements or what else were you looking at there in that study?

NEIL HANSEN 24:02

Yeah, that's been fun. In addition to those sensors in the ground, we have been exploring the use of remote sensing to trigger you know, to tell us when do we need a water and those kinds of things. The two main ones that we've evolved to use quite a bit is the canopy temperature. So we use an infrared thermometer targeted at the surface of the grass. It's a fairly well known phenomenon when if a plant starts to experience drought stress that closes the stomates on the leaf, it stops transpiring water and the temperature will respond, that surface temperature goes up because it's lost the cooling effect. And so if you can detect that, essentially, you're letting the grass say, Hey, I'm thirsty. Put some water on, and that's been pretty effective. And then the other sensor, the end DVI, that's a light reflectance sensor that essentially looking at turf health and color. That is not very valuable actually on irrigation management. But it does help you understand and manage the nitrogen fertilizer inputs better. So the combination of those two remote sensors is pretty powerful. And we've been using those together with the soil sensors to understand the system, but potentially in a, in a managed system where it's not a science project, you know, you may be able to do some things with one or the other. You don't need to have the whole suite,

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:32

you talked about that whole suite, and being able to optimize yea your fertilizer, your water. Is there an optimization then of the number of measurements or types of measurements that that you want it to take there as well?

NEIL HANSEN 25:50

Well, the types of measurements is a fairly easy question for me. I have really learned to love using a pair of sensors, one looking at water content, and one looking at water potential, side by side, same depth. At least initially, for a new new sight. When I look at those together, I am able to understand the water retention properties of the soil along with how the plant is responding to it. So you know, those are those are two sensors I'd like to use together. But you also asked me about you know how many sensors and that's actually one of the biggest challenges that we're still trying to figure out how to solve. These urban landscapes have a lot of inherent spatial variation, and sensors. One of the weaknesses of a sensor right is that it's measuring a spot or a point. So a water content sensor can tell you what's happening in that spot that you have to be able to use some kind of other information to extrapolate about how that point relates to all the points in a field. We've taken our project that we started in kind of these replicated plots, and we are now partnering with the sports turf managers on our university campus. And this has been really fun and really eye opening. And we've got sensors on our University football field, which is a pretty, you know, high visibility location for us. It's been a lot of fun. But in that environment, the manager just says, Hey, I can't have dry spots, you know this, this has to be pristine when 60,000 people come to watch a sporting event. So we're working with him to try and figure out how do we take what we're learning from these sensors, and translate it to an entire management for his field? And, that's probably the biggest challenge that we're still trying to figure out. And there, maybe you do have to couple it with some remote sensing devices. But I think that you never get rid of the need for you know, John, he's the sports turf manager, we need his experience and expertise. And I think the human experience together with the sensors can lead to some smarter irrigation decisions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:11

I think that segues into my next question is, could you speak to a little bit about, you know, smart irrigation? And how far that's come?

Speaker 2 28:17

Well, yeah, the urban setting, there are amazing products available. The irrigation controllers that are there's a kind of a different set of technology. Some of them use internet connections, getting information from local weather stations doing ET calculations, and recommending, you know, rates that adjust throughout the year. Others are capable of interfacing with sensors. So the idea of a smart controller is pretty powerful. I think that we're pretty low on adoption of those technologies. So I'd say in that timeframe that you mentioned, and we've come a long ways on the science. Even the science of nozzle technology had sprinkler heads, being able to design a landscape that has water conservation in mind. There's a lot of really great principles that have been developed. Still a lot of need, though for adoption. And again, when you get back to that kind of policy interface, how do you, how do you take these technologies and incentivize and educate people to put them to work? Now on the agricultural side, just really exciting things. There's a development in again, nozzle tech, the engineering side of things, what do the nozzles look like? Pressure regulators huge, huge development and drip irrigation. And, there where you have an economic benefit to these adoption that the adoption is better. And clearly, we've seen a massive conversion of traditional flood or surface irrigation systems to sprinkler and drip irrigation. And technology, there's still a lot of space to go for better improvement. Now, in both the urban and the agricultural settings, one of the greatest things that's happening is just the use and application of remote sensing, being able to look at landscapes, look at agricultural fields and see when something's gone wrong. Center pivot sprinklers are really fun to look at from, you know, if you're looking from a satellite image or drone image, if there's something wrong with a nozzle, or a sensor, or whatever, you tend to get these donuts around the field. Because those problems are traveling in a circle, right? And so just being able to monitor things and see things on a regular and routine basis, is a really great technology that's improving water use efficiency.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:05

So what are the next steps then for the BYU turf farm and for that project?

NEIL HANSEN 31:12

Yeah, like I mentioned, I think our biggest challenges at this point are for us, as scientists to learn how to work with the sports turf managers in a way that results in improvement and change that works for them. And that delivers a product that they're happy with. I'm very happy with the information we're getting from the sensors. And we are in the process, we sit down with them when they have time and show them what we see when we look at the sensor data, and then we listen to them. What do they see, that works or isn't working. And so I think similar to what I described in eastern Colorado with the water exchange, I think there's just a little period of time here where we're trying to understand the user's needs and the science and bring those together to create solutions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:06

Your talk of being slow to adopt some of these solutions, do you think some of that is that these new technologies and innovations are more cost prohibitive? The idea of smart homes was really big a few years back, it has seemed to have waned a little bit. But having you know, this, everything, the Internet of things and having your whole home connected. And it really only seemed that there were a few early adopters, and it kind of, kind of slowed a little bit. Do you see the same thing happening with the smart technology and smart ag and smart irrigation?

NEIL HANSEN 32:39

I sure do. Obviously, the rate of adoption is ultimately driven by the bottom line. And as you brought up, and if the cost of adopting technology is higher than the potential savings, adoption is going to be slow. But you got a couple of trends really driving right now. Water scarcity is pushing the cost of water up. Always, water costs are coupled with energy costs if you're pumping water. So when energy prices go up, there's a reason to save water too there. So you have costs driving higher. And you have, I think, improvements and the pricing of technology. So, to me, I think we're really going to continue to see adoption in, I don't know the pace of it, but I think it's going to, it's going to show its value, and continue to make a lot of sense for people too. I like what you said the internet of things, I think that that's a part of the way we manage water in the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:47

Elsewhere in Utah to your other ag related projects, they're in that state. You know, as you've been trying to bridge the gap between you know, one size fits all irrigation method for field, how's that going from moving from that towards a more variable rate irrigation system where the growers also are empowered and understand what's going on and can apply the water themselves and what rates and what amounts and those kinds of things?

NEIL HANSEN 34:18

Yeah, so in an agricultural setting, this concept that you're alluding to is referred to as VRI, variable rate irrigation. VRI is a concept that a single field can be irrigated, according to the site specific needs within the field. Now, a center pivot sprinkler is a beautiful piece of engineering technology to be able to apply a uniform rate of water. If you think about that big circle that's going around the inner rings of that or just go on a short distance and this one's out at the end are covering this huge distance. And yet the way the nozzles and the pressure regulators are combined, you're getting a uniform application of water. That's the way they've been designed. That's a beautiful thing. But we've gotten to the point now where we realize the field is not uniform You've got variation in slope and topography and soil type and just the way the crop is growing in a given year. It's really pushing it to the next level to say, Okay, let's don't go to uniform application, let's go to site specific or VRI, variable rate irrigation. And that's a project I've been involved in, that the companies that make the pivots have been developing this and have done some really amazing technology. We got started in this project with a farm cooperator. His name is Ryan Christiansen, and he farms near Grace, Idaho, actually, so we're here in Utah, but we traveled to Idaho to do this work, because it's so interesting for us. Ryan and his family actually bought one of these state of the art variable rate irrigation systems (VRI). I think they own one of the only center pivot irrigated golf courses on planet Earth. They irrigate a golf course. And they wanted to be able to irrigate the greens and the fairways and the out of bounds areas differently. So they bought the system, but they irrigate that whole golf course, and just half of the circle. Ryan's a friend of ours, and he said, Hey, what should I do on the on the farm side of that circle? And we started working with Ryan, we've continued to work with him for almost seven years now. Trying to figure out how to best utilize that technology. And it's been a really good and fun and eye opening project. One thing I can say is, there is no doubt that the crops he grows, winter wheat and potato. Both of those crops have variable needs that are significant within that same field. And it's not a highly variable looking field, you'd look at it and not say, Oh, wow, it looks relatively uniform to the eye. But it's not, there are variable water demands. And we're learning how to identify those, and how to control the sprinkler. And he talks about technology and the Internet of Things. Ryan controls that sprinkler from his cell phone. He has a GPS map, he's delineated that field into multiple zones that can be irrigated variable rates. And it's been exciting, the science together with a cooperator and the technology and the sensors, we use sensors in those zones. We've been able to, you know, people hear these numbers and don't say it doesn't seem like much, but we cut his irrigation from an average of something like 12 inches to a little more than 10 inches. So you know, at 1.8 inches of irrigation reduction, doesn't sound like much until you translate that into the gallons, that 1.8 inches is two and a half million gallons of water. And that's real. And Ryan loves it. He's since invested in another system on another one of his pivots. And he has plans to do more

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:29

What are the factors that go into the decision making process when it comes to variable rate irrigation? You know, you mentioned soil type, you know, the type of crop that they're dealing with, I assume are water content, water potential, those kinds of things.

NEIL HANSEN 38:43

Yeah, exactly. That is, again, I'm not smart enough to be an engineer to figure out how to create the VRI system. But from a soil science perspective, what you're asking is exactly what interests me is, how do you tell it what to do? And there are a variety of philosophies or some colleagues of mine around the world working on similar, you know, questions. So mine's not the only answer. But we've decided that we want to use relatively permanent zones. Subdivide that field into relatively permanent zones, and then use sensors in those zones to tell the sprinkler how much to apply. So how do you create the zones? And what we've learned is, some of the most powerful variables are historic yield variation. This farmer and many these days have yield monitors on the combine, right? So it's able to make a map of yield. So areas with higher or lower yield become part of the equation to create these zones. So historical yield, and then topographic variables like the relative elevation field parts of the field that are higher or lower, even if it's subtle, even if it seems relatively subtle. That really drives the need to irrigate water, to apply irrigation in a different fashion. And then we've done some other we've done electrical conductivity mapping of those fields. We've done some geographic modeling, there's a parameter called the topographic wetness index. But among all those variables, probably the two most powerful ones, is that historical yield and the topographical, the relative elevation. We validated those by measuring water content changes. Anyway, we do all those soil samples, not because we think any farmer would ever do it. But that's how we validated the way to create the zones using those more simple to obtain variables, the yield maps and, and those things. So that's what we do, we subdivide the field with spatial information, we put a pair of sensors in each of those zones. And then we track, we track the water retention properties and the change in water content over time. Every time the sprinkler comes on, we make a recommendation. And you'll see one zones getting, you know, three quarters of an inch of water and another zones getting half an inch or a quarter on any given day. And then the water savings that I mentioned, that's when you add all that up and compare it to what would you have done if it was a uniform irrigation, you're saving water. And in some cases, the crop is healthier. I think particularly on the potatoes, you're avoiding some excessively wet areas that make the potatoes prone to disease.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:46

So do you feel that this type of situation is applicable then to any type of agriculture?

NEIL HANSEN 41:53

Certainly agriculture is going the way of precision right? This variable rate irrigation(VRI) is not the earliest thing that variable rate nutrient applications is much more mature and developed. And it's to a point that it's a relatively standard practice among large producers. So things are going towards variable rate, seeding rates, changing the population of seeding or and even in some cases, the hybrids or varieties that are being planted, technology to precisely apply pesticides or herbicides, rather than blanket applications everywhere. I see that these precision, spatially variable, temporally variable technologies are increasing in adoption as we go forward and paying off. They're saving resources, they're making the impact of agriculture on the environment less and making the production more efficient.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:57

What were some of the specific benefits that Ryan Christiansen had seen? And how does that translate then to benefits that others might be able to see?

NEIL HANSEN 43:07

One of the things Ryan shares with me is having the sensors in the field gives him a sense of flexibility and security on it. Because he's managing multiple pivots, multiple fields, on that same field, he's managing a golf course and an agricultural field with the same pivot. Having those sensors gives him power to make informed decisions that can benefit not just the field where the sensors are, but other fields where he's moving water. So I think, you know, that's, not to be overlooked. The sense of security and peace of mind that he gains from having an assurance of what's going on and whether he needs to irrigate today, or he can wait a couple days. So that's something that translates to an urban setting, too. I mean, anybody that's managing water, I think making informed decisions, leads to better decisions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:04

And with all of these benefits, how then can we help share or at least do a better job of sharing this information or this knowledge with other growers or others who might be interested in this?

NEIL HANSEN 44:17

There really shouldn't be any reason that we're not getting the word out on development. I appreciate you're doing this podcast. I think that's a great vehicle, social media. Our science, in some ways is a little bit crippled by our measure of success is a peer reviewed journal article. I mean, that drives what we do, and there's good reason for that, right? I mean, that's how we keep the trust in science and keep things at a high level of integrity. But the drawback to some of those things is they can be slow at times and maybe not accessible. A lot of the practitioners and users aren't reading journal articles. And so it does be behoove us as scientists to make sure we're communicating not just in the journal articles, but getting the word out. And in places where users can get it. At that farm and grace on the golf course, in the ag field, we had an outreach event this past year. It was organized by Utah State University Extension Service, and one of the colleagues that's involved in this project. But it was just a phenomenal event. There were irrigation suppliers, farmers, educators, they were there. And I think, you know, the more that we get together and see things, we weren't just the teachers there, we were there to learn. And a lot of the people are pointing out things in our study that maybe it didn't work for them and thinks that, you know, hey, could you look at it this way? Could you measure this? So the more we get together in those kinds of settings, the better the science becomes, and the more useful it is.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:05

So, I think that also really transitions well into this last subject we'd like to cover. Helping to mentor and develop the next generation of researchers and scientists, one of the great things that BYU does really well is being able to give research opportunities to undergraduates, and that doesn't happen very often at research universities. And you've been finding success in working with students. You know, bringing them along, allowing them to give presentations to you mentioned, taking them to those research projects. They're at Christiansen farms, even if they did drive golf carts all over the place. But really allowing them to take a proactive role in the research itself. So I'd just like to hear your thoughts on on that idea of of mentorship and developing, you know, that next generation of scientists and researchers?

NEIL HANSEN 47:02

Well, thanks for asking, it's something that I care a lot about. And you're right, BYU as an institution is committed to we use, we use the jargon here inspired learning, right? It's kind of a two way phrase. If you get young people involved in research, they're up, they're encouraged and inspired, it really motivates and drives them. But the other side of things is they actually bring inspiration too. The learning becomes inspired because of them. I think a lot of young people, BYU is definitely this way, we don't have a lot of people that come to this university that have much experience with agriculture or irrigation in an urban setting. But the fact that we are working with really cool technology with sensors, with drones, you know, it's invigorating for them. And they're tooled up to add to what we have. So in a lot of ways, in my work I've learned, I help students see the question, and then kind of get out of the way and let them find answers to the questions. And it's been really fun. Yeah, sometimes they need a little more guidance than others. But in general, I found that they bring a lot of energy and a lot of creativity. And I think Ryan Christiansen would say the same thing. He's, been a great mentor, the students that come up, I mean, he'll take a little time. And while them with a great big farm equipment that he drives or whatever, you know, they're seeing things they've never seen before. And then they're bringing their innovation and their technology to address the questions that he has. So it really is it's not, it's not a service to the next generation, it's a desperate need for all of us to engage them. It's just been, for me, it's a fortunate part of my job that I've been able to discover that. So

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:03

I know that that hits home for me, and many of us here at METER. And I can guarantee you that the vast majority of our audience, as well have had those kinds of relationships, either to be mentored or to mentor others. Anything else.

NEIL HANSEN 49:18

Well, this has been fun. I really, I love the concept of using technology. Since you know, as you guys said, measuring the world, as you guys call this, I just think water is one of these pressing global issues that technology can help us manage better. And I love being a part of a global community of scientists working on that. And we're making good steps forward. As we've talked about, we need to continue to make sure we're getting the science into the hands of people that can use it and decision makers can apply what we're learning, but there's a lot of progress to be made. And we need to make it kind of quickly because it's an urgent, global issue.

BRAD NEWBOLD 50:05

There are many of those natural resources that we're running out of, but human ingenuity is not one of those. So hopefully we can help improve things going forward here soon. All right. Our time is up for today. Thank you again, Dr. Neil Hanson, for taking time to share your research with us. And if any of you in the audience have any questions about this topic, or would like to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com. Or you can reach out to us on Twitter at meter underscore, V and V. You can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Bryan Hopkins, PhD, is a professor in the Plant & Wildlife Sciences department at Brigham Young University.

Links to learn more about Dr. Bryan Hopkins:

Bryan's curriculum vitae

Bryan's LinkedIn

Bryan's ResearchGate

Bryan's Academia.edu

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Edward Swiatek is a senior application engineer with the Environmental Research Market Group at Campbell Scientific, Inc.

Links to learn more about Ed Swiatek:

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The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

TRANSCRIPT:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:01

Hello everybody and welcome to we measure the world, a podcast produced by scientists for scientists.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 0:07

So I just got a drill and was ready to drill a hole. And he walked into the lab right then he saw what he was doing and he said you probably better measure that and make sure that you don't hit one of the Freon tubes. And I said, "Yeah, yeah", I mean, what would be the probability of hitting the Freon tubes, the coils were that far apart! And I thought, "Oh I can see well enough to know where that bed is gonna go." And so I went ahead and drilled through the thing, and I hit dead on into one of the Freon tubes and all the refrigerant came shooting out of the thing. That was the hardest thing that I ever did in my life to walk into his office and tell him that I drilled a hole in the Freon tube.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:58

That's just a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure The World explores interesting environmental research trends, solutions to research issues, and tools to better understand the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Stay current on applied environmental research, measurement methods and more. Thanks for joining us. Today's guests are Ed Swiatek tech micro meteorologist and Application Engineer at Campbell Scientific, and Dr. Gaylon Campbell, founder and soil physicist at meter group. Ed and Gaylon, thanks for joining us today. We really do appreciate you being here with us. Today we wanted to talk to you about your association with some of the founders and pioneers of environmental biophysics and environmental measurement, starting with Dr. Sterling Taylor, who was a researcher at Utah State University in the 1950s and 60s. And I know that you worked with him, Gaylon. And so can you just give us a brief introduction into who he was, and why he is considered one of the founders of environmental biophysics.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 2:02

Sterling was part of that. I guess you could say cohort that we call the greatest generation, the the ones who grew up during the Depression, fought in the Second World War and went on after that and changed the world. And there were a number of amazing soil physicists that that I was acquainted with in group and Sterling was one of those. He grew up on a farm during the Depression, he got his bachelor's degree at Utah State University, went through ROTC and was commissioned officer in the army, served throughout through World War Two, got his PhD at Cornell and then was hired back at Utah State as their soil physicist. What made him one of the founders of environmental biophysics; when he was doing his work, environmental physics or environmental biophysics weren't really around. Those weren't things that were talking about. But they did talk about the soil plant atmosphere continuum. Nowadays, when you go into a field, you tried to narrow down as much as you can, so that you can make a splash. But those scientists didn't, they brought him down. Then they said, We need to look at the soil plant atmospheric continuum, all at once. And so they worked on plant physiology and micro meteorology and soil physics and all of the areas that that fit together for that, and became pioneers in in all of those areas, that that eventually did become what we call environmental physics now,

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:53

So Gaylon, what was your association with Sterling Taylor? How did he influence your life and your work in science?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 4:00

He was like a second father to me. He influenced probably essentially everything, been with me throughout my life. I met him when I was a freshman in college. I was studying physics, but the physics curriculum, had space in it for taking other things. And I grew up on a farm and so spring quarter that year, I decided to want to take a soils class and so I signed up for beginning soils. And it turned out that Sterling taught it that year I think that's the only time he ever taught beginning soils. But he was the teacher and it was an amazing class. At the end of the class, he came to me and said, "I'd like you to work in my lab". And I said, "Well, I can't. We have farm work to do and I'm needed there. But the next fall when it came back to school, he we met, We were just downtown, Logan together, and met, and he stopped to talk to me. And he said, Said, "I still would like you to come work for me". And I said, "Well, we're still trying to get fall work finished out. But when that's over with, I'll come in". So I went in and he put me to work in his lab. And the things that he had me do with the there, measuring, like electrical conductivity, and soil measuring water potential, measuring plant water potentials, meterlogical things, radiation, and wind and all of those things, the things that I have spent my whole career working on, were all things that he started me on there. And I've often thought if there had never been a sterling Taylor, there wouldn't be any Campbell Scientific, there wouldn't be any meter group, there wouldn't be any Juniper systems, all of those things grew out of the work that we did in his laboratory.

ED SWIATEK 6:10

Gaylon, you had mentioned that, if there was no Sterling Taylor, there wouldn't be a Campbell Scientific or a Decagon or meter group. I've often contemplated over my life, how different individual events sort of changed, where I ended up. But I never really contemplated how events are people who are removed from me once or twice have also influenced my life. So in a way your interaction with with Dr. Taylor influenced me as well in so far that if it didn't happen if he didn't take you on as a student to work in his lab, there would be no Campbell Scientific and there would be no Ed Swiatek working for Campbell Scientific.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:52

Are there any other contributions? You talked about how he really influenced, you know, the the work that we're doing here today? Are there any contributions to the field or, or multiple fields that were going on in his day, where he kind of expanded our knowledge in environmental sciences?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 7:10

He started out his career using water potential to determine when crops should be irrigated, and worked out the best scheme for managing water on crops that has been worked out, ever. We've tried to get Pat implemented for the past seventy years. And I think we're making some progress now. But it's amazing that something that good, I mean, we still go back to the tables and figures and work that Sterling did to guide us in that that was where his his research started was using water potential for irrigation management. And then he went on working on link transport of heat water in soil. And this may be an area that people aren't all that familiar with, but a few bury an electrical cable in the soil that you run current through and heats the cable up. That'll drive the water away from the cable and dry the soil around the cable. Then when it does that, then the cable will heat up even more. And you can have runaway situation, where are the cable mounts even. Well, he's he studied that in some of the early work on that, and he decided he needed better theory to go with that. And so he got into non equilibrium thermodynamics, which is a field that still people are making in the Nobel Prize several years ago, was awarded in that area. And he worked with some of the best scientists they were, he did a sabbatical in Belgium, to try to learn more about that. And so you can see that his work spanned from the the most practical things from growing better crops to some of the most theoretical things that people have worked on.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:14

That's amazing. Do you have any other fun stories about Sterling Taylor that might help us get to know him better?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 9:22

I have a very embarrassing story. I think it illustrates his patience. I was not the only person to be influenced the way I just described. There were a lot of young men that he worked with and brought along and not all of them went into soil physics, but, but a lot of them did go into science. This this has to be one of my most embarrassing situations. One of the jobs that he gave me there was to work on thermocouple psychometry. And that was the thing that produced Decagon in the beginning that eventually turned into Meter. In those days, we have to have a constant temperature bath with control to a 1,000th of a degree. And we didn't have a lot of money to put into lab equipment. And so Sterling had built a constant temperature bath out of an old washing machine. And he had done just a beautiful job and insulated the surroundings and he had put a propeller on in place of the washing machine agitator and this is the old style washing machine, not the new ones that you have now. And he had built this copper core in there and wrapped copper tubing around it so that he could refrigerate it, control the refrigeration. So it was just a beautiful instrument. And that was the piece of equipment I was using in these things that I was trying to do. And I was I don't remember exactly when that happened probably when I was a sophomore in college. But I you know, I'd grown up on the farm, I was pretty confident in myself. And I wanted to install some stuff on that drum. And so I needed to drill some holes through it to mount some things. And so I just got a drill and was ready to drill a hole. And he walked into the lab right then he saw what he was doing and he said "you probably better measure that make sure that you don't have one of the Freon tubes." And I said "yeah, yeah", I mean what would be the probability of hitting the Freon tubes? The coils were that far apart. And I thought "Oh I, can see well enough to know where that bed is gonna go." And so I went ahead and drilled through the thing and I hit dead on into one of the Freon tubes, and all the refrigerant came shooting out of the thing. That was the hardest thing that I ever did in my life to walk into his office and tell him that I had drilled a hole in the Freon tube. And I mean, what he should have done was ?????????bought my air sir. So aren't me at least.?????????? But this, such a kind and patient man and he said, "Well, we're gonna have to patch that up and recharge it arent we.".

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:27

Sounds like you got off pretty easy with that.

ED SWIATEK 12:29

Or not so easily! Because, you know, Galyon was left to his own devices to punish himself! And you know, more often than not, you're your worst critic and punisher.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:41

That's true. That's true. Now his book called "Physical Edaphology" published in 1972 provides many key insights on physics in irrigated agriculture. How could a deeper understanding of principles that come from that book, in particular, change our approach to watering today, you know, especially in this age of water scarcity?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 13:04

The way he did it, by measuring water potential in the soil, you can immediately know no matter what the soil is, you'll know whether you're over irrigating and running water out the bottom, or under irrigating and reducing the production of the crop that you're doing. You can irrigate perfectly with that. People have tried now for 40 years, or maybe more than that to measure the water content of the soil and do that. But while that's possible, it's not easy, and mostly you get it wrong. Or with water potential, You don't ever get it wrong. It'll be right, every time. And so if we would just apply the things that he worked out. I mean, the tables are in that book for doing the irrigation. He has plenty of theory in the book but he also has those practical things. There was one other soil physics book when he published that one, but it had been published quite a few years earlier and a lot changed. The reason that he that he wanted to publish a book was just to have something to teach out of. That book is unique. It's it's one that every soil physicist should have a copy of.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:24

He did die pretty young. And that cut short, a very promising career and decades, probably ahead of him and research. What do you think we missed out on because he died so early?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 14:35

I've wondered about that too. One of the things that he was working on was a big experiment, irrigating fruit crops. At the time of his death, he, he had gotten a big grant to do that was working on some of the orchards down on the Wasatch Front. And that was, again cutting edge research that would have had A pretty big impact on things that we're still trying to get right, buying the things that he had already worked out for, for yield crops. And I met, I think probably his non equilibrium thermodynamics would have made a bigger splash. Had he had more time to work on it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:22

So you mentioned that there's still things that we're working on to get right. Are there things that stand out about Sterling Taylor that we could emulate to improve our own research in the field?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 15:32

I have transcripts from a number of the talks that were given it at Sterling's funeral. And one of his colleagues in the soils Department said something about that, that I that I really like Win-Thorne was was his colleague. He said, "I learned further why Sterling devoted himself to research and studies with such vigor. I concluded that he had in common with a select body of great people, the trait of a never ending feeling of curiosity. He saw in nature, attributes and relationships that few other minds could see. He had the gift of curiosity. And that kept him in an almost perpetual state of excitement. He knew as few people do, the deep personal satisfaction that comes from ideas and the discovery of new truth". And I thought if would try to summarize the thing that that we could emulate in Sterling. Well, there were a lot of wonderful things about him. But that was a fun thing. And working with him, that he was just so excited all the time about discovering new truths.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:59

That's beautiful. So with that, let's move on to another pioneer in the world of environmental biophysics. And that is Dr. Champ Tanner. And I think it's you Gaylon who had an association with him. So can you tell us who was Champ Tanner?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 17:14

He was another of that greatest generation who came from southern Idaho, northern Utah. In the beginning, I think he did his undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, and his professor there inspired him to do go on for graduate work. But of course, that was in the middle of the Second World War. And so he went into the service for the period of the war and did his graduate work at University of Wisconsin. And then they hired him on the faculty there. He had polio during that time when he was in graduate school. He was pretty sure that that would prevent him from an academic career. And he was affected some by it but his determination, and the willingness of the University of Wisconsin to back him up and continue to support him through through that time, while he was recovering, he wouldn't have left Wisconsin, no matter what I think from you know, he felt that committed to them from the commitment they showed when he was struggling to get through that difficult time in his life. And they were paid back many, many times over for that faith that they had in him. He established a program there that just just wasn't any other one like it in the world. The students that he trained there; I have never known of anyone who trained a group of students that are as confident and able as that group, they've gone on to make enormous contributions on their own. And he covered almost every area he now it's really popular to do Eddy Covariance work and that's what he had his strength and he works with a lot of people doing that. But champ was doing that eddy covariance stuff back in the 60s and 70s. Before back when we called it, Eddy correlation, even then, its amazing to go back and look at those old papers and see all the things they tried. He worked in plant physiology, plant water relations, made some of the great contributions there. He worked on, evaporation through mulches did great contributions there. Over a broad range of subjects did amazing work. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences which is the highest honor that you can receive in the US scientifically. And if I understand it, right, he was the first soil scientist ever to be elected to that body. Soil microbiology, he made some pretty big contributions there too, I think it actually was a soil microbiologist that elected him. So you just sit back and you wonder how can somebody accomplish that much in one career? And then in terms of commercializing that, in Campbell Scientific and Meter Group wouldn't be there without Sterling but like, wise we wouldn't be there without Champ. So there's a number of companies that that owe their existence to the work that these guys do.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:49

So what is your association with Champ Tanner Gaylon? How did you get involved in working with him?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 20:54

I worked with a number of his students. And somehow through working with them, I got adopted into that family. And it was a kind of a family the Tanners were, were just the most gracious people on the face of the earth. If you were there, in their circle, I they took good care of you. The Tanner hospitality is beyond words. For me. He just was amazing to be a part of that group to knowing that well, but once I had been sort of adopted him, I had a lot of interaction with him professionally.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:32

Do you have any other stories of his interactions with his own students?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 21:36

I spent almost 30 years on the faculty of Washington State University. So I had a lot of students of my own. So I had a lot of opportunity of first seeing students and professors and how they interact and what kind of students they produce. And Champ produced the, the best ones that I know of, he set the bar pretty high for them, and they expected them to perform at a high level and his students talk about the soil seminars that they had there. And the grilling that champ would give them in the seminars, they knew they had to be prepared. They would talk about how important he felt like it was to take care of the equipment they had. His lab was like Stirling's in they built a lot of their stuff. And they didn't have a lot of money to spend on things like you do in labs nowadays. And so he wanted the tools taken care of. They said that if somebody left a screwdriver, out of place, didn't get it all the way back to the toolbox. The next morning when they came in, there would be the screwdriver sitting on their desk with a note from Champ encouraging him to not do that ever again.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:02

And did that work?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 23:03

I think it worked. I don't think they left stuff around more than once.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:08

What else then, do you think that scientists today could learn from Champ Tanner?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 23:14

He was just determined to not kid himself or let his students kid themselves when they got a piece of equipment to make a measurement, why they better understand everything about that piece of equipment and have checked all of the calibrations and made sure that all of it worked the way it was supposed to. So that when they got data out of that they knew that they could count on those data. And he was just always very rigorous in, in the way he pursued his research, the way he did the analysis, the way he maintained the equipment and then check to make sure that it was properly calibrated he was just a very careful scientists. So you could count on anything that he did. It was done correctly.

ED SWIATEK 24:06

I wonder if I could interject a story I heard secondhand about interacting with Champ Tanner. So I heard this story from a colleague of mine at Campbell Scientific, Joel Green, and Gaylon. He was a master student of yours. Is that correct?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 24:21

Right.

ED SWIATEK 24:22

So the story was about a student that Champ had and I label him Marcel Fuks. You had mentioned that note that accompanied the screwdriver that wasn't put away from what I had heard it sounded like Champ was famous about leaving notes for everybody, not just another student who left the screwdriver out but those on what to do for the next day and whatever. And going through program with champ people, the students were were tested and made sure that they understood everything and then when they graduated, they were you know, top in sort of scientists. So this story is about Marcel coming back to the US and actually staying at the Tanner home in Wisconsin as a guest, Marcel got up in the morning went downstairs to the kitchen. And he saw a note and then the version of story I heard it was a note on a yellow piece of paper written in red pen. And when he saw that note, his heart skipped a beat because he had a flashback to being back as a graduate student. And then he approached the countertop to read the note to see what Champ wanted him to do. And it was a note to champs life K, started off with K, I would like you to please and then the assignment for the day or the request for the day. But what I found so endearing about that story was that while champ had high expectations of his students, they were also part of the family. And he treated them the same as he did his family.

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:49

That's great. And that actually segues into our next and final individual that we'd like to highlight. And that's Champ son, Bert Tanner, who was a scientist at Campbell, Scientific for many years. Can both of you and Gaylon tell us a little bit about who Bert Tanner was?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 26:05

Bert did work in I think geophysics and he got a master's degree at Utah State in biometeorology. I think they called it. And then he went to work at, I think, for the Forest Service was in the Bay Area. But he wanted to get a PhD. And so he and I started corresponding he was interested in coming to Washington State University to get a PhD. And we had everything worked out, he was gonna leave his employment there. And he and his wife Cookie were wanting to do some hiking in the Grand Canyon, before they came up to Pullman. So they, they were hiking around, accidentally kicked over a coffee pot and scalded Cookies, foot or leg. And so she had some pretty severe burns. And they brought her out and took her up to the the burn unit University of Utah, they have a good unit there that that can take care of that. And well, while they were there, Bert called me to let me know what was going on. He was kind of at a loose ends, waiting for her to heal. And and I said, "Well, if if you got a little bit of time, why don't you run up to Logan and visit with my brothers. They've just started a new business there," This was just a year or so after Campbell Scientific started, "you might enjoy visiting with them." So Bert went up there and visited with my brothers. And the next thing I knew he was calling up and saying, Well, they offered me a job. And so I guess I'll stay here. And so he never did come for his PhD he stayed in Logan and was an amazing help and example at Campbell Scientific for a lot of years and had a huge impact on on the whole direction that went.

ED SWIATEK 28:07

That started, she told us almost verbatim to the version that I had heard that, that it was key, that Cookie got burned. And he had the visit to CSI. And then a little twist that I also got from Bert was that because Cookie was injured, there was need for insurance and steady employment. And that probably weighed heavily towards his, I'm sure he took and that this he agonized about the decision whether to go on to get a PhD, or work at CSI. But in the end, at the time, the practical matters of a stable income with insurance was was really critical for them. Bert joined um the marketing department, and then a group from Campbell Scientific left to form Omni data. And so then there was a need for some leadership in the marketing department. And then so Bert moved from the application engineer position into the vice president of marketing within Campbell Scientific, but he always enjoyed the application engineering type of work, specifically interacting with clients. And then at the time, that also was kind of hand in hand with being what we call now in application scientists. And so Bert was in the unique position that he was in upper management. And he just steered and mold, certainly the marketing department and probably to some extent, the company to service, the scientific community. And I have a quick story to sort of drive home that point how Bert was very interested in working with the scientific community. Campbell Scientific was invited to give a presentation and a little workshop to Brazil. This would have been probably in the early 2000s. I was preparing the lectures and the slides and I guess I didn't really give it to Bert for review or I did And he just didn't have the time to take a look at it. And so we were in Brazil, my title page came up, and I had what I thought was everyone's title on there. And after birth name, I had vice president of marketing that I went ahead and gave the presentation. Then that evening, he kind of pulled me aside. And he said, While I am the vice president of marketing this week, I'm a scientist. And that was sort of represented over and over as we got involved with different individuals who needed instrumentation. And the instrumentation that they needed was not necessarily something that we had as a standard product. There were bits and pieces that could be used in these systems. And then Burt took it upon himself and the company took it upon himself to work and develop new systems for our clients to meet to meet their kind of measurement needs. So and again, it ties back into this idea in Sterling's lab where you needed something and you went ahead and built it. Now, it's a few years later, and the scientific community would approach Bert and say, Geez, this is what I really need to do. Can you help me in some fashion, he was more than willing to take on that challenge. When I joined Campbell, scientific It was initially to work in the air quality market, it was a kind of a new market that the company wanted to develop. But I had done my graduate work making Eddy covariance measurements at Utah State University. So I had experienced with these type of systems and instrumentation. And while that wasn't my focus, it quickly changed to become my focus, as the scientific community is approaching Bert and wanted to build systems to meet these specific needs and the I, he ended up tapping me as a resource to help him do the programming within the data loggers. So that underlying theme was something that always drove birth, in terms of basically product development and r&d, that was really housed in the marketing department rather than, say, an engineering. So the washing machine came up. I really enjoyed that story, Gaylon, because I could see myself in that same position saying, "Yeah, I know how to drill a hole without hitting a coil". When I started at CSI in 1992, one of the things that group did was kind of show me around the company. And he took me into production where we were building circuit boards. And there were two washing machines that were used to spin up the boards after they hadn't been washed. They were genuine washing machines, as opposed to some kind of high end PCB type of device. So it's just a washing machine like, wow, this is just wild. And then later on, I had heard a story about when Eric was a teenager. And I guess he always had a really curious mind. And one way to sort of tamp that down was to give him tasks that were a bit laborious. And he was assigned a task of reducing the weight of some sort of farming implement, probably a plow or something like that, basically drilling holes into it. And he was given a hand crank type of drill to drill these holes. And maybe he did one or two, and then decided that there was a better way of doing it. And then he promptly took the motor out of his mother's washing machine, and built himself a drill or maybe a drill press or something like that. So I can't, it's interesting how the washing machine theme seems to be interwoven in this history. So another sort of side story, you had talked about the the quality of the students that came out of the Tanner lab. And Bert, he knew the first level of students that came out of his father's lab, but then there was the second and third level. And when he would interact with these students, he always kind of questioned them as to their lineage. After this, you know, the third or fourth time I saw him go through this kind of q&a to see how this individual got back to Champ Tanner. Then I told Bert, over dinner I said up so he has a tanner number of three, and looks at ease and what. So he has a Tanner number of three. So there's no this individual than his major professor who has a Tanner number of two than the one before him, which is typically like George or towel or some of that level. At a Tanner number one of the naturally Champ had a Tanner number of zero. So Bert really got a kick out of that that term.

BRAD NEWBOLD 34:37

Although he worked in industry, he was well respected and he was even a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy. So what were his contributions to the field of environmental measurement?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 34:49

We might mention a few of the things that that Bert brought in the trace gas analyzer, that Campbell Scientific has built for quite a while that was a Bert project. He worked, I mean it came from George Thertell, but Bert knew about it and champion that and got it going. The Sonic anemometer, the Campbell Scientific CSAT three that we started out, I have built a little one dimensional Sonic on sabbatical years ago and Campbell Scientific started building that. But they really wanted a better thing. And so they hired Larry Jacobson, who built that CSAT three, but that was all. Bert Tanner, he was the one the force behind the co2 and water vapor analyzer if I remember what all...

ED SWIATEK 35:45

Just the co2 gas analyzer.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 35:48

Yeah. So that that was, again, some of the stuff that Bert pushed through. So some of these tools that are absolutely essential to the AmeriFlux, Veriflux and these huge programs and in China, those all came from Berts push that he put behind getting a set of tools out that could do that job properly. I mean, he was as demanding as his father was in terms of making solid measurements.

ED SWIATEK 36:22

With all of those instruments, they were really to serve as the scientific community. They were not red butter, if I use that term, the sonic anemometer for example, there are already at least two or three other vendors on the market, that the manufacturer of sonic anemometers. But Burt felt that we could build an instrument, do a better job with our design, make it more economical for the community, and integrate it much better with our data loggers. And so like you said, Gaylon, he pushed a champion for that sort of product development. And then that held true with our gas analyzer as well, there was already a company that had a product, but he thought that we could do a better job integrating the gas measurements with the sonic measurements, and then that ultimately, poured out of the products that we have for measuring co2 and water vapor fluxes.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 37:15

So even though he didn't get a PhD, he should have been granted a DSC Dr. Science degree. They do that in England, once you've produced a body of scientific work that's worthy of a PhD or give you the BSC degree, and we should do that in this country too.

ED SWIATEK 37:37

Yeah, no, I agree for what it's worth, Bruce Bugbee. And Larry Hips at Utah State University, champion to award Bert a PhD, posthumously. And they were successful about two years after he passed away.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:53

And earlier, Ed, you talked about how Bert was really involved in helping his clients succeed. Can you add a little bit more about what he had done to influence or improve, you know, customer experience with Campbell Scientific,

ED SWIATEK 38:07

Actually, I can think of, well, there's there's several cases, but two really pop to mind. This was work that was done for a client in Korea by the name of Joon Kim. He was a student of Sashi Berman, from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, June was interested in making methane fluxes over rice paddies. And so we ended up building and selling him. The first installation was a was an Eddy covariance methane sensor. The second one was a gradient system to measure methane fluxes along with co2 and water vapor. And then a few years later, Joon Kim was interested in making co2 and water vapor measurements within a forest canopy to get at the storage term. We didn't have a system per se, but a Joon talked with Bert for a little bit actually emailed back and forth a little bit with Bert. Bert talked with our engineering staff. We got a resource from engineering. And then he grabbed me and we engineering provide us with hardware and I ended up doing the day logger programming. And then there was a trip to Korea for a week for training and installation. One more I think Gaylon had mentioned some work into into China. And this started in like January 2002, where our representative interacting with the Chinese Ecological Research Network, and they were interested in close path Eddy Covariance systems, and also profiling systems. And at that time, people were building their own. There wasn't really commercially available systems per se, there were the components, no gas analyzers, data, loggers, pumps, and this kind of thing, but typically, they put it together, like in the old days with Sterling Taylor, but in this case, the representative wanted some turnkey kind of systems. And so there was some initial negotiations and a quote that was probably done in February. We submitted that to CERN, the Chinese Ecological Research Network, we weren't really expecting them to place the order, but they did. And then we had a ship date of something like November of 2002. And we got the order at the end of the spring. And then it was just, you know, all hands on deck in terms of taking the designs that were sketched out on the back of a napkin, and then turning them into real engineering drawings, and then ultimately building systems with the hardware, then working out data logger programming and software and this kind of thing, shipping the equipment, and then going to China for three weeks to do the installation and training. A following year, there was a follow up enhancements to the systems that another three week training, but I think that was actually one of our first experience with a really large purchase of a network kind of hardware. And I heard this little comment from Paul Campbell, a couple years ago, where after that sale was made, Paul had mentioned, you know, we should do more sales like that. And currently, as far as like a business model for Campbell, scientific, that's what we're shooting for now is facilitating equipment designs or system designs for large networks.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 41:20

I think I remember when that when that order hit. And you're right, that was all hands on deck. And Paul might have said, "Oh, we should do more of that" but the engineers would not have said, that we should do more of that.

ED SWIATEK 41:35

That was incredibly stressful time for everybody involved. David Liddell was our international sales manager at the time, and he was doing all the coding and working with Bert staying in the office till 10 or 11 o'clock routinely. Then when the order came in, then it switched, where, you know, we we had our day jobs of supporting individual clients, and then usually around three o'clock, then we switched to the back of the building back of building one, and then work on the China order until 11 or 12 o'clock at night.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:10

Exciting times.

ED SWIATEK 42:11

That just taught me some to its like, and really, um all the wives should get credit for the incredible patience that they exhibited doing that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:19

Definitely, they should be the ones getting overtime, right and double pay and all that!

ED SWIATEK 42:23

Right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:25

Okay, so final question regarding Bert Tanner. Is there anything in particular that you feel that we can learn from his work in life?

ED SWIATEK 42:34

Yeah, that the one thing that I would say, and I've kind of instilled that in my own work ethic is just real dedicated and unfettered devotion to the client and meeting their needs, listening to them, and not trying to sell them what we have, but listening to what they need, and then adjusting our product line to meet their specific needs.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 42:56

I couldn't say it any better than that perfect. Eric worked for Sterling to and that was, that was a really formative part of his training. So I'm not sure if which, you know whether Sterling's influence on him or on me that have the biggest effect on creating Campbell Scientific but, but it all goes back to Sterling.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:22

Our time is up for today. Thank you again, so much, Ed and Gaylon for taking time to share your association with some pioneers in the field of Environmental Biophysics. And I think that our listeners will really find this episode inspiring. If you in the audience have any questions about this topic or wants to hear more, feel free to contact us and metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. Or you can connect with Campbell Scientific at campbellscience.com you can also view the full transcript from today's episode in the podcast description. Stay safe and we'll catch you next time on We Measure the World.

Richard Gill, PhD, is an ecologist and department chair in biology at Brigham Young University.

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Marco Bittelli, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Food Science at the University of Bologna in Italy.

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Saul Alarcon is an agronomist for Gradient Crop Yield Solutions with over 30 years of experience in agriculture. As part of the Morning Star Company, his research into plant health has been instrumental in developing crop models for growers. He obtained his Bachelors in biology with an emphasis in plant health from the Instituto Tecnológico de Los Mochis in Sinaloa, Mexico and recently received his Masters in agronomy from Iowa State University.

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Dr. Colin Campbell, PhD, is research scientist and head of research and development at METER Group. Learn more about Dr. Colin Campbell:

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Natalie graduated with a degree in biology from Pepperdine University, where she completed an honors thesis conducting research on the interaction of drought stress and pathogen infection in chaparral shrubs. She then spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Spain, studying the effect of water stress on Dutch Elm Disease. Most recently, Natalie worked for the Everglades Foundation, creating educational programs and materials about the Florida everglades.

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 0:08

Why do plants even produce these chemical compounds? Is it just because they smell nice? A lot of people already know that some flower smells might be a useful to plants to attract pollinators and help aid plants in that way. In reality, there's a lot of different reasons why plants use these and produce and emit these volatile compounds. And one really cool way is because these plant volatiles that are produced when an herbivore damages a plant, they're known as herbivore induced plant volatiles. And this specific smell that plants create and emits actually can attract some natural enemies. This means the plant is basically putting out into the environment a smell that some insects or other natural enemies can actually use to locate the herbivore that's feeding on the plant. It serves the plant like a bodyguard.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:09

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is Natalie Aguirre, PhD candidate and plant physiology and chemical ecology researcher at Texas A&M University. Natalie graduated with a degree in Biology from Pepperdine University, where she completed an honors thesis conducting research on the interaction of drought stress and pathogen infection in Chaparral shrubs. She then spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Spain, studying the effect of water stress on Dutch elm disease. Most recently, Natalie worked for the Everglades Foundation, creating educational programs and materials about the Florida Everglades. And today, she's here to talk about her research on how plants communicate and defend themselves. So Natalie, thanks so much for being here.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 2:03

Thank you for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:05

We're excited to talk about plant communication and plant self defense and all of that. So first off, we definitely want to get into your research interests and projects. But first, can you give us a little bit of your background and how you came to be in the field of plant physiology and chemical ecology?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 2:22

Sure. So my excitement about science started pretty young, and I was able to do some research in unrelated fields in high school. After that, I knew that I enjoyed science and maybe not necessarily working in the lab all the time. When I decided to go to school at Pepperdine. I ended up finding a lab that I loved because we did a lot of research outdoors and we're studying Chaparral shrubs. During the time that I was a student there, it really was a time where California was experiencing extreme drought. And we were making observations out in the field and noticed that some of the most important shrubs in my opinion out in the hillside, were experiencing a lot of die back, which was this drought induced die back due to pathogen so I spent a lot of time doing research and figured out that that's pretty much what I wanted to do. My advisor Dr. Steven Davis at Pepperdine, encouraged me to apply for a Fulbright, there was a lab in Spain that is really amazing. And they were doing similar things to what we were doing in California, but studying Dutch elm disease all around Spain, and specifically in Madrid as well. So I got to use the same techniques and meet a lot of cool people doing that Fulbright in Madrid. And upon returning, I ended up applying to this lab at Texas A&M, who my advisor now is Dr. Angela Helms, she sent out an email requesting students to apply to her lab, I decided to switch gears a little bit and move towards chemical ecology and studying a little bit more about how plant volatiles and chemicals are involved in some of the physiological processes that I was already interested in. It's been very exciting working under her and getting to know a little bit of a different side of scientific research.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:14

That's great. Let's go back to your research there at Pepperdine. Can you go into a little bit more detail about what constitutes Chaparral? What are the different species that you're looking at? And then specifically, like you mentioned, dealing with pathogen infection, what was going on specifically with those infections that those shrubs are dealing with?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 4:31

So the Chaparral shrub vegetation type is pretty unique. It occurs in different places around the world and one of them being in Southern California. And if you think about being out on a hike, you would see a lot of different low tree shrubs. So I'm trying to describe the height to you. It'd be above your head and there'd be a lot of different species that are dominant in that area. And then there's also some important plants like a sage plants so those smell really unique and really fragrant. And then this Chaparral Shep community is also composed of different native grasses that grow closer to the ground there. The landscape and California changes pretty often, especially now with increases in fire frequency. The Sharpe ratio community has different plants that are adapted to these fire intervals. And so some plants they need this fire in order to germinate the seeds in the seed bank. The plant that I studied melasma Lorena uses this Reese broad Vantage to come back after fire. So this specific Chaparral shrub to me, I think I'm a little bit biased, but it's one of the most important out there in the landscape. Because it has these huge root systems. So the taproot goes down like 30 meters into the ground, and really provides a lot of stability for the hillside. So once we started noticing these major die backs in different pockets of these Chaparral communities throughout California, and specifically in the Santa Monica Mountains, we decided to look a little bit closer. And ended up seeing that it was an opportunistic endophyte, which just means fungus that was able to take advantage of the plant stress during this drought time in California. And I did a little bit more research into finding out exactly why that was happening and how much stress is required and things like this,

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:30

Right, I guess, in my mind and not thinking as a plant physiologist or you know, mycologist or whatever. But it would seem that I mean, the the general common sense is that fungus needs nice moist areas to grow and propagate. But you're saying that fungal communities were then affecting the shrubs during drought seasons during these hot and dry areas? Does that seem counterintuitive? Or is it just me?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 6:55

If we think about our own bodies, we can have, let's say a scrape on our arm or something where we might get some kind of bacteria or microbe that could cause an infection. And if we were healthy and not previously sick, let's say or not stressed out with something going on in our life, then that cut will heal pretty quickly. But if we were extremely sick and the cut was big enough, we might take a really long time to heal. And so when we put that analogy into how the plants on the hillside, this prolonged drought, which is not normal for these plants are occurring over four or five year period are really stressing the plants to an extent that this normally occurring microbe that can live in the plant tissues, and the plant can normally fight it off and resist this infection. It just started spreading.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:49

Is there a specific vector for the fungus?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 7:52

Yeah, so not this specific one. We didn't really look into how it was being factored or, or moved around. But I did help some other students throughout my time there. Think about doing some spore trapping throughout the Santa Monica Mountains, where we tried and it's not very fancy at all. We just dipped microscope slides into some Vaseline and stuck it out in the wild and saw and trying grew what was stuck on to those slides. And so we were trying to get what you're saying it's how exactly I say moving from tree to tree, for example. And for this specific microbe, we think that just having spores in the air and maybe a naturally occurring break in a branch, for example, the sport can land there and grow a little bit over time and then take advantage in these instances. And of course, like anything else when it's doing well start to reproduce and spread that way.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:53

Yeah. So what exactly was the specific effect to the plant from this fungus?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 8:59

A healthy, very good shrub that's in good shape. Would have a lot of like stems coming up from the ground because again, it's one of those tree sprout's. So it just shoots up from base. And the stems can extend maybe 10-12 feet in the air and be very bushy, a lot of green, large leaves. And once this infection starts occurring in one of those branches, that it would start to drop its leaves. And so over time, throughout the years, when we really started to notice that there was something happening, you would have a lot more clearance and what the shrubs looked like the above because they're dropping a lot of leaves. And then ultimately, when the progression of the disease was so bad, then you would have what looks like very dead trees up top.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:48

Is this a matter of these plants then not being able to go dormant? They basically just are dying off, like you said, because that lack of photosynthesis.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 9:56

This was a question that we were really not sure at the time and the students now at Pepperdine, are continually trying to answer some questions and take more data and observations of what the landscape looks like. Now, over time, they have these great taproot systems, which store a lot of the energy that the planet was making over time. And so the thought was that even if they dropped all their leaves, even if they, you know, had to essentially kill off all of their big, large branches, they could re sprout since that was the mechanism that they used from fire frequencies and how they would cope with that a lot of people when I would give presentations to the public, for example, they would ask like, Well, are the roots dying? Because I need to know if the slope is going to be stable, because my home is directly underneath? And it was really hard for us to answer that question. Because we, and this is a fault to a lot of plant scientists, it's so much easier to study what's happening above ground, and really difficult for us to have a good measurement on the effects of this infection below ground. And I tried to understand a little bit more about this root system, the impacts of it on the fungal infection, ultimately, we were able to grow saplings in pots. And what I found interesting from this brief experiment that I did is when I inoculated this fungus into branches up top, it was unable to travel down into the root system. Essentially, what I was measuring was if I can recover this pathogen from the roots, and I never cut, so I didn't do long enough studies to know if there was large effects on the composition of the root or anything like that. But I at least couldn't retrieve it from there, which I thought was really interesting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:44

So with all of this research, were there any specific measurements that you were doing with specific instrumentation? Or was this all just visual observation? What were you doing there?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 11:54

I participated with other undergrads studying the same project as part of a class. And so there were many students taking a lot of data on different things, but ended up sticking I guess, or what I ended up continuing on for my honors thesis was specifically I was interested in the movement of water to plants. This is known in the field as plant hydraulics. So we were doing a lot of plant hydraulic measurements, we also looked at as the model conductance and photosynthesis rates to know if there was an effect on those types of measurements from this infection. I didn't quite appreciate this at the time. Now, as a graduate student, I really love being able to use a parameter because it's such powerful data. And we're able to retrieve this data so quickly and learn a lot about the system, even if it's just an initial measurement.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:46

So you were looking at how the leaves were reacting to the fungus. So that helps to stomatal conductance was reacting to the fungal infection.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 12:55

Yeah, exactly. I also was really interested in how the change in moisture affected the plant as well. An easy way to understand this, especially over time is to know how the plant is responding to opening or closing stomatal. All right, yeah. So I think my love of the Porometer started in California and it really has continued until now.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:20

Are there any ways then to mitigate against these fungal infections there on the chaparral?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 13:25

Yeah, we haven't come up with a good solution. To be completely honest. There are ways to mitigate microbial infection in plants. As a community, I think scientists have focused on plants that are really economically important for trees. I should say, I don't know too much about this. But there are some stories I've heard where you can give some kinds of injections to plants and help fight the microbial community that way. Unfortunately, right now in California, they're just native plants. So the people who care about them are less in abundance, I guess,

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:00

Let's switch gears and follow you over into Spain because it seems that these studies of pathogen infection in plants is kind of your impetus for moving over into Spain. Is that right?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 14:11

Yeah, that's right. What I ended up determining is that water was playing a big role in how the plant is able to combat this infection. So Elm's disease is a completely different scenario. I guess there's a vector involved with the bark beetle and different plant completely and different environmental conditions that the elm trees grow in was very different to like dry California. But I was still interested in how water was affecting the growth of the pathogen, and also the physiology of the plants.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:42

So in California, we we're trying to figure out okay, is there stress that's not necessarily inducing these infections, or at least making them vulnerable to greater infections? Were you seeing that same similar drought flood? Like you said, it's a different ecosystem, a different environment from for these elm trees and And so I would assume that there's different impacts that water and drought and temperature and other things might have.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 15:06

I was really lucky with the lab that I ended up working with because they allowed me to join in on other projects. Originally, I had really wanted to study how the fungus can grow in different water conditions. Specifically in and out of the plants, they ended up realizing that if we tried to grow some of these trees in an environment that also had other microbes present as well, if this can change and help the elm tree and prepare its defenses for future stress because of the disease, even there, my work shifted a little bit. But I would say that what I ended up getting out of the Fulbright the most besides being able to meet new people and learn new techniques, was just being able to think a little bit differently. It was the first time that I was really on my own as a researcher and trying to figure out how my ideas could fit into a different perspective. And so yeah, I find that with Fulbright, in general, a lot of people love their experience, but it ends up being very different than the scientific picture that we have, in our mind going into it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:21

So a lot of times we talk about how is it best to, quote unquote, translate, you know, scientific language into the language of the public, there seems to be a disconnect with what scientists are finding out in their research and how that is communicated. I would assume that going into a different language as well, it does add complications, but at the same time, it can be very insightful and a good way to get into these other communities. For instance, here in the United States that maybe are primarily Spanish speakers?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 16:49

It's true, I think, it just opened up my mind to the idea of communicating science to other cultures. One Direction I think my career will move into is being able to help scientists communicate to the public right now, my advisor has encouraged me to be a science mentor for a science journal that allows scientists to rewrite their articles for young mind. It's a really cool process. I've reviewed several papers. Now, every time I get an article, in my email, I'm like, yes, I'll review and this specific journal is really cool. In that they also have young minds work as the peer reviewers for the article, what I found is that as much as scientists try, and they know that they're writing for a specific audience, it is really difficult to think about science in a way that other people can understand. And yeah, pretty much most articles come in. And I just think to myself, wow, scientists really need help in this department.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:59

Yeah. So what is the general process? Then you receive these articles, then are these articles they're already written or supposed to be written for a younger audience? Is that correct?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 18:08

Yeah. What I found is that a lot of scientists don't know that this is out there, this type of journal that allows you to republish your work, and they actually counts as a full on publication, the one that's written for kids, so you can cite it. So in my opinion, valuable to a scientists as well to be able to do this, but they submit the article. And like any other article, there's often co authors and graphs of data that are in these articles. I think throughout the process, the authors are able to really take a step back and receive feedback from young kids. I've worked with students in elementary and middle school, both here in Texas, and also at home in Miami. It's just so funny what these students say. And the whole process is really enjoyable for me to be able to interact with these students. And they really take it on as a big responsibility that they're in charge of, which is really nice. I think it's a different way to think about science, especially as a young kid. Ultimately, we submit reviews in the forum and the platform, and the scientists have to make those edits and changes and re-upload them to a script. Yeah, it's the same process but with a little bit of a twist.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:31

I did have a couple of questions back with the Dutch elm disease. So the beetles are feeding off of the trees. The fungus is on the beetles, the fungus is then spread to the trees, and then the beetles are picking up the fungus from the trees itself. So is it all kind of self contained within that community?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 19:47

Yeah, exactly. Factoring of diseases occurs very differently in different systems, which I find really crazy but for this specific disease, and a lot of other ones the bark beetle was just trying to enter the plants in order to feed on the good tissues, right. So a lot of the times the most nutritious will be underneath the bark. And like you mentioned, the pathogen can stick onto the beetle and move to the next plant that way or a clean individual bark beetle can get infected and take that to another one because it consumed tissue that had the disease. And now a little bit of what I've learned throughout my PhD, it's also interesting because sometimes the pathogen itself can manipulate these types of factors, specifically insects to aid itself in spread, I guess, or spreading to other diseases. So while it's been a long time since I've thought about the Dutch Elm system, but I don't know too much about the motivation of the I guess. And the relationship with the insect in that regard. But yeah, it is pretty crazy to think that even as scientists as researchers, what we think is happening might not be the full story.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:07

I would assume that there are many, like you said different angles for mitigation as well. So you could tackle the you know, the beetle itself or the fungus or even just the stress, right?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 21:16

Yeah, Spain spends a lot of money in finding research about Dutch Elm disease. And the angle that we took in the lab that I was in was resistant varieties of Elm plants. So they had found different Elm individuals throughout the country. And they were these healthy looking Elms, amongst other not so healthy looking plants, and they bring back cuttings and try to propagate and determine which are like the most resistant individuals of Elm trees were used in farming of grapes. And they would actually serve as the posts that allow the grapes to grow up because Elm trees are just you know, like one second, especially as a young saplings and they don't branch very much. And so when people would move from place to place there was on trees planted as they went along to help in this cultivation of grapes. So now they have these stands of Elm trees that grow in very differing conditions. You mentioned flooding earlier, and they oftentimes do grow by rivers and more moist areas. But going back to how this started, one of the ways this lab specifically tackled the problem of Dutch Elm disease was planting more resistant varieties of Elm in places where the population might be struggling.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:39

Alright, let's switch over and talk about your current PhD research looking at plant volatiles plant physiology and moving from pathogens to herbivores, or other other consumers of these plants and how that affects plants defense and communication.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 22:57

Yeah, the world of chemical ecology, I just think is crazy. There's so much going on out there that we don't understand still, and so many volatiles that are present. So for those listening who might not think of plant volatiles, we often like to say that the smell of freshly cut grass or the smell that you encounter in the kitchen, when you're chopping herbs, all of these plant volatiles that we think about are really useful to plants and communication of different events going on in the community. Yeah, I was really unaware of all of this occurring in our world until I started this PhD. And now, I just think it's the most fascinating thing.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:44

So what are some of the specific questions that you're getting at with these volatiles and how they affect plants and the plant physiology and other things?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 23:53

Yeah. So I guess in order to describe my main question, I need to give a little bit of introduction into why do plants even produce these chemical compounds? Is it just because they smell nice? A lot of people already know that some flower smells might be useful to plants to attract pollinators and help aid plants in that way. In reality, there's a lot of different reasons why plants use these and produce and emit these volatile compounds. And one really cool way is because these plant volatiles that are produced when an herbivore damages the plants, they're known as herbivore induced plant volatiles, and this specific smell that plants creates and emits actually can attract some natural enemies. This means the plant is basically putting out into the environment a smell that some insects or other natural enemies can actually use to locate the herbivore that's feeding on the planet. It serves the plants like a bodyguard, I guess. Yeah. And so that's one really cool way. And the fields is also discovered that plants can communicate with other plants in its vicinity. So we call them neighboring plants. And some people have looked at the relationship between the individuals. So if the plant is closely related to an individual that's five meters away versus the one directly next to it, it will have better communication with the directly related individual even though it's further away. So these are questions that are, I think, relatively new and not flushed out. So what might occur in one species doesn't occur for all, you know, but yeah, very interesting things like that, we're able to learn now about how plants are communicating with volatiles. And specifically, when I first learned about how these plants sort of communicating with smells, I guess, what I knew about plants was their physiology. So I know a lot about how water moves through them. And I knew that they responded to water stress by closing the pores called Samad on the surface. And I was like, Okay, so the volatiles enter through the pores. And my advice is like, well, we don't know, we don't know, if they entered through the plants, if they're perceived on the outside, you know, we don't exactly know how the plants are perceiving these compounds, and where that's occurring. So I was like, Oh, this is exactly what we need to know. It's like the first step. And I'm not the first person but I am happy to be here and try and see if I can answer these questions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:48

First of all, I guess, what were some of your hypotheses or your predictions, as you were going into this project,

NATALIE AGUIRRE 26:55

I initially hypothesized that the important volatiles that we're studying in the lab would enter plants through the stomata. And mainly this is a really good place to start, I think because we know that the stomata are responsible for gas exchange. So that's their job. They're letting gases in and letting them and I thought, Okay, this, this is a great place. So if I had to have one statement that just stamps my whole dissertation, it's that one, but it's such a big question, I guess. The more I look into it, the more I realize, man, it takes a lot of work to be able to say that that's definitively true. The stomata has the port of entry for volatile compounds is also really promising because other people have shown that volatiles do enter the plant leaves. So that's one step. Like a lot of people might think that's obvious when not a lot of people have shown that the plants are actually taking up these volatiles. And so there have been some studies that show that that plants use a volatile that has been marked in some way by the lab, and they able to track this molecule and it's converted into other molecules that then can be used for defense, for example. So we do know that at least some of these larger compounds that are important in this type of plant communication, specifically referring to herbivory do enter the plant. We also think that the volatile compounds are exiting leaves via the stomata instead of just diffusion or maybe mechanical breaking one that insect consumes the plants, that's another option. There have been studies that show that that volatiles are produced in some areas of the leaf that haven't been broken specifically by the herbivore. And if these volatiles don't exit out of the whole set of the stomata, then they would build up and become toxic to the plants. And so through that sort of reasoning, they've determined that the stomata must be the exit port for a lot of these volatile compounds.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:05

It's super fascinating this whole idea of plant communication, these volatiles are going from plant to plant. And when the plant takes in these volatiles, what is the next step of its self defense process?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 29:16

Sure. These volatiles are being used by the plant as a cue, right that there's an attacker near, I guess. So it's really crazy because different species have different strategies. So different plants use this same cue to do something completely different. So in one instance, the cue could mean that the plant needs to induce defenses because surely an herbivore is about to come. And so it will start signaling within cells to create defensive compounds and then the plant will be less palatable to that insects, for example, and there's really high degree of specificity so specific insects that are consuming a plant. So for example, I study corn, but we can think of any plant species, it produces different smells or different volatile blends, depending on that herbivore. So it actually senses different compounds in the saliva or in the regard to tint of different insects, it's able to then manipulate the smells to be more reliable for its neighbors. So this strategy of induced defense is one way to combat this. But the one that is more closely related to my research is called defense priming. The induce defenses would be great if an herbivore actually appears and starts trying to consume the plant, it would have been a great strategy to use. But if there's no herbivore, then the plant would have used a lot of energy and resources. In order to produce these defenses that were really not useful to it, there is another strategy that plants can actually prime their defenses so we can think of it like being in a ready state, and only when an herbivore comes near and starts to consume the plants and the plant recognizes the herbivore then is able to really induce these high levels of defense of compounds. related to my research, I use these known defense priming cues or these volatile compounds that we know in corn prime plants as a way to understand if when I expose corn plants to different volatile compounds, if they were able to hear this or smell this and ready their defenses. As researchers, we are able to take advantage of these known strategies that plants are using in this communication to try to answer different questions,

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:52

right. I was trying to wrap my head around how corn evolved these triggers. Is this something that is from precursor state? Or is this something that has quickly evolved over just a few 1000 years or even a few 100 years.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 32:05

So the native plant that corn was bred from or maize that we know today is called teosinte. And I'm not very well versed on how well teosinte is able to prime its defenses, I'd imagine that it's been co evolved with definitely this idea of coevolution with different insects and how better or worse maybe the plants are able to communicate due to really long term interactions is really important. However, the more we learn about what these blends are composed of the more realized that a lot of the compounds that are in the blends are consistent through out different species of plants, volatiles. And so it adds another layer of complexity because we need to then figure out if it's the ratios of these volatile compounds, but that's doing the major communicating, right, or maybe the presence of one volatile in conjunction with another one, for example. And I specifically ended on corn because again, I'm really interested in the stomatal aperture, how open and closed they're in this whole plant process. With breeding plants over time, we've selected for the ability for plants to maximize yields, right, so like open stomatal while they photosynthesize as much as possible. And then close over time. And corn is really good at doing this. And so it is a model system in chemical ecology and also in plant breeding as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:46

Right. What are the implications of your research? Or what do you think that you can add to the field as it goes forward in the future?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 33:53

Yeah, so we've talked a lot about plant defenses in the past few minutes. And this is really intriguing for farmers and people who are growing crops and thinking about how to help plants defend themselves against these pests that reduce yields and reduce our ability to produce food. And so there's thoughts of using different volatile compounds to lower insects away from fields or maybe compounds that can help boost this natural immunity of plants or this prime state. I think that research looking at how these compounds are interacting with plants, so maybe getting into plants or how they might change the plants physiologies I think that the field of chemical ecology could really be combined with plant physiology in order to help better agriculture and help understand how we can use this to be more efficient in our crop production. I think what I've found is that and I say I think because I'm still not a million percent convinced that I can make such a bold claim. But I really do think that the properties of these volatile compounds will determine how they will enter into plant leaves. And so I think that when we use whole blends of compounds, there could be molecules with different properties that might be able to enter via diffusion, right, like small molecules. But in general, I think that my research has shown that larger compounds do require this stomatal pore as a port of entry. And then to further complicate things, we know that environmental context now is super important, not only because it changes this stomatal aperture, at night, plants close their stomata, but then their defenses might change based on what they perceive in these different contexts. So just so many possibilities, but one thing when you said that about nocturnal herbivores, I think that plants might also be able to open their stomata a little bit more to maybe hear better or smell better, or whatever verb you want to use. And so some of my Somatal conductance data has shown that, yeah, maybe during the day, they're better at modulating this to be able to fine tune what they might have heard. And at night, maybe there's completely different compounds that could allow this to happen and try and smell if an herbivore is present at night.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:40

That's super cool. Did you have anything else that you wanted to add? We know you have a passion for bringing stem research to underserved communities? Can you go into a little detail about that?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 36:49

Yeah, so I didn't grow up in a community that's much like anywhere else in the US. Communities where there's a lot of huge Hispanic population, or different diverse communities, oftentimes lack the availability to have different types of professionals present in large abundances in the community, I guess. And I just think that it's this presence of being able to see somebody who maybe sounds like you, or looks like you or something like that. I just think that it's the awareness that's able to propel kids in different directions that they might not have gone forward with, if they didn't know. And so after graduation, I want to move back to Miami and be able to talk science to different communities that not necessarily are younger, I really think that the elderly are really underserved community as well, especially in science, we don't really write or communicate with elderly folks very much. And I think that they're pretty vulnerable to being lonely or not have as much intellectual stimulation. So there's a lot of different communities out there that I find really enjoy a lot of like the common science thing, you know, like everyone has smelled freshly cut grass, and most of us love it. Yeah. So just being able to provide a little bit more scientific context to different groups, I think is hopefully how I can spend my life in the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:21

I think that's a great endeavor, being able to communicate scientific research and findings to everybody, you know, young, old, those in our field, those who are out of our field. All of that is super important in helping our society flourish, I think.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 38:35

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:37

All right. Our time's up for today. Thanks again, Natalie, for joining us. We really do appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 38:45

Thank you.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:45

Also you in the audience. If you have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That's all for now. Stay safe, and we'll catch you next time on We Measure the World!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Dr. Darren Ficklin is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Indiana University. He received his bachelor's in geological sciences at Indiana University, obtained his master's in geology at Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in hydrologic Sciences at the University of California Davis. After completing his Ph.D., he stayed in California and did postdoctoral work at Santa Clara University. His current research focuses primarily on the intersection of hydrology and climate.

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists for scientists...

DARREN FICKLIN 0:07

Yeah. So if you're not familiar with Brood X Cicadas they come out of the ground every 17 years, and these are not, these are not flies. These are several inches in length and a half an inch. So they come out every 17 years, and essentially what happens is when they come out, they leave these gigantic holes in the ground about the size of a dime. And these burrows go about, they can go up to 60 centimeters deep. So they can go relatively deep. So they emerge from the soil. They make their way up the tree, they'll mate on the tree. And then the larvae or nymphs will fall to the ground, dig into the soil, and they stay there for 17 years. So the research question was essentially, how does this how do these burros affect infiltration?

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:57

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is Darren Ficklin. Darren Ficklin is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Indiana University. He received his bachelor's in geological sciences there at Indiana University and then went on to get his master's in geology at Southern Illinois University and a PhD in hydrologic Sciences at the University of California Davis. After completing his PhD, he stayed in California and did postdoctoral work at Santa Clara University. His current research focuses primarily on the intersection of hydrology and climate. And today he's here to talk about his many research projects into watershed and soil hydrology, climate change, and bugs. So Darren, thanks so much for being here.

DARREN FICKLIN 1:52

Thank you for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:55

All right. So yeah, today, we wanted to talk about a few of your projects and research interests. But first, can you tell us a little bit about your background? And, and then how you became involved in hydrology?

DARREN FICKLIN 2:06

Yeah, that's a good question. So I'm, I'm from Indiana, Originally, I'm from about an hour south and I grew up in farmland. And I've always been interested in science. I have no idea why, some of these older, older folks listening may remember, Mr. Wizard, Bill Nye, I watched those all the time. I remember as a young kid, mixing mayonnaise, and ketchup and mustard and making my own chemical, chemical, chemical concentrations there and doing some weird stuff with that. But I've always been interested in science. I don't know really what happened with that. And as I grew older, I got to kind of be in the environment more. And so my dad worked for the USDA NRCS as a soil scientist, specifically what he did is he helped farmers around the region, limit erosion. So that I think that kind of steered me in the direction of the environmental science. And that was, that was essentially I was too young to know what that was. But as I grew up, in high school, I kind of could understand of, you know, what you can do in the environment. I was also really into computers at at the high school, I didn't understand them. In fact, I went to Indiana University, and I was originally a computer science major. And they threw me into a sophomore level course. And I had no idea what I was doing almost immediately. So that was, they threw me in and they were coding on the first day. So I did not understand what computer science was at that age. So I dropped that almost immediately. I talked to the advisor, one of the academic advisors at IU, and they they kind of steered me into this intro introductory geology course. And that was it, that basically, I took off from there, I really, really enjoyed it. And then as I took more and more classes, I took more hydrology classes in the upper levels. And that's really when when I took off as far as I was interested in hydrology, and I think a lot of that stemmed from my, you know, farming background and my dad's work with the USDA.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:15

So, I guess that's kind of fun. This is one of the things that we hear often is that either Yeah, the the folks that are now in their specialties they are quite often didn't start where where they thought or didn't end up where they thought they would end up starting with one thing moving on to another. So going from computer science. So then did with your computer science background, and then geology. So I'm assuming that that GIS then became kind of one of your one of your go twos to connect the two.

DARREN FICKLIN 4:46

Yeah, so at undergraduate I started taking a lot of GIS courses as well. That was junior senior level courses, and specifically they were geological applications in GIS, where you would work on I work on my own erosion processes on a hillslope. That type of stuff really, you know, really kind of kind of gelled everything together. For me the computer science aspect. Yeah, I didn't understand that computer science was coding. At that time, I learned very quickly. I mean, now I can code but I didn't didn't understand it when I was entering the undergraduate curriculum.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:20

Right. Well, let's talk, let's dive into some of your current research and or more recent research. A lot of a lot of what you've been working with, especially within the realm of hydrology is hydrology and Hydroclimatology. And and those kinds of they interplay between between climate change and variability and hydrological processes. Can you get, I guess, how did how did you go from from being, you know, working with? Let me back that up. So how did you come to focus more on on this, this, I guess, this interplay, the integration between climate and hydrology?

DARREN FICKLIN 6:03

Yeah, so my master's was in groundwater, groundwater hydrology, my PhD was in surface hydrology. So a lot of those are treated separately, they should not be treated separately, but a lot of them are treated separately. So that kind of gives me a little more general idea of the hydrological cycle. And as far as climate change goes, that really started when I was out in California, getting my PhD and it really started. You don't I don't realize this and when you're in the Midwest, but California exists because of its snowmelt snowpack. And I was really interested in how climate change was affecting those variables. So that's kind of what initially got me going on that. And then I took that a little step further and kind of worked on the agricultural aspect of climate change, specifically looking at water quality. I was looking at nitrates pesticide runoff in the Central Valley of California. And then that kind of led me directly in to my postdoctoral work, which, which was mainly on stream temperature, largely due because of the important aquatic species out west salmon, trout, that depend on a particular particular stream temperature to exist.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:13

I'm interested in definitely in the the issues around hydrology within the inner mountain and arid west. I mean, that's that's kind of a big deal now. And it has been for a while, you know, ever since ever since people started living there, you know, water is is a scarce resource, in those more arid environments, and especially like what you were talking about with being dependent on on snow melt on that snowpack, for for that runoff for recharge, for all those other things that we're dealing with, what are some of the questions that you're interested in? And maybe some of the things that you learned? And in researching, particularly with in dealing with with kind of those those more snow dependent regions?

DARREN FICKLIN 7:58

Well, would you add climate change to the mix? It's not not pretty, right. So the snowpack barely exists, depending on what what climate change your projection you're looking at and working on. The snowpack barely exist at the end of the century, right. And it's largely due to air temperature, air temperature, precipitation falls that either snow is rain, right snow or rain. And when you have a higher temperature, it's more likely to fall as as rain. And then you put that on an existing snowpack. That wipes it up pretty quickly. So So that's we've done work in the Sierra, the Columbia and the Colorado, and they're all basically telling you the exact same thing, you know, when you increase air temperature, and and even when when precipitation is held steady compared to historical rates, snowpack still goes down. Yeah, so that's, that's generally a conclusion. And that's, that's not a new conclusion. There have been plenty of people looking at that. And still looking at that, and specifically, how these dynamics are going to change and whether these models can capture these dynamics, and then the you add the whole reservoir management aspect of that, which I don't do, but how are you going to manage no water or lack of water when when to release this water? For agricultural irrigation and environmental flows? It's extremely complicated.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:15

Right, and yeah, I mean, personally speaking, I've been interested in in the, the, I guess, the plight of the Great Salt Lake here in in the West, and that, specifically, when you're talking about like, yeah, reservoir management or in dealing with snowpack. They're in the in the Rockies. They're nearby they had a bunch of snow. So to back this up the Great Salt Lake has been decreasing the the water level has been decreasing for for for years, for various reasons, climate change among them. But then also they're having a they had a huge snowfall this winter, and expecting a huge snowpack, but then we're dealing with As climate variability, so then you have a lot of snow, but then the next week, it's, you know, 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and you're having all that snow that's supposed to be getting packed down is melting, and then you're dealing with floods and other things like that. And so then, you know, the lake level will rise for a little while, but, but again, that that idea, like you said, that long term of the hydrology of that region of that Basin region does not look very good right now.

DARREN FICKLIN 10:29

Yeah, I mean, I did my postdoctoral project. One of my projects during my postdoctoral work was on Mono Lake in the eastern Eastern Sierras. And the issue of of that is still snowpack as well, but the main issue was that LA went up and grabbed all of the water entering entering Mono Lake now there's been some some laws to kind of, kind of move that back to a more reasonable allotments, but it's still the same. It's the same issue there. Where's the snowpack feeds, the small creeks, enter Mono Lake and when they when you don't have water, you expose the lake bed, which is salty and brine and lots of like, Salt Lake City has as well, right? Where you get these wind storms? And it just, yeah, asthma.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:09

Yeah, yeah, it's Yeah. windstorms. You have an inversion that then keeps all that that air pollution down all that kind of stuff as well. Yeah. And I mean, it's it's something that we've seen throughout throughout the world. I mean, yeah, especially there in California, Mono Lake Owens, Salton Sea. And then elsewhere, you have, you know, the Aral Sea, it's probably that the most well known one worldwide, where you have that just decrease in and that inflow. And then just, yeah, everything kind of goes to pot after that. Yes. It's tough to come back from that. And it's one of those things where, where you're changing. I don't want to be, you know, Debbie Downer about this, but a lot of times change doesn't happen until it's right there in your face. And then and then oftentimes, it's too late. So yeah, I don't know.

DARREN FICKLIN 11:57

Yeah and it's hard to tell farmers you can't have that water. Yeah, so yeah, just Yeah. When they've had it for so long.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:05

I think I think I remember hearing and, and I hope I'm correct on this, I don't want to say anything, but but that, therefore the Great Salt Lake, the, I think about 80% of the water that comes off, is being pulled for agricultural use something along those lines as and 20%. For for other, you know, industrial or urban or residential use. Yeah. And so that's, that is a difficult situation to find yourself in, is, especially as a farmer grower producer, where, you know, now I can't do what I've been doing, or what my family has been doing for generations, because, you know, some outside, you know, outside sources telling me, you know, that I'm using too much water. I've got water rights, and I don't want to go into all that stuff. But but it's definitely something that here in the intermountain west, arid west, it's it's something that is of within the prioritize discussions, and yeah.

DARREN FICKLIN 13:05

Well, that's not going away. I mean, I know California is doing a big groundwater management, groundwater recharge management, they're putting a lot of money into that. So it's there. There's a lot of money out the West to understand these problems, and they're not stopping.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:22

Have you? Have you gotten into any any kind of involvement with with policymakers when it comes to water use or management practices?

DARREN FICKLIN 13:33

No, no, I haven't. That's something I would like to do. We have a great school on campus, School of Public Environmental Affairs. They do a lot of environmental policy. And I do have colleagues that work with with policymakers. But it's something that I haven't really reached out and done yet. It's it's something that's needed absolutely.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:52

You have a, I guess, recent or current projects on funded by the USGS on rain on snow events. And looking into those, what have you found with that was what was your primary questions going into to that project? And what have you been finding with with that?

DARREN FICKLIN 14:08

Yeah, so that projects I had a PhD student here at IU that graduate and is now at the Stroudwater center out on the East Coast. And he got the interest of looking at rain on snow, but not in the western United States to where rain on snow is is really studied. A lot are quite well. We're looking at the Great Lakes, where there's a lot of snow, a lot of snow in the Great Lakes, but rain on snow isn't really looked at there. And we know that rain on snow causes flooding up in the Great Lakes. It happens. It happens frequently. So we're kind of taking what we've learned what we've done with western United States and moved it up to the Great Lakes Basin which needs some studying as well. And the main questions was essentially what's rain on snow doing in the future? And then what we're working on right now is what's rain on snow doing to water temperatures and how that's going to affect aquatic species Michigan is, is throwing a lot of money into these species that they're introducing up up in northern Michigan. They are arctic grayling is one of them that they're trying to get back. It's been there. And I'm trying to make it make it a successful return. So with all of this, we're working with these tribes in northern Michigan, help disseminate this type of information. So we're a year into this project, we've got roughly another year to go. Right now we're doing a lot of computational work, to try to get everything ready to go. So that we can start analyzing the data, start inputting climate scenarios and, and summarizing all of this info.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:41

So what are some of your primary hypotheses then that you're you're testing or looking at with this.

DARREN FICKLIN 15:47

So with the rain on snow stuff, we assume that rain on snow is going to decrease. Right? That's not what you would necessarily think. But when you have, and we actually what we found in Northern Great Lakes Basin, it increases in the southern Great Lakes Basin, it decreases the rain on snow events. And largely because you don't in the southern portion of the Great Lakes Basin, you don't have any snow. And you need rain to occur on snow, for rain on snow to happen. So while while we are warming in the in the southern Great in the southern Great Lakes basins, Southern Michigan, Northern Indiana, Northern Great Lakes basins up like Lake Superior, there's still going to be snow there. So what we're seeing is that there's going to be an increase in rain on snow events. So flooding, for example, and on the southern portion, and we're seeing a decrease on rain on snow. And right now we're looking at these implications of what that does to stream temperatures. So the hypothesis for the water temperature aspect is if you don't have a snowpack to cool the water temperatures, alright, so if you think about a snowpack that just slowly slowly melts, you're you're constantly inputting cold water into your stream. What happens when that's gone? What happens to the water temperatures when those gone? Can these trout which are trout and salmon, which are really economically important for this entire Great Lakes basin? What happens? Are they are they able to migrate out of there? Are they even able to exist? We know that they're going to be stressed out, but how stressed out? Are they? So that's kind of the general hypothesis is when you don't have snow? What happens? Right, yeah, right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:21

With that, so you're primarily looking at at those those fish species? Is there concern with the plant community or other, you know, other organisms as well that, that as you know, again, it is are you seeing the, you know, trout and others as kind of like the The Harbinger or canary in the coal mine of how things the rest of the the ecosystem might might react to this change?

DARREN FICKLIN 17:46

I don't know much about the plant communities. But if you think about warmer waters, they're usually more productive. So what that brings in, I don't know invasives. There's a whole question of on the plant community that I'm not an expert on, we were looking at trout and salmon, because that's when you think of these idyllic streams in northern Michigan. They're trout and salmon streams. That's what that's about people spend a lot of money to go up and do. So we're looking at those. And the tribes that we're working with on on that particular project that they're very interested in as well, as far as these the fish species. Right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:21

And is it? Is there a concern with you mentioned invasive species? Is that a concern with invasive fish species? Or is it mainly just the decrease in the the trout and salmon, just so

DARREN FICKLIN 18:31

something we will be able to do is see if, if invasive fish species are able to live? Well, we'll have a whole whole ensemble of stream flows and water temperatures, and we'll be able to say which species can survive there. Because generally, we know what fish species like, what they don't like. So we can develop all these scenarios. And there's a lot of invasive talk in Lake Michigan all the time. With all of these Asian carps, whether they can eventually make it in there or not. So it's something that we could do. And something that we probably should do in the end as well to see if if these invasive species are able to even survive there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:15

So what are some of the, I guess, parameters? Were some of the data that you're collecting, in order to and to to model and forecasts going forward?

DARREN FICKLIN 19:26

Yeah. So this is we work with the hydrological model. And if you're not familiar with hydrological models, just think of it as a big bunch of equations that all talk to each other, right. And the general input to these equations are precipitation temperature, and then the model essentially tries to figure out what happens with the water as it goes through the landscape. That's generally what these models do. The model that we're working with, which is the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, which is an open source model, it uses a lot of GIS layers. It uses a lot of the equations that I mentioned. So That's what we're kind of working with for this model for this project, and we collect a lot of observations, but most of these observations have already been collected by the USGS, the EPA, we're also working in Canada, some because Great Lakes go up there. So we'll use Canadian data. But largely the data that we use for this for this large scale project, the data already exists, so that that makes our lives a lot easier. And because it's an open source model, we can do a lot of different things with it. So one example that we did implement rain on snow into this model, which it did not do earlier. So we can we can test a lot of these different hypotheses using this this large scale model.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:35

Right. And so there's the I guess, a separate maybe connected project in that was funded by the NSF with with hydroclimate. And so yeah, getting data from Yeah, high resolution streamflow, water temperature, GIS modeling, all that kind of stuff. Can you connect it, or go into a little bit more detail about what's going on with that with that project?

DARREN FICKLIN 20:57

Yeah, I mean, it's essentially the same, we're developing these large scale models for all of the all of North America. And essentially, what we're producing, and what we've already produced is a database of water temperatures and stream flows in the future, for essentially every, let's say, every big water body in North America. So we developed a website to where the user can go and click on a particular watershed or basin, and they can download, essentially 1950 to 2100 projections of water temperature and streamflow at the monthly time step. We're in the middle of writing this, what they call a data paper up, we're in the middle of writing this right now, or what's essentially going to be introduced to the community where they can start using it. But the methods that I just mentioned in the previous project, it's the same methods just really big scale. So in both of these projects, we're using supercomputers to do this otherwise, you know, the desktops that we're talking on? Not able to do that type of computational work.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:59

Right. Right. And with with a lot of this, this modeling into streamflow and temperature, I guess you have some other publications, even more recently in, in nature, water, dealing with the impacts of from what you're finding, I'm assuming this is what from you're finding from these these models? And from current current research, and the impacts and and the implications for for yeah, water resource management and other things. Can you go into a bit more detail about about that?

DARREN FICKLIN 22:35

Yeah. So I took a sabbatical last spring. And during that time, I was in England, and I was working with some colleagues in England, and we all essentially got together. These were all water temperature people. We all we all got together, we figured out you know, what don't we know about water temperature. And when we look started looking back at the literature, we noticed that a lot of the water temperature studies that are they assumed natural conditions are there on these these northern Canadian rivers, Scotland, Scottish rivers that are just like perfect rivers, which if you go south and latitude, those don't exist anymore. And so what we thought is like, you know, we need to know more about what's happening with water temperature in urban landscapes when you have pipes. And when you are agricultural landscapes and we have an NSF funded project going on right now we're looking at the influence of tile drainage, on on water temperatures, as well. So we really want to understand what water temperature is doing in these really mucked up environments where we barely understand the hydrology. And we want to know what the hydrology is doing to the water temperatures and what what we've what we're doing and what that nature water paper kind of calls out as for just way more observations in these regions where we don't know anything about in the most screwed up environments. Let's do some observations and see how water temperatures react to precipitation events or heat waves or droughts because we really don't know what's going on in these really, really managed systems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:06

Right with with that, how are you going about? I guess, just from a so we talked about the modeling but but even just kind of boots on the ground type of field research, how are you going about collecting the data for, you know, for instance, it looking at at tile drainage effects on on stream temperature?

DARREN FICKLIN 24:27

Yeah, we spent a month in the summer going out and deploying water temperature sensors all over the Midwest. And we specifically selected basins that have not much tile drainage and in basins that have a lot of tile drainage. And we kind of installed these, these water temperature sensors along the spectrum of no tile drainage to a lot of tile drainage. Those are those are taking data right now. I hope that so we will, that's one thing we're doing is we're going out and we've installed 20 and we're probably going to stall five to 10 more sensors. So we're going to have a lot of data Uh, hopefully right now, but we're going to go out and collect it more in the fall. And we're going to use this information, try to understand what these agriculture practices are doing for water temperature. And if you're not familiar with tile drainage, it's, it's all over the Midwest, and we don't we know how what tile drainage does to water quality that's really well studied, but not not necessarily water temperature, which is kind of determined water quality is that as well, right? Yeah.

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:26

Right. I was gonna say I probably should have should have back this up a little bit, could you get go into a little into maybe not too much depth, but could you just explain tile drainage and how it's how it's used within the agricultural settings.

DARREN FICKLIN 25:39

tile drainage is essentially pipes underneath the landscape underneath agricultural landscapes. And it's essentially what it is, is it keeps the groundwater table from coming up to the surface. And, and it drains any water that comes in contact with it. So it's a perforated pipe. And that perforated pipe collects soil moisture, it collects groundwater, and it takes those pipes essentially, it's a highway for water and it takes it to the nearest water body. And that that's an agricultural ditch or river. So you can see how this would affect would affect water quality. But But the goal of tile drainage is to keep your soil from being waterlogged, either from groundwater or soil moisture, any water that intersects it, it's essentially gone because the pipes are perforated. So that's that's kind of why the Midwest is is is so agriculturally productive. Most of Northern Indiana was a wetland at one point and when you throw tiles in a wetland, they're gone, essentially. So yeah, it's all over the place, so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:43

interesting. Along with that, are you measuring any kind of other issues with water quality? So you talked about I mean, you're focusing on temperature, but but anything other you know, other chemicals, you know, nitrates or pesticides or other things like that?

DARREN FICKLIN 26:58

Not really any chemicals other than water temperature, I'm not a not a water chemist. I don't have a I don't have a wet lab. I can understand water temperature. That makes sense. My PhD student right now is getting his PhD in geography, but his dissertation is on how tile drainage affects hydrology. Specifically, he's looking at the flashiness of streamflow how fast the hydrograph goes up, and that goes down. Right now we started to look at how tile drainage affects drought, whether these tile drainage drained watersheds are more susceptible to drought than their counterparts without much tile drainage. So we're looking at the hydrology aspect as well. We have several new students coming in in the fall that will probably more along they'll take the water temperature work. And right up all right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:43

Okay. All right. I know that you had some other some other research looking into hydrological intensification and and just how that might impact water resource management. You just dealing with with precipitation events and their duration, their their size. Can you go into explain a little bit about that, that project there?

DARREN FICKLIN 28:13

Yeah, so defining hydrological, densification is essentially too much water and then not enough water. So it's exactly what has been happening in California, where they've been having this drought, drought, drought, drought, and then they got huge snowpack, right. If you if you think about how to manage reservoirs with no water, and then you get a lot of water, do you release that water into the streams? Or do you need to back that water up in case for the next drought, to store that water? So there's kind of a you got to it's a complex decision, whether they need to do release the water store the water so that's essentially what that project looks at. And it basically looks at extreme precipitation events, and then how long between the next one? So one thing we expect with climate change is extreme precipitation events, and then a dry period between them. So that's kind of what that study is looking at. And we did, we did a lot of climate models, and we looked at what's going on throughout the world, specifically tying that into how you can manage that with water, and how you can manage that with reservoirs.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:18

Right, right. Yeah, no, going back to California. I know that I mean, with excess water they've been, we've got Tulare Lake that's back again to Lake.

DARREN FICKLIN 29:27

It's now a lake! It's a lake now!

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:29

It's a lake. It was a lake and then it wasn't a lake and that's the lake again. And again, going back to Yeah, water issues in in the arid west. And especially with with agricultural side of things. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of issues. And I mean, again, it's one of these things where where we see this, like you're saying we see this in these particular regions, but but then these are just kind of prototypical of what what the potential is elsewhere throughout the world as well?

DARREN FICKLIN 30:03

Yeah, yeah, it's just that the West United States is and other arid regions, which is completely dependent on reservoirs. Yeah. So yeah, yeah.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:12

So what are you? I mean, did you come up with any suggestions for, for water management, I mean, you talked about reservoir management or other things like that. So

DARREN FICKLIN 30:22

I worked with Sara Nall, out of the Utah State. And she that's, that's her specialty. And we don't have many good recommendations. Other than that, you know, you kind of need to start thinking about this. planning out really extreme extreme scenarios of what happens when you have a really wet year, and then five dry years behind it. And you know, you didn't need to kind of run these in their, in their models, these reservoir management models to see what are we going to do? How can we do this? Or at least at least start thinking about this stuff? I mean, hopefully, California now is in the western United States now is thinking about this, but you know, maybe start implementing some policies. In case this happens again.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:02

Right, right. Right. All right. Well, let's switch gears here a little bit and talk about bugs. And I know this isn't your main specialty. But yeah, I was gonna say, did you ever think that you'd be an entomologist? No, no. So pretend to be one. So yeah, let's talk about let's talk about Brood X Cicadas and their emergence in 2021.

DARREN FICKLIN 31:26

Yeah, so if you're not familiar with Brood X cicadas, they come out of the ground every 17 years. And these are not, these are not flies. These are several inches in length, and a half an inch in width. So these are big, these are not, these are big bugs, they they can they can ride along on your hair or your back. So they come out every 17 years. And essentially what happens is when they come out, they leave these gigantic holes in the ground about the size of a dime. And these burrows go about, they can go up to 60 centimeters deep. So they can go relatively deep. So they emerge from the soil, they make their way up the tree. There, they can't fly yet, when they when they emerge, they eventually can when they when they break out of their shell, but they'll crawl up the tree. They'll mate on the tree. And then the larvae or nymphs will fall to the ground, dig into the soil, and they stay there for 17 years. So the research question was essentially, how does this how do these burros affect infiltration? infiltration rates. So I actually did this project in 2004, as well, which was the last emergence that was a that was an undergraduate project I worked on here, at IU. It's come full circle come full circle. The next one is, the next one is 2038. So I'll be ready for them. So essentially, what we did for this is we contacted the NSF hydrological sciences program, and we said, there's going to be a big disturbance coming, can we have just a little bit of money and what we did, is we bought the METER Group, SATURO units infiltration units, to go out and measure this, so and these are these cicadas they're can be a million per acre. So the ground looks like Swiss cheese. And there are areas in the same landscape which may not have any, any cicadas whatsoever in them. So the reason that they don't have any cicadas is maybe there's construction there between this and the previous 17 years. So what you'll see is, you'll see a lot of cicadas and these, these this fence rows or urban forests where essentially there's not been anything worked on in the past 17 years. So what we did, we took about 90 measurements with the SATURO unit all over Bloomington and we did it in urban landscapes in forested landscapes. And specifically, we had two of these units. One unit was measuring the infiltration rate, where there's a lot of cicada holes, cicada burrows, and the other one was not it where there were no cicada holes. So they're, you know, roughly two meters apart, we could kind of kind of find areas where there weren't any emergence holes. And what we found was that we found almost an 80% difference in infiltration rates in forested landscapes. So they these these bugs caused quite a bit of an increase in infiltration. We did not find any difference in urban or urban landscapes though, which was, which was very interesting. And we attribute that to there's a lot of compaction, soil compaction in these urban landscapes. So cicadas have a rough time, I guess burrowing down and they'll tend to have shallow or shallower burrows. And what we think is essentially if you have shallow burrows, you can take on less water. So we didn't actually see any difference of infiltration rates. So that's essentially what we what we found that that project it we still have a ton of data that we're working on, but it's officially going to wrap up this fall. So we there was An army of graduate students and undergraduate students all over Bloomington, surrounded by cicadas and taken all of these measurements, but it was, it was the easiest research question I've ever developed. Because it was it's just right, it was just right there in front of us, you know, how does this affect water, so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:16

Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, I want to get into more of the results with that hydraulic conductivity. But, but what Yeah, dealing with with the timing, because you know, that it's coming was it was a difficult to get funding ahead of time to plan up and say, Hey, I need it by I need to have this ready to go bye, bye, you know, was it spring 2021? Or whatever it may be? And then and then also, secondary to that, is that is the timing within your, your measurements? As as well? Is there? Is there? Is there a timing issue? Where where those holes, then will will fill in? And then you might not have the right, you know, the right results that that might or I guess the more accurate results they might get earlier on? So two questions are about timing?

DARREN FICKLIN 36:10

Well, the answer is yes to both timing is very important. So the the product at the NSF project that we funded that we asked for funding was NSF rapid and rapid means you don't need to go through the review, go through the program manager, and they will essentially cut you a check to do what you're requesting to do. So that process didn't take too long. I don't remember but month, month and a half or so, that had to start in March, or mid spring to get that happen. And then essentially, once I got the money, what the only hold up was getting the equipment to me. And that that that was that was on time as well. So I got the equipment in roughly mid May, maybe late May. And they all emerged in mid May, late May. So the timing was kind of very important. I had to get the measurements as soon as they soon as they got here as soon as they emerged. The other question, yeah, we had to get we had to get these measurements quick. Because it was noticeable, especially in the Midwest, when leaves started falling from the trees, big storms sediment, filling it up back up a sediment. So we wanted to get as many measurements as we could, I mean, we took 90 measurements, which was essentially five days a week with four or five people out in the field. So 90 measurements is quite a bit for this for this type of work. Now, we only used about 70, because there were some issues with the soil afterwards. So we can go into those a little bit later. But yeah, timing, we had to get it. We had to get all these measurements as quick as possible.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:40

Yeah so yeah, so let's, let's get into so how are you? So we talked about using the SATURO Infiltrometer, how are you, how are you using that? How are you doing your site selection? Yeah, could you get into just kind of the nitty gritty of how the the field process worked?

DARREN FICKLIN 37:59

Yeah. So we know, we wanted to compare the cicada infiltration rates in in forested and urban landscapes. So that that was kind of criteria number one. And essentially, we had a forest that we worked in, so we were pretty good there, we could we could find the cicada holes, take the measurements, and then look around several meters and find an area without nice decadal holes, and then we would just set these two units up at once. And they would they would just be going for, you know, two or three hours, however long they go. Urban was a little harder. We mostly concentrated our measurements in parks, parks and lawns, where we had permission to be in there taking measurements. But essentially, we needed to, we needed to find areas where the emergences were pretty, have a pretty high rate. And then and then work backwards from there. Okay, so that that's generally the fieldwork. And then we would we took 90 measurements in total, and we use 70. I think for the paper that was published earlier this year on this.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:01

So with that, you said you found an 80% difference between the disturbed and undisturbed when when it comes to is that field saturated hydraulic conductivity is that correct?

DARREN FICKLIN 39:11

That's Kfs (field saturated hydraulic conductivity). Yep fields such as oh, yep.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:14

And, and so I guess, is that what you were expecting? We're expecting more or less or, or does that sound about right?

DARREN FICKLIN 39:25

We didn't know what we would expect that areas with high ticket emergence borrows, you would have higher infiltration rates. That makes sense, right. And we expected that to happen. But we did not see that in urban landscapes for for the reasons I previously mentioned. So hypotheses Yeah, we should see higher saturated hydraulic conductivity rates and areas with with higher emergence rates. Yeah. But we didn't know the percent because this, this hasn't been done. Yeah, we had no idea. We had no idea, you know earthworms. I think it's 10%. Okay, but this was pretty I mean, these are big holes, these aren't earth worm holes so I mean.

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:00

Yeah these Yeah, right these are large macropores.

DARREN FICKLIN 40:02

Yeah.

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:03

I guess one of the other questions that I had was, do you see other, you know, macro invertebrates like like cicadas or any other animals along those lines that have potentially as big as an impact as what you were seeing? I guess the biggest impact on soil hydrology, as what you're seeing with cicadas are.

DARREN FICKLIN 40:25

Not in this area, not in this area. I mean, this was a really intense emergence to where there's the soil look like Swiss cheese.

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:34

Right. So I mean, you're talking about millions per acre, right?

DARREN FICKLIN 40:37

Yeah, so there's nothing around here that does that. So no, I think this was the this was the as high as the Kfs. Probably could be in forested landscapes. And so now we're starting to think about what are the implications of this type of work? Right. Yeah. And in one of the things we are looking at is this potential, what happens in underneath this groundwater? What happens underneath the groundwater, where there are papers in review about what happens with soil respiration? When this when this happens? So carbon carbon fluxes and nitrogen fluxes? So the implication so I kind of started out as the water person, and I'm kind of building on what are the implications of other aspects.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:21

Right. Right. Because I mean, especially with you know the emergences, like like these, I mean, they're huge, but they're, they are only, you know, 17 years apart. That's, that seems like a, it's a very long time when you're dealing with especially lifecycles of of invertebrates. But is it is it something where, where we might see, I mean, I guess, man, like, climate change comes into play, as well as that, as the climate changes, I'm assuming that putting my my fake entomologist hat on is that I'm assuming that that this emergence is triggered by by environmental factors, potentially, I mean, for it to be 17 years. I mean, for other for other emergent, you know, species, it's based off of, you know, you know, degree days or other things like that, where, where there's those internal processes, that that trigger these things. Do you see potentially, I mean, I guess, couple questions here. Do you see climate change affecting the emergence of of cicadas, you've been you've been doing some work in, in climate change in the region. But then on the other side, as well, is that could the cicadas as as we're as urbanization expands or dealing with the impacts of, you know, water flow within the soil? Could there be changes or future impacts? To any kind of degree where we we might need to mitigate or manage the issue?

DARREN FICKLIN 42:52

Yeah. So as far as climate change, they emerge when it's the soil has been 64 degrees Fahrenheit for three days. So they'll start to move up. So if you want to just warm up the soil, then they're going to emerge earlier right now, why they come out every 17 years? I could not find a good answer for that. Whether the cicadas kind of track the number of you know, summer cycles, I don't know I don't put my fake fake entomology head on to and but I don't know why they emerge every 17 years. But if you talked about climate change, it's all dependent on soil temperature for them. So warm up soil, and they're gonna merge earlier into the year so maybe instead of mid May, they're maybe gonna move early May alright, and it's gonna screw up graduation around here. The the the other thing is, is there the nips, essentially hanging out in like a little feeding cell and these feeding cells are attached to a tree root. So cicadas have to be where trees are at all times. So they are not going to they're not going to emerge in the middle of a soccer field, unless there was a tree there 17 years ago, right, so they need to be near trees, because that's what they feed on the roots. So but from our studies, we think, you know, all these deforestations, suburban housing, moving out, anything that's going to disturb that top of the soil column where these nymphs are hanging out right now is going to wipe out the cicadas are there they're not going to they won't come back in these areas. And I live in an old neighborhood where their cicadas were all over the place. And right across the street was a new subdivision. There were no cicadas in that entire subdivision.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:33

Interesting.

DARREN FICKLIN 44:34

So, so that type of land use management will certainly wipe out cicadas.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:39

Right. Right. Well, any other interesting stories, I guess, when you're dealing with with bugs, there's got to be some funny stories about people getting attacked by bugs or Yeah, well, more or anything.

DARREN FICKLIN 44:53

My wife went grocery shopping with two cicadas on her shoulder the entire time. That was a common occurrence when you go to the grocery store during that time period. As I was walking my dog around the neighborhood, I talked to another dog owner whose dog had to get their stomach pumped. Because they've eaten so many cicadas out in their yard. They're the moles were outrageous. I've never seen more moles in my yard. During this time period. Everyone was eating well, the birds are eating well everyone was eating well, at this time period, it was even so even so there the birds were having a buffet there were still there were still so many, then the noise was deafening. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's it's a wild experience for for about a month, month and a half.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:40

Yeah, man. Well, well, good luck in 2038 when they'll be back, though, coming around again, you'll have everything everything ready. Yeah, I was gonna say come and come 2038. I mean, if you put your, your, your future you hat on? Do you have any other questions that you would like to investigate when it comes to soil hydrology with with cicada emergence,

DARREN FICKLIN 46:00

I would love to get some groundwater wells in. I would love to get a sense I know where they're at. I'd love to get some soil moisture sensors that go deeper in the landscape and actually see what happens to soil moisture during during precipitation events. And so these questions are endless now that we know a little bit more about what they do. We can be a little bit more prepared for this, even though we had 17 years to be prepared for it. We we still we still had to rush it through it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:28

All right. Well, I'm sure we'll be in touch then.

DARREN FICKLIN 46:30

Yes, yeah.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:31

When that comes around, so.

DARREN FICKLIN 46:32

Go ahead and get the equipment ordered now.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:34

That's right we now have to sit around for 17 years. I don't think our warranties last that long.

DARREN FICKLIN 46:40

Ah okay we'll have to renew that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:42

Yeah, all right. So let's switch gears one final time here. You had a project a couple years ago that you're working on in dealing with crowdsourcing and citizen science when it comes to hydrology and just looking at watershed data. Can you talk about that little is it is the Boyne river research project. Is that Is that correct? I pronounced that right. Yep. Yeah, so the Boyne river research project, yeah can you go into a little detail about about that project, how it started and why you were looking to use a citizen scientists?

DARREN FICKLIN 47:19

Yeah, it was in the Boyne River. This was a river in northern Michigan, kind of the same types of rivers, we just talked about lots of trout, lots of salmon, lots of people spending money to fish on this. And we, I worked with people at a crowd hydrology.com, where most of this information come from, and we kind of got an idea of like, okay, so the USGS, they do a really good job of measuring streamflow and water temperature, but they can't do everything. And they can't really get these smaller rivers. So what would happen if we installed some citizen science measurements, citizen scientists, devices, and these devices, it's a ruler in a river, that's all it really is. It's a ruler in a river on a piece of wood. And the top of the ruler says, Call text this number with the height of the water. What we did a little unique with this project is that we also installed digital thermometers as well. So there'll be two, two poles in the water, what is it and what's the water temperature, and there's a digital screen that says, you know, whatever, whatever temperature it is. And both of these have signs that say send this data to Texas, Texas, this information that gets cataloged somewhere and it just waits on us to do something with it. So at the same time, we were developing one of these hydrological models for the Boyne river. And the really the research question is, can we use this citizen science data for hydrological modeling? Usually, we use USGS data, because it's, it's reliable, it's accurate, etc. But if we were successful, right, so we got a lot of these citizen science measurements, and we use these citizen science measurements, we didn't get a lot of them, but they're certainly enough to do what we wanted to do. So we integrated these measurements into a hydrological model model was relatively accurate. And we were we could do some things with this model. And what we did was we developed a website to where we would forecast the streamflow in the water temperature for up to seven days in the pants, not too different to what you're seeing on the phone with the weather, to where the local community can can click on a particular day and seeing what the water temperature is going to be in a particular stream or each, you know, five days from now. So ultimately, it worked. You know, the main issue with this type of work is the uncertainty of the data with the USGS, you know, you know what you're getting and it's pretty reliable, but here we were getting we know we know that the know that the water level is not 15 feet. You know, we know we know that so we'd have to throw that information out. I would have people send me pictures of the of the gage just is not not what I wanted. But we would get a lot of different different types of data that we couldn't use. And if someone sent us a data that was one foot, that's a reasonable number, right? We don't know if that's right, or whether it's wrong, but something that we had to account for when we're developing these hydrological models of this region. So

BRAD NEWBOLD 50:24

So yeah, so a couple well, first question yeah, do you, I mean, do you bake some some, I guess, some variability into into that model when you're dealing with with those data?

DARREN FICKLIN 50:35

Yeah, so what we did a Data Assimilation technique, and we can assume some uncertainty associated with that, right? I don't remember what number we use, but you know, think about plus or minus 10%, or, you know, whatever, whatever that is, we can kind of bake that in which it's useful when you're working with this type of data to do something like that. Because you don't know what you're getting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 50:57

Right, yeah. And I think with any kind of forecasting models, or any anything along those lines, I mean, we're dealing with probabilistic models, where, where's your, you're dealing with a range of certainties? And so yeah, so yeah, even for even for, like you mentioned, you know, our weather forecasts, or whatever, you might say, oh, you know, the Weather Channel says it's going to be a high of this and this, but they're, they're basically taking that, you know, that mean, or whatever it may be of their models and saying, Hey, this is our, our, you know, 95% certainty or something along those lines. Yeah. So yeah, all that kind of stuff is kind of baked in, that we take for granted, when we're when we're dealing with models on a daily basis.

DARREN FICKLIN 51:36

Yep. That's essentially what we had to do. You know, we knew roughly, workflow from previous work, we knew what the uncertainty should be, we could kind of bake that in, and we're gonna be around a range rather than an exact value.

BRAD NEWBOLD 51:51

Right yeah. And if you were, if you were to do this again, or revive it, or, you know, do it somewhere there in Indiana. What are some of the improvements that you think you'd could make in dealing with kind of crowdsourcing citizen science data?

DARREN FICKLIN 52:04

Well, where we worked with, and Boyne, we worked with a community within Boyne called the Friends of the Boyne River, and they are heavily invested in the Boyne river. So they would go out and take measurements for us a lot. Alright, so one of the things that we learned from this type of type of study is you can't just pick another watershed, you need to have a community that cares about the river. Because if they don't, then you're not gonna get the measurements. So there's really no use of you being there. All right. So we targeted the Boyne river because we had worked with or some of us have worked with the Friends of the Boyne River, who would we know that they would they paddle the river all the time, they clean up the river all the time. So we developed a relationship with them prior to even starting to study. So if I were to pick a watershed in Indiana, we would need to do the exact same thing. Like I said, otherwise, if if the citizens aren't taking observations, there's no citizen science going on. Right. So there's just no point. So that's kind of the big take home message there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 53:08

Great, we're getting close to our time. Any any final thoughts for our audience about about stuff that you're working on? Or? Or anything that we've talked about?

DARREN FICKLIN 53:19

No, I mean, I think we've mentioned a lot. A lot of the stuff that we've talked about are kind of still going, for example, the rain on snow that we mentioned earlier on, some of this still going on. Citizen science, we're always trying to bring up we've always talked about going out to the Yellowstone and doing something very similar to look at a different research question out there it's flooding. In Northern Michigan, it's more species, aquatic species. So yeah, a lot of these a lot of these projects that we talked about are kind of they're still going on. And some future research projects were usually largely dictated by the students that I work with their their interest, and they may not be interested in, in flooding, they may be interested in drought, and we'll go we'll go that direction with them so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 54:04

Right, right, awesome. Alright and if anybody in our audience wants to find out more about this stuff that you're working on, where might they be able to go?

DARREN FICKLIN 54:15

You can always send me an email at D-Ficklin, dficklin@indiana.edu. I don't know what social media exists at this point. Right now it's X, I don't know what it'll be. But I am, I am @d_ficklin on Twitter/X. If you want to find me there. We would maybe talk to talk elsewhere. So that those are the main ones send me an email, always happy to chat about these projects and get something going.

BRAD NEWBOLD 54:45

Okay, awesome. Well, our time is up for today. Thanks again, Darren, for being with us. We really appreciate you taking time to talk with us today. I know I've enjoyed the discussion. I hope that those in our audience, have as well.

DARREN FICKLIN 54:58

Had a great time. Thank you for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 55:02

Stay safe and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Steve Blecker PhD is a research soil scientist with the Ag Experiment Station at Colorado State University. He obtained his Bachelor's at Penn State University and graduate degree in pathology at Colorado State University. His research focuses on sustainable agriculture, soil health, and range land restoration. Steve is actively involved in collaborative projects with the farming community and contributes to the advancement of sustainable and resilient agricultural practices.

Jim Ippolito PhD is currently a professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. He obtained his Bachelor's in agronomy from the University of Delaware, and his graduate degree in soil chemistry, fertility, and quality from Colorado State University. Jim is an expert in and teaches soil fertility and soil health principles and practices. He is actively involved in research, teaching, and extension activities, working to improve soil health and fertility for the benefit of farmers, land managers, and the environment.

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

JIM IPPOLITO 0:07

My gut is telling me that this is where we're going to see the best bang for our buck in terms of return on investment, for improving carbon in our soils, it's going to be in the Western United States, we're going to see drastic improvements. And I'll tell you from some of my experiences with other soil health projects, that if you do things, quote, right, you might see a change in less than five years. In fact, we had a project over on the western slope of Colorado where we saw changes in three years in terms of organic carbon accumulation in the soil surface in three years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:41

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continues. Today's guests are Steve Blecker and Jim Ippolito. Steve Blecher, is a research soil scientist with the Ag Experiment Station at Colorado State University. He obtained his Bachelor's at Penn State University and graduate degrees and pathology at Colorado State University. His research focuses on sustainable agriculture, soil health and range land restoration. Steve is actively involved in collaborative projects with the farming community and contributes to the advancement of sustainable and resilient agricultural practices. Jim Ippolito is currently a professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. He obtained his Bachelor's in agronomy from the University of Delaware, and his graduate degrees in soil chemistry, fertility and quality from Colorado State University. Jim is an expert in and teaches soil fertility and soil health principles and practices. He is actively involved in research, teaching and extension activities, working to improve soil health and fertility for the benefit of farmers, land managers and the environment. And today, they're here to talk about their research into agroecosystem management, soil health, and Ecosystem Sustainability and resiliency. So Steve, and Jim, thanks so much for being here.

STEVE BLECKER 2:09

Glad to be here.

JIM IPPOLITO 2:09

Yeah, thanks for having us Brad.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:12

Alright. So today, we wanted to talk about a few of your projects and research interest. But first, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be involved in soil science and your particular specialties?

STEVE BLECKER 2:25

Yeah, I just sort of wandered into soils, really, I mean, I didn't really like I didn't really know what I wanted to do at Penn State and I just kept kind of wandering around taking different classes. And the day, I took the I took an intro to soils class, and then it just something just clicked. I was like, wow, this is really cool. I mean, people actually study soils, I mean, wow. So I just took all the soils classes, I could get a hold of, and then my undergrad ran out, and I just wanted to keep going. So turned to grad school. And it's learning about soils ever since.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:03

what got you involved in in kind of the agricultural side and with extension activities?

STEVE BLECKER 3:08

Well, that's pretty recent development. For me, I was I was doing more basic research for most of my for a lot of my career anyway. And, and just kind of once, when I came back to Colorado, and in my current position, there was this opportunity to do a lot more kind of applied research, just kind of work with growers in different agroecosystems, it just kind of you know it was exciting to me to be able to, you know, instead of, I used to publish in, not that I don't publish anymore, but in scientific journals, and maybe read by a handful of people, but now it's just it's more I'm more interested in kind of connecting with growers and just letting helping them understand the soils that they're working with.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:56

And Jim, how about you?

JIM IPPOLITO 3:58

Well, my, my path into soils is much like Steve's like, when I was an undergrad, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I was geared towards sciences, like science is in my blood, basically, in my genes. And I knew I didn't want to go into chemistry. My, my family has a long history of being in the chemistry field. So I steered clear of chemistry. I really steered clear of chemistry. And then I stumbled across horticulture class when I was a freshman. I said, Oh, that's interesting. Let me go see if there's any other classes that are offered within the College of Ag at the University of Delaware. And just like Steve, I took Intro to soil science. And I was hooked. I just, it just felt right. And lo and behold, there is a lot of chemistry in soil science. And so I'm a chemist. I consider myself a soil chemist and I love it. I just love what I do. I've been involved with a lot of different sectors though. A lot of ag over my 30 plus year career, in fact, most of it has been an ag but also in, in sites that have been contaminated with heavy metals, or more recently sites that are contaminated with these forever chemical compounds, PFAS's and PFOA's. And, you know, just solving problems, I'm, I'm really an applied soil chemist, I love what I do. And, and I've known Steve, we both known each other's for oh my gosh, since 1990, we went to grad school together at Colorado State University, and our paths have just done this, we've interwoven our paths over the over the years. So, which is why we still work together.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:42

That's good. That's good that you guys still like each other, then after working together so long, more or less. And I do hope that maybe we can come back and talk about those forever chemicals. That was kind of a side, you know, side discussion that I think is really interesting and pertinent to a lot of stuff that's been, you know, popping up recently. I mean, but anyway, we'll come maybe we'll come back to that later. So one of the one of the I guess, themes, or I guess, overarching research interests that seems to be within both of your specialties deals with soil health, or what we have now call soil health I know, in the intro, Jim, we talked about your or I mentioned that your degrees were in soil chemistry, fertility quality, which is kind of what now we would term soil health. I was wondering if you if you guys could just kind of give us a give our audience a basic overview of what we what is considered now soil health, what are the the principles that that go into soil health? You know, how do we, how do we quantify or measure soil health and kind of all those kinds of things?

STEVE BLECKER 6:54

Okay, I'll take a crack at it, and then fill in the gaps, Steve, because, you know, when I think about soil health, and when I talk about soil health to a lot of people that maybe are not strongly familiar with soil health, this is how I approach it, I approach it much like discussing human health. And when we go to the doctor, because maybe we don't feel right, and the doctor runs a bunch of tests on us, right, so a doctor may ask you to run on a treadmill, for example, to take a look at maybe physical health, you'll get a blood draw. So blood might be chemical health, and sooner or later down the line, somebody's probably going to start taking some gut microbiome samples from you. And that's a measure of biological health. So when we talk about health, especially with humans, we oftentimes never talk about health directly, but we look at the measurements that we think get are geared towards human health or the like, good human health, if you will, we do the same thing with soils. So in soils, we look at soil physical characteristics, chemical characteristics, and certainly biological characteristics. And we look for the sometimes we call it the sweet spot, at least that's what I call it, where all three of these physical, chemical and biological overlap. And, you know, you can think of three circles overlapping. Many of us have used this analogy before, and looking at where that circle in the center encompasses the, quote, best of physical, chemical and soil, biological health. So that's, that's my approach. And to be honest with you, I've used this approach for oh my gosh, almost my entire career without even knowing it. What do you think, Steve?

STEVE BLECKER 8:39

Man, that's a hard act to follow. I like the analogy with the human health. I hadn't thought of that. That's pretty good. But no, I mean, you're right. It's the name has changed, didn't always used to be soil health, but the things we measure, I mean, there's three major biology, chemistry and the physical properties of soil. I mean, you're right. I mean, that's, that's how they interact, to determine, you know, how healthy your soil is going to be for, you know, what the end uses, in our case, a lot of its agriculture. So how do these different properties interact.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:13

So, so along with with what you're talking about with, you know, I guess, using continuing with that analogy or metaphor of, of human health, are there? I guess there's two questions that I have here. And maybe they're kind of kind of overlapping here. But within when we're dealing with human health, you know, we will check our pulse to see if we're still alive, right. That's kind of a very basic, basic overview of how you're doing right if you're, you're healthy, you're alive. But But like you said, there's there's other aspects as well. Are there and I don't I don't want to say are there shortcuts but are there are there particular measurements or characteristics of the soil itself, where you can kind of say, hey, kind of just take a quick snapshot and say, soil is doing pretty good because of XY and Z? Or is it something where you really do have to dig in to each of those physical, biological and chemical characteristics to really say how healthy that soil is?

STEVE BLECKER 10:23

Yeah, that's a great question. I, I don't know if there's any shortcuts, because every soil is different. And every, even if the soil is the same, the management practices under which the soil is, is under Well, that's the management practices that are being applied to a soil, even if the soil is the same changes the soil, we all know that. So quantifying soil health is, it can be somewhat tricky, because if you want to take a shortcut, and you know, a shortcut in one soil, it may not be applicable for a completely different soil. And so I think about the programs that we run at Colorado State University and Ohio State University, and we look at a number of different indicators or soil characteristics that encompass physical, chemical and biological health. And what we tried to do is tease out the minimum data set, that would be for a specific soil, or maybe a specific management system, or something along those lines, which is basically what we're doing with a number of projects that we have at Colorado State University. And we don't want to have a producer sending a soil sample to our testing facility or another testing facility to analyze for 20 different characteristics when maybe only three are necessary. That's, that's the sweet spot that we look for in these different systems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:50

I guess what would soil like you said, there's, there's differences between, you know, how soil might look or a particular type of soil within varied, you know, agricultural, or other land management uses. How would How would a, I guess, what would a healthy soil look like? If we want to, you know, stereotype we're whatever, what would a healthy soil look like? In, you know, an agricultural field versus a healthy soil? Say, even just in, you know, general environment? So with, you know, within? I don't know, if if getting into forestry is too deep for you guys, or whatever? And versus, you know, I don't know, if if we're dealing with soil health as much in you know, more of the civil engineering side of things. There's different things that they look at for that, but how would How would a healthy soil? What would a healthy healthy soil look like in those different situations? And is there some, some overlap? Or would you expect completely different soil profile profiles to I don't want to say, you know, but different soil, like suites of characteristics within those different regions or spaces?

STEVE BLECKER 13:05

What yeah, there's, I mean, the big concern in Colorado, is water, I mean, we're a pretty dry state. And anything you can do to improve the water holding capacity of the soil, I mean, that generally will help the soil health, but also help the plant productivity. So I mean, you can just go out into a field and dig up the surface of soil and, you know, you can see how well it's aggregated, you know, what kind of pore space can the water move freely down into the soil kind of. So it can be stored in how much organic matter, you'll always hear, can't get away from soil health without talking about organic matter in our soil carbon, because it's just, it's so key to so many different properties. One of which, of course, is its ability to hold water. So if you I mean, if you go out in the field and look side by side, you can just pull out a cloud of soil and, you know, see how well it's aggregated. Versus in I've seen people like the NRCS, they'll take a chunk of soil that's healthy, and put it in like a big, clear cylinder and let it sit there. And if it's, you know, the healthier soil kind of stays together, the aggregates hold together, whereas a soil that's, you know, quote, unquote, less healthy, tends to, you know, kind of break apart and fall apart much quicker. So that's there's a lot of visual cues, you can look at.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:26

How, I guess, what are some are there some general principles, I guess, for land managers to think about when it comes to just overall improving their soil health? I mean, what if there were just key steps or? Yeah, just kind of a basic outline for how to improve your soil health. What would those look like?

JIM IPPOLITO 14:54

Yeah, that's a great question. I think having a PhD I often use the term it depends. Because it really depends on where you're located. So I think about the projects that we have where we're using METER Group equipment, we were using them dominating the Western United States, specifically Colorado, and then in other surrounding states, but mainly Colorado, and we're talking about the Western US. So in Colorado, for example, a basic outline would be, like Steve just mentioned, focusing first on carbon. And anything that you can do to improve organic carbon content in the soils of Colorado, for example, you're gonna win the battle, and you likely will see an improvement in soil health. And, and there's a reason behind this because the soils in Colorado are naturally low in organic carbon content. And they've become lower over time because of historical agricultural practices. So anything we can do to increase organic carbon in the soils that are relatively fragile, that typically have less than probably three and a half percent organic carbon or organic matter to begin with, is a bonus in the western United States. And that leads to what Steve mentioned, increases in water holding capacity aggregate stability, carbon is a food source for micro organisms that enhance nutrient cycling and turnover, which enhances the chemistry of soils. And it's all linked together. And, and if you looked at those three circles, biology, chemistry, and physical aspects, the sweet spot where those three overlap is carbon, it's really carbon in the center. That's how I look at it. I'm not a carbon chemist, definitely not a carbon chemist, but we measure carbon, and we've measured carbon in our soils for decades. Now, Steve, and I have done this for 30 or 30 plus years together, yeah, because this ties in with what we're doing with the equipment. And so you know, in the western US, we're drought prone. And so anything we can do to increase water holding capacity of our soils, is a benefit. So in terms of soil health, or looking for systems that producers manage, that get a little bit more bang for the buck in terms of carbon storage, and subsequently utilizing METER Group equipment, to take a look at the changes in moisture holding capacity over time. And one of the things that's just really, it just stands out to me is when you look at the soil health research has been done across the US. And if you look at the areas of the US where METER Group equipment is located, there is a big hole, and it's almost hovered over Colorado. So that's what we're trying to do with our projects is to fill that gap.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:54

Awesome. We're glad to help out with that as well. So no, I think definitely, definitely, I think that that is one thing and because we see this in in lots of different in varied applications, whether you're talking about soil moisture, or other soil characteristics, but also, we have that with, you know, with weather monitoring, or whatever sorts of systems, we have a lot of these these regional Mezonets that are going up throughout the United States and elsewhere. And by creating we've we've also had people on our podcast talking about Yeah, creating networks of soil moisture, data and so moisture, water potential, so yeah, soil water potential, those kinds of matrix potential, that kind of stuff. So definitely got being able to, to connect, we want to be able to know what's going on in the here and now. But also, there's, there's this added, imperative, you know, this, this added, I guess, urgency to also be able to predict what's, or forecast, what's going to be happening in the next, you know, 5-10-50 years down the road as well. And if we don't have that good data right now to work with, then then we're, you know, just kind of shooting in the dark type of thing. So, let's...

STEVE BLECKER 19:20

One thing we're kind of, I mean, we're kind of looking into because we have, we have METER sensors scattered over pretty large chunk of the state in all kinds of different agroecosystems, irrigated non irrigated range land. So that, you know, it got us thinking what I mean, there's, initially the idea is to, you know, let the producer understand, like, what his practices are doing to soil moisture. But also at the same time, we have, as you mentioned, I mean, we were kind of just inadvertently, I guess, building this network of soil moisture monitoring stations across the state that yeah, so that might be able to help us answer You know, some of these questions about, you know, how the different systems respond to drought and so

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:04

Right, right. And I want to come back to this to in particular, in talking with you're talking with you about, about your, your main research project, because there's a lot that we want to know and understand about, about the instrumentation, but also about just the the challenges in creating, like you said, inadvertently, or on purpose, creating these networks, and, and being able to say, okay, what are the challenges in having, you know, all sorts of instrumentation just all over the place, about, you know, installation, and, and, and connecting them all. And not to mention, you know, collecting the data, as well as analyzing it. And we're dealing with, you know, getting into big data issues, and all that kind of stuff. And so, so there's a lot of a lot of interesting questions that we can talk about here in a second with that. I want to let's, let's switch gears, and we did have some folks here that wanted to know more about, they're in Colorado, the STAR program. They're in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture, they're in Colorado, can you tell us a little bit about that program and what it's all about?

STEVE BLECKER 21:30

Steve's gonna pawn it off on me. Okay. So the STAR program is something that was not initially created in Colorado, it initially began in Champaign County, Illinois, it stands for Saving Tomorrow's Agricultural Resources program. And in Illinois, it was geared around water quality. So programs, ie management of different parcels of land to help improve water quality that's moving off site from a parcel of land. We took that concept. And oh, my gosh, probably about three or four years ago, in Colorado, we created with the help of a lot of people, the STAR program that's centered around soil health, not water quality. Again, it still stands for Saving Tomorrow's Agricultural Resources, but it's based on essentially the backbone of the five principles of soil health at the NRCS promotes. And so I can't remember all of them. I'm drawing a blank here, but you know, it's soil cover living roots, introduction of livestock. There's two others, I should know these off top my head, I've done this for so long, and probably just blanket I'm blanking. But the the five principles of soil health that the NRCS promotes. And then what we've done is we've created in Colorado, a set of STAR field forms that are housed on the Colorado Department of Agriculture's STAR website. And these field forms were developed hand in hand with producers in different sectors of of ag within the state of Colorado. And so we went through, I don't know how many iterations of these field forms hand in hand with producers to come up with a scoring system. So producers will if they're growing corn, for example, in the state of Colorado, they can feel fill out a field form that's geared towards corn, they're asked a number of different questions and the questions are scored. And then the scores are accumulated. And they fall into one of five categories. So they and they receive a STAR placard. And the STAR placard that goes into their field or on their fence is either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars. One star is the producer is doing the average as to what everybody else is doing in terms of focusing on soil health within that type of agroecosystem, and five is your, you've maxed out all the soil health principles that the NRCS promotes. Getting a five star is really, really difficult. Getting a one star is really, really easy. And we've set this up hand in hand with the producers to do this on purpose because not everybody should get a five star if they're only doing a three star work in their field. And so this is this is what we've developed and we have I think 11 different field forms for all sorts of different types of crops and it might even go into we didn't create a we didn't create a field for for rangelands, did we Steve?

STEVE BLECKER 24:44

Other grazing lands? Yeah. It covers rangelands,

STEVE BLECKER 24:49

But it's an it's completely voluntary. almost completely voluntary. Alright, so there's part of it. That's voluntary. If a producer wants to become part of the STAR program, they can. And we also have something called Star Plus. And this is, and this is the incentive based program from what I remember. So, correct, yeah, so other producers who, if they're lucky enough to get into the STAR Plus program, there are certain additional requirements that they need to meet, in order to get an incentive payment from the Colorado Department of Agriculture. It's but the premise is still the same, they fill out a STAR form, they get a rating. And then what we're trying to do in our programs, is to look at these different management practices or tweak these management practices to increase the STAR rating from say, a one to a two, or maybe a three to a four on a particular parcel of land. Did I miss anything? I

STEVE BLECKER 25:52

I mean, basically, no that covers it pretty well, I mean, basically, the idea is to just go out and interact with these producers and just have a conversation about soil health, and try to get them to, you know, they need to try out, they need to commit to trying out one of these, one of the five principles of soil health, just implement a new practice that they haven't tried before, on other portion of their field, a whole new field, and then just see what happens. You know, and that's what we're, that's what we've kind of started in the past couple years, we're kind of at the, the leading edge of, of the star plus projects. So we don't really have any revenue data coming in yet. But that's been interesting just to go out there and interact with all these different folks and all these different agroecosystems.

STEVE BLECKER 26:36

Yeah, the you know, one of the most exciting portions of this project are that it's not one project. It's multiple projects that use the STAR program. But I think one of the most exciting things is one working hand in hand with producers to come up with a rating system, two these placards that will go out into fields. And our programs are supposedly touching about 500 producers across the state. So it's not inconsequential. And so each producer will have a placard that should be visible along some road that they live near the where the field is located, to hopefully generate discussion and interest among other producers, because we all know producers go down to the local coffee shop, and, and chit chat, right. I mean, they do more than chitchat, they talk about what they see and this, this, hopefully will generate some interest to get more people involved in the program. And the last thing I want to mention to you, which is part of our climate smart commodities project is we're hoping that this STAR rating system will eventually end up as a market signal. So if you're a producer, with a five star rating, you might get a little bit extra, when you sell your commodity on the market. We're really hoping that this is what this leads to.

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:52

Yeah, I was I mean, that's good to hear that it's one of my my biggest questions with that was the adoption, you know, producers and growers are notoriously slow at at adopting new technology, new practices, or at least that's the, that's the the traditional view of how things go. They're there some early adopters, and here and there, but it's because it's such a, you know, risk reward practice when it comes to agriculture, is that if they do see that things are working out towards their benefit, then at least from what from what we've seen here, then you can really start to see that shift in, in best practices, from a potential, you know, from traditional practices that have been going on for, you know, a century or two, to or even or even more, to those where where we have kind of either new technology, new ideas, or new innovations in land management. And so that's really good to see. I was I was interested in that incentive, like how much of an incentive does it take to to generate this, you know, to generate buzz or to generate adoption, but it sounds like it's, it's going pretty well there, at least in Colorado. Along with that and both of you, Steve, you talked about going out and you know, visiting face to face with with these growers with producers, and communicating the this this program or the benefits to adopting this program or any other or even if it deals with just soil health in general or other practices. This is one of these questions that kind of pops up with a lot of our guests is Have you have you felt that there's there are practices or techniques that you've used that you found successful in communicating? I guess kind of in translating scientific research to the layperson or to in your instance With with growers and producers, is there because a lot of times within this, you know, scientific community within academia, again, we're using jargon, we're going back and forth, we're, you know, publishing white papers and peer reviewed journals, that really doesn't percolate down to the general audience. And especially in this case where the general audience, those growers and producers are the ones who would benefit most from the research that you're doing. So, to back this back up again, have you found any? Or what are the points of success that you've seen in being able to communicate your research to, to a lay audience?

STEVE BLECKER 30:37

Let me give this a shot first, and because I had an extension appointment at Colorado State University, and it was pretty large. And so I, part of my job was to talk to producers, often outside of the projects that Steve and I and others have going on. But so thinking about in the context of soil health, I remember one of the first talks I gave to producers that a producer conference, oh, my gosh, probably December 2016. And I got a lot of eye rolls, when I was talking about soil health, because a lot of the there was probably over 100 producers in this room out in Fort Morgan, Colorado, lots of eye rolls. So I realized quickly that there had to be a better way to get the point across that soil health is important. And so coming back to the point I made at the beginning of the podcast about human health, people really can understand human health. And maybe they can't wrap their heads around soil health. But when you make that analogy, and that comparison, it is very simple for people to see where we're coming from in terms of soil health, and that's worked really, really well for me for the last probably four years. I don't know have you run into those issues, Steve?

STEVE BLECKER 31:56

I generally, we, I kind of take this a little different direction. We rely heavily on our CSU Extension program in the state. And they tend to have experts, agronomy type experts in different parts of the state that have experience in different agroecosystems. And these are folks that have developed relationships with producers in the area. So they trust you know, they've built up this level of trust with the producers. So we we rely on them to kind of also help get out the message between them in our we haven't Well, I worked for the Ag Experiment Station. So I have about eight Ag Experiment Station set up across the state where they have field days, and we can bring in producers and to kind of explain the research and they can see firsthand Hey, you know, we tried this different tillage method. This is what happened. And so that's kind of, so I rely mostly on all these other people in the field.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:57

Let's talk about you mentioned agroecosystems. And so let's get into kind of the, the meat of the conversation here. You have this large federally funded grants project here in dealing with agroecosystem management practices and improvements to that and how it connects to soil health and Ecosystem Sustainability resiliency. Can you give us a little background on to this this project and how it came to be and, and just kind of Yeah, introduce us to, to what you're hoping to do here?

JIM IPPOLITO 33:33

Yeah. We got lucky! I can tell you, there's there's more than just luck involved. But when we started in Colorado, this soil health push, really the push the most recent push started in 2019, July 2019. And there was a lot of people interested in soil health, and that got whittled down to a number of different subsets. And the subset that Steve and I run in, we have a core group of people myself, Steve, Dr. Megan mock molar. We have two people from a consulting company called Groundup consulting. That's Max Neumayer. And, and Helen silver. And then we have a couple of postdocs, we have at least one postdoc, but the core that I just mentioned, we work really, really well together. And some people in our group have strengths and weaknesses just like everybody else. I think we have a pretty good handle on who has strengths and who has weaknesses in different sectors. And when I think about being successful, Steve and I, and and Megan, Mark Miller, we have the science down. No, no doubt about it. We're really good at what we do in terms of science. I don't want to sound like, arrogant or anything, but we're, we've done this for a long time. So I think we're really good at what we do. One of the things I think scientists sometimes struggle with is being creative in terms of writing, right? I mean, it just happened. So we have Max and Helen that are creative wizards. And they can put together a proposal that is just really good looking. And we've been very successful. So we do the science, we write the science, and then they write the, the other portion that makes it look sexy, to be honest with you. And we have been so successful, I think we're running off of a total of 30 million, 34 million? I can't remember, I've lost track of the number. We have this climate smart commodities grant that totals something like 25 million. It's not all coming to Colorado State University, because it's split among different entities. But it's 25 million. And we had another one federal Conservation Innovation Grant, that was I think, 3.4 million, and then a few others, and they've built upon one another to the point where we've landed this climate smart commodities grant. And we're looking to the future to keep doing what we're doing now just on, you know, either in Colorado or outside of Colorado.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:20

And I want to I want to come back to that, because one of the questions I wanted to ask, is it when you're talking about funding, because I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of, you know, do or die when it comes to grant writing and looking for funding and all those kinds of things. And, and so one of the questions was that, that maybe we can come back to her, you can answer it now. And we can splice it in later. But, but what what makes these kinds of large projects attractive for funding? So you talked about you have, you know, you wrote it the science, you had somebody, you know, some some folks make it sound sexy, and those kinds of things, what are what are some of the things that you felt were key to, to, to attracting funding from, from these these, you know, government programs or, or funding agencies?

STEVE BLECKER 37:10

Well, I think the key for this climate smart commodities Grant was the fact that we've built this program, from the ground up hand in hand with producers, and we've been lucky to score or land or receive relatively smaller grants that have led to bigger grants that have led to this climate smart commodities grant. So you know, being successful in grant development, and grant receiving is building a program. And we've been lucky enough to build this program. And so you write a grant, like the climate smart commodities grant, and you can put data into that grant that you have from previous grants that are focused on identical topics. And we so we, to be successful, we've been really focused, like our group has been completely focused on soil health. And when you build out something this large, you have to bring other people on board. And I'm a scientist, Steve's a scientist, I won't speak for him. But we've brought in sociologist, to take a look at how this star program will develop and unfold on a socio-scale or socio economic scale. And I can't do that. I don't want to do that. So we have sociologists and economists that are going to do that for us. And so that just makes this project this much bigger,

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:23

Got it, so let's let's get into let's yeah, dive into the weeds. What are what are the main, you know, problems or questions that you're you're looking to, to answer or dig into when it comes to the project here?

STEVE BLECKER 38:38

Well, there's a there's a project I'm working on, it's kind of it's outside of these STAR programs. But it's it's soil health, because that's what we do around here, apparently. But yeah, we're looking at this project. We're looking at degraded range lands in southeastern Colorado. In just different conditions where they've been overgrazed in the past. And there's also there's a trend, I won't go into a lot of detail, but the municipalities, I mean, water as water becomes more and more scarce and more expensive. There's lands that are bought up that used to be irrigated, but then they're just allowed to kind of return returned to a dryland state, because they the cities want to use the water for something else like municipalities. So then, you know, you're left with a task of so what did we do to these lands that are no longer being irrigated? You know, how do we kind of improve them? You know, do we incorporate grazing or what kind of amendments can we add? So it's been a it's been an interesting challenge, but we've been going out working with these ranchers, it's been kind of a almost a bottom up approach. It's like go out to them and say, Hey, show me some fields that you're having problems with, you know, we'll kind of talk about why and then we, we've set up some plots on some of these kind of degraded or, for lack of a better There were areas, and we're just trying some different techniques to see, you know, if we can improve the productivity of the range land. Further, these are all, you know, grazed cattle graze lands.

STEVE BLECKER 40:13

Let me, let me add something about our our bigger picture across the state of Colorado. So what we're trying to do, and this is complicated, because I can't give you a really good answer as to what we're going to find, I guess that's the premise behind the sciences, you know, it's exciting that it's new. And so what we're trying to do is look at across the state of Colorado, and adjacent states, what management practices work, and which ones don't, in terms of improving soil health, and concomitant concomitantly improving soil water, or available soil water. So these two go hand in hand, that's really what we're doing, you know, to be honest with you, if you're gonna take up like a 30,000 foot view, look on the projects that we're running, it's really all about water, especially in the Western US. And soil health is just tagging along for the ride, to be honest with you. But we are looking at trying to improve soils, so they're resilient and sustainable, and can hold on to water for a longer period of time and supply water to crops. And so we're trying to find sweet spots in terms of management practices across the state. And so the idea is, this is just an idea, not sure if this is how this is going to work out or not. But we break the state down into different types of cropping systems or agroecosystems, or we break the state down into different eco-regions, or we break the state down into some other type of format that makes sense. So we can piece this soil health, water health or water quality or water quantity, puzzle together to help producers across the state of Colorado, and I don't know how it's going to flush out but it's going to flush out one way or the other.

STEVE BLECKER 42:01

I was just gonna say, no matter how we end up breaking it out. I mean, the big, the big hurdle is always variability. Because there'd be there's variability in soils, even within these different practices, their variability, I mean, like, if people use different kind of cover crops, there's different kinds of tillage practices, even on a conservation tillage side of things. So that's why we're trying to, you know, that's always going to be a struggle, but we're trying to try to get hundreds of growers involved in this. So we can at least maybe kind of get slightly, you know, kind of clear things up a little bit, maybe in some of these different systems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:36

Right, right. So what are some of the, I guess? What are some of the parameters then that you are looking at? And and how are you? How are you getting at them? How are you measuring and quantifying those?

STEVE BLECKER 42:51

Well, we're, we're certainly casting a large net. And that's the beauty of doing research is, you know, if you have the funding, you can cast a large net. And so we're doing this on purpose, because we want to collect more data then not enough data. And so right, if you're in the sciences field, like Steve and I have been in for over 30 years, you always, invariably look over your shoulder and say, "I should have I should have collected this, I should have collected that". So with these projects, I I feel like we haven't, we won't do that we won't look over our shoulder and say we should have done this because we're doing it. And we're collecting a lot of data. With the hopes to widdle the data set down to something manageable for producers in the state of Colorado. We're collecting soil physical characteristics, biological characteristics, chemical characteristics, nutrient characteristics we're collecting. Sooner or later, we're going to be collecting some microbiome characteristics, which are a little bit outside of against both of our expertise. But we have other people that will be doing this for us to put a puzzle together that makes sense, across however, we break this out across the state.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:03

So say for instance, if you're if you're dealing you're you're measuring all the various soil characteristics, let's break that down. What are what are some of the those characteristics that you're measuring? How are you measuring those?

STEVE BLECKER 44:14

Yeah, well, there's things like aggregate stability, I mean, you can you take a soil sample and all the stuff you take back to the lab, right, and you're doing some sort of extraction, but like what aggregate stability, there's a, in a civil engineering department build a device that Jim uses in his lab to basically it just kind of agitates the sample over time and you see how well it holds together. And yeah, there's different extracts to pull out you know, like what kind of nutrients are available to plants, nitrogen, phosphorus, all the major nutrients like that, it might end micronutrient micronutrients as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:50

Right.

STEVE BLECKER 44:52

Yeah, on the, you know, in addition to water, aggregate or wet aggregate stability, we measure bulk density So actually collect a sample that's separate from all the other samples we collect in the field to measure how dense or how dense the soil is, I guess it's the bulk density. We collect soils for in terms of biological, we're looking at currently, well organic carbon is at the center. And then we look at microbial biomass carbon, we look at something called beta glucose oxidase activity, which is a measurement. It's an enzyme assay for how easily micro organisms can degrade cellulosic material and soil. So like some of the basics are relatively easy materials to decompose. We look at something called and Steve alluded to this, we look at potentially mineralized double nitrogen. So how much nitrogen is present in an organic form that can be mineralized over a certain period of time? Yeah, and we've looked at other assays in the past some enzyme assays but where I think we're at least the climate smart commodities, we might be doing some microbiome type assays where we're looking at structure and function of microorganisms within systems. And then, of course, we're looking at pH and electrical conductivity. And like Steve mentioned, nutrient concentrations, both macro and micronutrients. And there's there's probably some other things Oh, water holding capacity in the lab on like, pressure plates. We're supposedly doing that as well. It, it's a big list. Yeah.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:31

Yeah. So So with that, with that big list? I mean, what then are you've talked about dealing with collecting, collecting a bunch of data, you've talked about, you know, the spatial variability or variability with you know, land use? Are are there any, I guess, what would you consider your your biggest hurdle in, in putting out this large amount of of instrumentation or collecting all this, this this data here? Is it? Is it is it the time is it? Is it just the I mean, you've you've, you've got the funding now. So you can, you can purchase the equipment, you can pay for that time, but are there are there other things that that you see, that you have seen or foresee as as major hurdles. In collecting all of this data?

STEVE BLECKER 47:18

The soil moisture monitoring, in these agroecosystems, you got to deal with, these aren't like, like some are like a forest right, we can just put these in the ground and walk away. There's, these are actively, you know, managed fields that are being tilled, and all these other practices. So when we started out, we were putting these systems like right in the middle of the field, because, you know, we wanted to get like the best representative spot we could find. But you know, then they get knocked over and damaged. And we'd have to pull them back out, depending on whether they were harvesting or tilling. And that was only with like, 10 or 12 sites. But now that we've got network, we're ramping this up with dozens and dozens of sites, we tried to, we really had to think about a different way to do this. So we just were working with METER to kind of, I mean, basically, we just extended the cables. So we can put the logger in at the edge of the field and then run the cable in. And then we work with the grower to try to find a depth. We usually put them in at six inches, but we try to find a depth that we can leave them in, right, hopefully for the duration of the project for three or four years. Because it's just we just logistically it's just too hard to run back and forth. Installing and uninstalling. So yes, yeah, it's been challenging.

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:31

Yeah.

STEVE BLECKER 48:32

And Colorado is such a big state that if you have a site like we do, we're going to be installing these at locations that are eight hours from Fort Collins. So if something goes sideways, to jump in a car and drive eight hours to splice a cable together, and then drive eight hours back is a real challenge. So yeah, Steve's taking the lead on this. Well, and it's been great because we bought a trencher to to help with the installments. Because if we have 500 of these devices to put out. Yeah, unless you want like really big forearms like Popeye or something. I mean, trenchers are really handy. I think, you know, I'm a lab rat mostly. And I think about the bottleneck on that side is just Hance having people. So the climate smart commodities grant when it starts rolling, some sometime next year, we're going to have about 300, almost 400 soil samples come back into the lab. And all that analysis needs to be done and I can tell you from experience that that will take at least a year to get done with the people that we have, so we need to hire more people. And I know our space is limited, so we need more space. So fun.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:53

So So what are the I mean we can talk about any preliminary results that you But, but what are the primary hypotheses that you're testing? Or do? I guess? What your, your expectations with with connecting, like you said, connecting these, you know agroecosystem management practices to soil health and Ecosystem Sustainability resiliency?

JIM IPPOLITO 50:24

Yeah, that's a good question I picked up on the word hypothesis. And so this, this is a tough one to crack because, you know, it's a general hypothesis. But if a producer is following one of the, or all of the five principles of soil health, the hypothesis would be that soil health would increase in a system, right? And that's a cheesy answer. But that's, that's the answer I can give you. Because the way we've set this, this whole project up, and the STAR program in Colorado, is to allow the producer to make the decision on what they want to change in terms of management. So it's flipping the research upside down, to be honest with you, you know, as researchers, we come up with the ideas and hypotheses and then we, we set up the project and test them, but we're not doing that in this project, the farmers, they're installing the new management practice, and then we just, we kind of go with it. So in some respects, we're flying a little bit without a hypothesis.

BRAD NEWBOLD 51:28

Kind of exploratory research.

STEVE BLECKER 51:31

Yeah. And things like I mean, we're always trying to improve or increase organic matter in the soil. But that can take a while. Yeah, it can, you know, it can exceed the life of a grant. So it's kind of so you might not see the, you know, these changes within three years, right, just you know, you wouldn't necessarily expect to but, so that makes it kind of challenging.

JIM IPPOLITO 51:53

You know, one of the nice things about the climates where commodities grant is, I think we could potentially eke out five years with us. And so from my experience, having worked in Colorado for a really long period of time, you know, these are the places where if you're going to see a change in carbon, you're going to see a change in carbon in the western US if you do something positive. And that's because our carbon content is organic carbon content is so low to begin with. So if you make an incremental change, it could be huge to be honest with you, you know, if you go from 1.5 to 2%, that's, that's huge, it's only half a percent change. But if you do that, in a system that has low carbon to begin with, like in Colorado, you're going to see more of an improvement than if you went for a half percent change in carbon content in a soil in Minnesota, that already starts with seven and a half percent carbon. So this is where I, my gut is telling me that this is where we're going to see the best bang for our buck, in terms of return on investment, for improving carbon in our soils, it's going to be in the Western United States, we're going to see drastic improvements. And I'll tell you from some of my experiences with other soil health projects, that if you do things, quote, right, you might see a change in less than five years. In fact, we had a project over on the western slope of Colorado, where we saw changes in three years in terms of organic carbon accumulation in the soil surface in three years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 53:21

Have you have you had any, any issues or challenges in in collaborating with with, I guess, again, the the idea of the collaboration between growers and academics? Within this this project itself? We talked about communication with with them, are you is this is this something? Well, let me back this up. Are, are these when you're going out? Are and installing or measuring? The assumption is that you're working with growers and not just on experimental fields is Is that Is that correct?

STEVE BLECKER 53:55

Yeah, we have, most of these are, these are their fields. Yeah, used to grow, what they're grown. And we, and we utilize, we didn't really bring up the we have a series of conservation districts throughout the state of Colorado, and, and other entities like that. But it's kind of up to them, and they apply to the Department of Ag and say, Hey, we want to, we think we can bring on 10 producers or our conservation district. So then, so we rely on these guys to you know, who already have these relationships with the growers built this trust. So I mean, it makes a big difference. And they, you know, again, the producers don't have to, it's all voluntary, so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 54:36

Right, right. And, Jim, you talked about the, you know, you know, potentially increasing carbon by, you know, there in the in, in the semi arid west by, you know, half a percent would be huge, but do you see other other potential impacts of, of projects like these, this project or projects like these on on agriculture, and I guess Have the implications for, for Colorado, the region and maybe potentially the world at large?

JIM IPPOLITO 55:07

Well, I do and I, when you ask a question like that, I come immediately back to the STAR program. And so I recently moved from Colorado State University to Ohio State University. And I'm trying to instill the STAR program within some proposals that we're writing currently to expand this idea of using star to quantify soil health, not only in Colorado, but then, of course, the western US with this climate smart commodities grant, but bringing that concept to the Midwest. And so there's, there's some real opportunities. And we, in Colorado did a, I think, a really good job developing that program, to the point where, you know, can't I don't think be lifted directly out of Colorado. But you could take that and then tweak the content in the STAR program to a particular state or region across the United States, and probably the globe, to be honest with you. That's, I think that's the benefit of what we've done in the state of Colorado.

STEVE BLECKER 56:10

And I would just add that, I mean, the one thing we haven't talked about is erosion. I mean, all these practices help keep the soil in place, and can have soil health without soil. So keeping litter on the surface, if you're, you know, all these different practices, cover crops, having that living root in there, just kind of anchoring the soil, keeping it around things that, you know, didn't happen back in the dustbowl days.

BRAD NEWBOLD 56:32

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So looking at let's see, Jim, you said you might be able to stretch this out to five years, a five year project, but looking looking there at the end, or even, I guess, looking into the future, what do you see as the future of this research? What do you see? You've talked about expanding, growing, expanding projects and building project upon project? And what do you see as the future of of this research project as it moves forward?

JIM IPPOLITO 57:00

Yeah, that's a great question. So the climate smart commodities project is really mostly Colorado centric. But it also encompasses five states that abut the Rocky Mountain backbone. So New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, all the land grant institutions within those five states and Colorado State University, are working on this project. So the concept is, we've built we've built a really strong program focused on soil health in the STAR program in Colorado. And we want to send feelers out to these adjacent states to see if something like this would work in those states. And to be honest with you, Max Neumayer, and Helen silver, have already held discussions with the state of Wyoming. And they're putting they're putting together a soil health program, much like in Colorado, and they've reached out to other states, I know they're working in the state of Washington to do the same thing. And the state of Washington is on the periphery of the climate smart commodities project. But the the concept is, is to not make this Colorado centric, but make it Western centric, and then make it nation centric. So we actually have help, we, there's people that are working on this at the STAR, center location, or whatever you would call it in Illinois, to make this a reality across the US. That's what I'd like to see. That would be really cool.

BRAD NEWBOLD 58:28

Steve, any thoughts on the future of this kind of research?

STEVE BLECKER 58:34

Other than just I mean, the more we can make this data available to the producers, and show them that, hey, it really works, you know, and hopefully, not only does it work, but hopefully they'll be seeing increases in yield as their soil health improves, because I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean, they're not gonna mean they're not growing soil, they're growing crops, right. But, of course, you need good soil to get a good crop. So hopefully, this this will go hand in hand, as they improve the soil, they'll see yields increasing, and they won't just, you know, try it on one field, you know, adopt it over larger portions of their operation.

BRAD NEWBOLD 59:11

Right.

JIM IPPOLITO 59:12

I'll just add to this. So, the dream, this is probably pretty crazy. That's a crazy statement coming from somebody who writes proposals to bring in research dollars to do work. But the dream would be to not have to work on soil health ever again. And that may sound crazy. But imagine if you could develop a program that just fine tuned every single system to number or a short set of indicators that we know tell you the story of soil health, or if you could use the star forms that this is what we're going to do. We're going to match up the STAR forms data to the data we collect in the laboratory. And imagine if you could take just a form that producer fills out, that would tell you what the health of the soil is without having to do the work in the lab. To me, that is really what I'd like to see happen. So people like myself and Steve and others, we can start focusing on other topics of importance. And keep this simple. If there could be a simple there probably is not a simple but that's the dream. Right.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:00:27

Right. Well, any other final thoughts or other things that you'd like to share with our audience about what we've talked about or beyond what we've talked about here?

JIM IPPOLITO 1:00:39

I'll tell you, we're, we're working. And this is outside of the climate smart commodities. But you know, Steve mentioned his work in range lands, these degraded range lands. And so we actually have a soil health program where we're looking at using soil health principles and practices and quantification in mind land reclamation, which is really fun, because those systems are really they're like, these degraded range lands that Steve's working on, they're just very wacky, you know, they may be contaminated with heavy metals beyond the point where plants can grow. And so looking at practices to improve these to grow something to reduce erosion, like Steve mentioned, and to improve soil health and Plant Health, and hopefully animal health, because bracing, you know, grazing animals come through these areas, and ultimately, environmental health. So it's like a One Health concept, if you will. This is what we do.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:01:32

Yeah, I think we're out of time. But maybe we'll have you back to talk more about Yeah, range lands and reclaimed mining and biogeochemical cycling and forever chemicals and all that kind of stuff. So anyway, those are fun things for for potential future episodes. We'll see. All right. I think that's it. Our time's up for today. Thanks again, Steve. And, Jim, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. And it's been a great conversation. So thanks again. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Taylor Bacon is a Ph.D. student of soil and crop science at Colorado State University. She obtained her Bachelor’s in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton University with a focus on energy and the environment and a minor in sustainable energy. As a Ph.D. candidate, she is researching nature-based climate solutions, land-use emissions, and food/energy systems.

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

TAYLOR BACON 0:08

I think one of the hardest things we ran into was when we were initially designing this research plan and kind of deciding what data we wanted to collect. Deciding what sensors we wanted to use, where we wanted to install them, is that there is so much heterogeneity and variation within the solar array, even just within a single block of panels across even just a couple feet apart because of these different zones. And it was challenging to balance okay, what can we feasibly measure and what how much data can we feasibly collect, while still capturing enough of this variability to actually be accurate and to have representative data?

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:53

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guest is Taylor Bacon, a PhD student in the Department of soil and crop Sciences at Colorado State University. She obtained her bachelor's degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton University with a focus on energy and the environment, and a minor in sustainable energy. Now, as a part of her Ph. D program, she's researching nature based climate solutions, land use emissions, and food energy systems. And today, she's here to talk about her research into agriculture ticks, regenerative energy, and land use, and much more. So Taylor, thanks so much for being here.

TAYLOR BACON 1:42

Thank you so much for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:44

So today, we wanted to talk with you about your your projects and research interests. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into to where you are now with environmental sciences and into your your specialty, and you're a PhD researcher?

TAYLOR BACON 2:02

Yeah, so as you mentioned in the intro, my background is actually in engineering, I did my undergrad in chemical and biological engineering, focusing on sustainable energy. And my undergrad thesis was looking at bio energy for jet fuel production as kind of a sustainable alternative. But my senior year, I took an environmental policy class, and really just had this moment of being like, Oh, this is what we need to actually make these technical solutions I've been studying and work on happen in the real world, and we can be doing the research. But if there isn't the policy to actually drive that into implementation, that's kind of a missing piece. So I got really interested in environmental policy. And after graduating, got a fellowship at an environmental nonprofit working on climate and clean air and energy policy, and spent a couple of years doing that. And it was really, really valuable experience, I learned a ton and kind of developed an understanding of how all of these drivers work together and kind of what actually has to happen for change towards a like sustainable climate future. But after I was there for like three years, and towards the end, I of my second or third year, I started really missing science and kind of more quantitative work, I was doing a lot of policy analysis and advocacy, but kind of was itching to get back towards the more quantitative side of things, started thinking about what I wanted to do next, and had a couple criteria, I wanted to do something where I could do fieldwork outside and physically be collecting data and kind of be more on the ground. At an actual place collecting actual data after doing a lot of kind of modeling and high level analysis. I wanted to do something that was really solutions oriented. So I wanted to be doing science, but I wanted to be working on science that was kind of directly applicable to these problems we're facing and was really solutions oriented. And then I'd taken a bunch of environmental chemistry classes and undergrad and started kind of looking in that space and found my way to this soil science program that kind of matched all of those criteria. And this project specifically that I'm working on in Agra voltaic is really exciting because it kind of matches my background and sustainable energy and energy policy with this soil ecology biogeochemistry side of things that I'm more recently getting into.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:40

That's awesome. That's super cool. I want to I want to touch on all of that. So but yeah, so can we can we go back you you've mentioned that in your undergrad research and I definitely want to dig into what you're doing. Now. That's going to be the bulk of what we want to talk about today. But it. But you've talked about working with with biofuels and doing research in that aspect. And you said bio jet fuels. That's something that that I am not sure if I'm familiar with, in general with biofuels, but not bio jet fuels. Can you tell us a little bit about about that, and how, how that works with I mean, with jet fuel, it's very, it needs to be, you know, very high quality. And, you know, a lot of more, a lot of other things like that. But can you tell us a little bit about that?

TAYLOR BACON 5:31

Yeah, so this was a while ago, so I'm a little a little removed from the weeds. But the idea, or kind of the motivation for this project was that we can electrify a lot of things. And electrification is a really good option for decarbonizing a lot of different sectors of the economy and a lot of different modes of transportation. But large scale electric aircraft are probably pretty far down the line. But in the meantime, we have technological options for creating jet fuel from plant residue from different plant based sources, that when you're growing that feedstock, you're sequestering carbon. So the idea is that then your your bio jet fuel is carbon neutral, because the emissions that are released are balanced out by the carbon that sequestered when the plant is growing. So my thesis was using chemical engineering modeling software to design and model a pathway for converting, I looked specifically at forestry residue as kind of a sample feedstock that has a little bit maybe a little bit better sustainability on the front end, because you're not displacing agriculture, or kind of it's this material that's already there. And there's definitely limitations and collecting it and accessing it. But that's what I use as my feedstock and then designed in model this process. And this modeling software for converting it to a jet fuel, in theory could be used as a drop in jet fuel in existing infrastructure. But didn't economic analysis and was basically like, this is not feasible unless you have really ambitious carbon credits and a lot of policy support, which kind of tied back into the turning of my attention to environmental policy.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:21

Right. So with that, I mean, I would assume that if, if you have a an undergrad at Princeton, who is interested in the stuff that I'm sure there's plenty of other organizations and corporations that are dealing with, you know, biofuel research and those kinds of things. How did that tie into to what the I guess the existing research and kind of research and development was, has been doing in that in that field?

TAYLOR BACON 7:46

Yeah, it was actually really great, because there was a company actually based in Oregon, called Red Rock biofuels, that were just starting to try and design and build and implement, I think the the plant was maybe just starting construction when I was working on my thesis for a very similar pathway. So I got to connect with them and chat about their work a little bit. And then there's a bio jet or not a jet fuel, but just a biofuel plant in Iowa. That's one of the only commercially operational ones in the US, I believe, or at least was at the time. So I got funding from Princeton to go to or that plant and kind of see what they were doing. So I definitely, yeah, I did my best to kind of see what was actually happening and kind of where this fit in with what other people were doing. And there were definitely other companies that were kind of starting out on the same path that I was looking at. And we're, we're definitely ahead of what I was doing, because they were actually building a plant rather than just modeling it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:49

Right. Right. So is that something then art? I mean, I guess, probably not in the commercial space, what are there then, I mean, you know, aircraft jet engines that are running off of biofuel, or like mixed or hybrid fields.

TAYLOR BACON 9:04

I think United has been doing a lot on sourcing their jet fuel and incorporating biojet fuel. So it's definitely a pretty small fraction. But there are a lot of people working on kind of setting targets and moving towards having it be more prevalent. And I think there are some airlines that as kind of a way of supporting these pretty young technologies and young plants will agree to buy a certain amount of biofuel, and that can kind of serve as a financing guarantee to actually get these things off the ground.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:39

That's awesome. That's cool. That's fun to see. I mean, it's one of those things where Well, I think a lot of a lot of what's interesting with with what we're going to be talking about today and with your research is that is that there are a lot of things that that we have that are going on right now. That do have that huge potential for for greater impact when it comes to the environment, and the climate, and you know lots of other things that are tied to those as well. So I think that's I think that's, that's really interesting. So you, you went from doing kind of more of the hard science research, you said that you went into policy, and kind of environmental law, environmental policy, those kinds of things. What What made you want to switch from and you said, You switched back, but what made you want to really get in and dig into environmental policy? And you started working with the Environmental Defense Fund there, it's based out of DC, so how, how did that that, yeah, that changing trajectory happen for you?

TAYLOR BACON 10:51

Yeah, I think there were two big pieces. The first was the environmental policy class, I took my last year at Princeton, and my, or the the professor teaching that class had been had worked at the EPA and been really involved in the Kyoto Protocol. And it was really, really powerful to hear her experience as a science, kind of as a scientist, being involved in this really important policy. And just kind of made me start thinking about, Okay, well, we have the technical solutions. And a lot of times, that's not the limiting factor, like, we have the technical know how to do a lot more than we're doing currently. So we're like, why is there this gap? And that class, kind of like, okay, well, there's all of these regular regulatory networks and frameworks and policy kind of support that needs to be there for these things to actually be making a difference. And I graduated during the Trump administration, and all of these kinds of climate, things felt like they were falling apart. And my, my feeling when I graduated was that like, I don't want to be doing research kind of isolated from what's actually going on, I want to be working on solutions and kind of actually implementing these things. And tied with my thesis that we were just talking about. I had designed and modeled this pathway and kind of said, Okay, these are the carbon emissions, this is the benefit. But it's not feasible unless you have this really strong policy support. And, but yeah, between my thesis experience in this class I took, I was just really eager to do something that was kind of more on the ground. And a friend sent me the listing for this fellowship at the Environmental Defense Fund and kind of said, this seems like it would be up your alley. And I was, yeah, very excited to have the opportunity to kind of see what was going on in the policy where we're old. And I started out in DC, and it was super incredible to be going to congressional hearings and testifying at the EPA, and really kind of be in the middle of the environmental policy world and see what it actually meant to have policy that supported these technical solutions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:15

So you actually got to be be there communicating? So so it seems, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, so you were working behind the scenes with doing research, as well as as kind of not necessarily creating policy, but but suggestions and guidelines for for policy makers, and then being able to communicate that to to, you know, I guess the decision makers, potentially as well, is that is that kind of your your, what your roles were there?

TAYLOR BACON 13:43

Yeah, I did a lot of research on policy and different policy options. And then a lot, I worked on a team that was predominantly lawyers who are involved in EPA regulatory action. So it was a lot of writing comments and kind of staying involved in these EPA processes, which are designed to have a lot of public feedback. But most people don't have time to read these super extensive dockets and submit comments and testify. So EDF did a lot of that work is and kind of pushing forward these these regulations in a way that would help climate and energy and air quality.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:25

I think that's, that's something that well, it ties into to some themes that we've had with a lot of our guests when it comes to kind of the your different roles, your varying roles when it comes to you know, scientific research where you have the different ways that you're trying to communicate your your findings or your understandings, or the or even just communicating the data or your interpretations of the data. Did you did you feel that that? It was let me back this up? What were the differences that you felt in being able to To communicate whether difficulties or, you know, ease of communication when it came to communicating within, you know, the scientific the research world versus communicating with policymakers versus even communicating with the with a general lay audience if you had the opportunity as well.

TAYLOR BACON 15:18

Yeah, I think there's a lot of overlap in that you, the, your goals for the communication are tailored to your audience. But you are still making very intentional choices about how you're communicating what information you're clued, including how you're framing it for that audience. So I think the skill of like honing a message for an audience was really applicable across the the range of people you're talking to. I think learning to communicate for to the general public, for kind of a more broad audience was really helpful. I think science communication, when you're in the weeds, and you're kind of really getting into the meat of an issue is almost easier, because you can just kind of say everything that you know, but for the general audience, it was a really helpful exercise in thinking about, Okay, what's the most important thing like how can I make this relatable? Or make it clear that this is important? Why is it important? And I had the opportunity to write blogs for EDF a lot, which was great for my writing skills and like communication skills, and I definitely have carried a lot of those into my PhD program.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:32

That's awesome. Yeah, that's definitely something that I think, I mean, everybody can, can work on communication skills, right? Whether it's interpersonal, whether it's, you know, to larger, broader audiences as well. But especially in dealing with with those in the scientific research community, or research and development, or whatever, and being able to really, I think, really hone in on, on what, what it is not only what you want to convey, but yeah, what your audience who your audience is, like, like you said, who your audience is, what kind of what kind of level, are they going to be able to really grasp the, you know, your findings, your conclusions, or the, I guess the the direction that you that you want that conversation to go as well. I think that's again, that's, that's something that that is, it is, you know, key for, for anybody who's in the sciences, to be able to communicate to a broader audience, not just within their bubble of academia or whatever it may be. So, so from from there, how long were you at the EDF?

TAYLOR BACON 17:47

I was there for just shy of three years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:50

just shy of three years. So again, switching what made you want to switch and and move again, from, you know, the world of DC and policymaking and other things back into, into kind of the hard science and research and and back into academic research.

TAYLOR BACON 18:07

Yeah, when I finished my undergrad, I kind of was of the mind that I was never going back to school, I had had enough I was just ready to be in the real world. And then after a couple years at EDF, I loved my time at EDF and had such incredible, incredible colleagues and learned so much. And I think I always was like, oh, yeah, environmental policy is really important. And then kind of saw what it actually meant and what environmental policy looks like when you're actually implementing it. But I just missed the more quantitative quantitative side of things. I was doing a lot of writing and, and kind of softer research, like reading a lot of policies looking at policy impacts, but was working with consultants who were the ones who were doing a lot of the the more quantitative work and analyzing outcomes of different policies a little more quantitatively. And EDF is a really unique organization in that it has a lot of PhD scientists on staff who are doing research but in a way that is kind of focused towards policy, relevant research and really solutions oriented. And I was part of a early career scientist mentorship program at EDF and was paired with a really incredible climate scientist and had the opportunity to hear about her experience as a PhD scientist, and she actually did her PhD at Princeton. So it was fun to chat about New Jersey. But yeah, I think the combination of kind of feeling feeling the itch to do something a little more quantitative and seeing these role models who had this mix of the science and the policy that I was really interested in, made me go reconsider my my initial stance that I was never going to go back to school and start looking into grad school programs where I could hopefully work towards a similar career path.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:09

Right. Right. So, so thinking long term end goal. So is is that is that something that you would like to do when you're done with your your PhD work is to kind of move back into the policy world.

TAYLOR BACON 20:22

That's the goal, something, I mean, I still want to be doing research and have that be a really central part of my career. But I really admire the scientists who are both scientists and advocates and are doing really important science. But don't stop there and kind of move that science forward towards like, this is how we can use this this. This is what it means. So yeah, something like that either at an environmental nonprofit or government agency or something like enroll the National Renewable Energy Lab where they are doing a lot of really policy relevant research, that that would be the dream someday.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:00

Good. Good. Well, good luck with that. So what took you then what, what drew you to Colorado State University where you're at now?

TAYLOR BACON 21:10

Um, so I had been living in Colorado for the last two years of my fellowship at EDF. EDF has a boulder office. And I'm from New Mexico originally. So it worked out well to be a little closer to home and in the mountains with lots of good trail running. So I was looking at a pretty narrow set of schools to begin with. And CSU has a really incredible kind of soil ecology biogeochemistry school or departments. And there's a lot of faculty, including my advisor doing really incredible research in that space. And I reached out to a bunch of professors at a bunch of different schools and just had a lot of conversations about people's research, and ended up finding Keith Pashtun at CSU and he had this agricole takes project that seemed like it was a really good fit for my background, and everything just kind of fell into place into place.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:10

That's awesome. Really quick, do you miss the humidity of back East?

TAYLOR BACON 22:17

No, I I do not miss the East Coast, a lot of my friends are there. So I go back to visit. But growing up in New Mexico, like 20% Humidity was a humid day. So it was definitely an adjustment. And I, I do not miss it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:36

So with your aside from from your project, and we'll we'll get to that that next, were you able to kind of mold your your coursework that you've been working on and your your program itself around around this, this idea of, of, I guess, either renewable energy, regenerative energy, you know, those kinds of things there.

TAYLOR BACON 23:00

Yeah, that's been one of my favorite things about the like a PhD program in general so far is that there are effectively no requirements. And every course that I choose to take is just kind of working towards what I'm interested in and what my goals are. And I actually have the opportunity to be part of this very, very cool fellowship program at CSU, that's funded by the National Science Foundation and is called inner fuse, which is the interdisciplinary training, education and research and food energy water systems. So it's this really interdisciplinary group of students from all over the University, studying food, energy, water systems, and kind of a climate future, which is kind of exactly where I want to be, especially with the food energy, intersection. And there's specific coursework that goes with the fellowship that's focused on the kind of systems thinking and systems analysis. And you're taking these classes with people from totally different backgrounds, totally different research. So that's been really, really valuable from a coursework perspective, and then starting to take a lot of the more soil ecology, biology, okay, biogeochemistry classes, since that's not something I have as much background in. And yeah, it's just been really great to be able to kind of pick the the types of classes from the big systems level classes to the what is happening on a tiny, tiny molecular level in the soil, and kind of bring those all together in this research project.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:33

That's really cool. I have a soft spot for interdisciplinary research, and fellowships and those kinds of things. I was a part of one back in my day, and it was really, really cool. Just be able to, because a lot of times, we kind of get in and this this goes for anybody. I mean, any of you in the audience who's listening to this, like we often will get into our own bubble of and we think you As the work that we're doing is really important. And it it, it may very well be. But But there's so many other people that are thinking about things that might be tangentially related or even overlapping with what you are interested in, that are thinking of coming at it from a different perspective or even, you know, even might have different ideas or even just even just the the fact of, of being able to look at a problem with different sets of eyes. Is is really important to being able to, I guess, yeah, solve problems and come up with Yeah, solutions for a wide variety of, of different interests. So I think that's really cool. And yeah, I'm definitely a, an advocate for interdisciplinary research and collaboration. From yeah, whatever it may be, because they're there things too, and I'm sure that you've seen it, we can talk more about this about, about your project to about working with. Yeah, working with renewable energy, but then also you're incorporating, you know, the interests of of, you know, ranchers and of other folks who are who have different, I guess, different motives in mind, potentially, but all coming together to try to, to make things better for for, you know, the population as a whole, or, but starting small and working big, you know, so yeah, so I'm really happy that that all that is going on for you. So let's let's jump into to this main project, is this year, is this your dissertation project? Or is this kind of a precursor to it?

TAYLOR BACON 26:48

This is it. This is the dissertation project.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:51

This is the big one. All right. Cool. So yeah, just just talk to us a little bit about about cattle tracker and about Agri Voltex. And we want to get into Yeah, regenerative. You know, land use management, and all that kind of stuff. So wherever you want to start, feel free to jump in. And we can we can go from there.

TAYLOR BACON 27:15

Yeah, so I have the opportunity to work on a very cool project called cattle tracker. It's funded by the Department of Energy, Solar Energy Technology Office, and you were talking about interdisciplinary teams. And that's one of my favorite things about this project is. So broadly, our goal is to design a system to co locate regenerative cattle grazing with solar energy generation, there's been a huge build out in solar energy, and there needs to be a lot more to stay on track with climate goals. But there's often a lot of tension around land use, because solar requires so much more land than, like point source, like a coal fired power plant. So figuring out where these solar power plants are going, a lot of times they're displacing agricultural land, and that can have drawbacks. So in the last decade or so there's been a lot of research that is kind of questioning the idea that you can only do one or the other that you have to do agriculture or solar energy generation. And it's often referred to as agri voltaic. So the colocation of agriculture and so solar photovoltaics. And the research has looked at all sorts of different combinations. So everything from growing high value vegetable crops, to pollinator habitat to grazing, which is what we're focusing on. And because it's such a complex system, you have the animal side of things, you have the solar energy generation side of things, you have all of these ecosystem and ecological impacts. The team that we're working with on this project has folks from silicon Ranch, who are the principal investigators, and that's a solar company that is actually practicing solar grazing Agra voltaic systems and owns tons of solar power plants across the country and and kind of know that engineering and operations and management and maintenance side of things really well. And then we have on the CSU side of things, we have people who are working on biogeochemical models of what's happening and how the panels and the cattle and the soil and the vegetation is all interacting and what's happening beneath these panels. And we have animal welfare experts who are looking at okay, like what does this mean for the cattle? How are they interacting? We have our field site is located at a ranch called White Oak pastures in southwestern Georgia. So we have a lot of the ranch staff who are actually really managing the sheep and cattle that we're studying. So there's all of these different people from all of these different backgrounds working towards this, this goal of designing this cattle compatible solar system, which is really exciting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:14

That's super cool. So, I mean, there's, there's lots of different ways we can go with this. I think that let's take, I guess, let's take a step back. And, and talk about because you were talking about how, you know, solar farms use a lot of land, I guess, what is kind of the baseline for, you know, solar farming right now, when it comes to when it comes to, you know, solar panels, and, and their, you know, their footprints on on the landscape? And I guess, and then, and then if you could talk about that as well as the environmental impact from because because a lot of times as we're dealing with, you know, with counteracting and mitigating climate change, we want to delve into renewable energy, which then I mean, solar is, is one of those primary energy sources. But at the same time, there are other environmental impacts from, you know, renewable energy sources as well, if you could just kind of dig into that a little bit there.

TAYLOR BACON 31:15

Yeah, I think that's really important. And that was one of the things that I was really excited about this project. Because I, EDF, I had been working on all this modeling and analysis and policy design, I was like, Okay, if we want to reach this percent reduction in carbon emissions by this year, this is the amount of solar we need. And it's one thing to say, Okay, we need however many megawatts gigawatts of solar. And it's another thing, my partner spent a summer working as a engineer on a solar power plant, and I went and visited him, and just seeing how big this solar power plant was, that was just like a fraction of the total that we needed. And it does, it totally alters the landscape, I think, the land where this one had been built had previously been cornfields, and that was just kind of a mud pit. And there's different soul different solar companies do it differently. And there's different impacts. And I think your question about what the impact of these solar power plants is, is something that people are like actively studying right now. And there's studies that are just starting to come out on kind of how the panel's change the dynamics, and a lot of that depends on what vegetation you're planting, and how you're managing the vegetation. So there's, there's a lot of variables that impact what solar panels are doing to the ecosystem and to the environment. And one of the big motivations for this project is, how can we do it better? Like how can we minimize any negative impacts, and maybe even have some positive impacts by pairing the regenerative grazing with the panels and hopefully improving soil health and vegetation productivity and indicators like that?

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:58

Yeah, I was gonna say, could you go into a little bit more detail with those with those impacts? Because I mean, you know, my assumption is that we're, you know, we're creating, you know, heat islands in, in these situations, or we're affecting that, you know, the microclimate there in that location. And, and we might say, Oh, it's, you know, it's just, you know, you know, a couple of acres or half an acre or whatever it may be. But then, again, you know, you have the butterfly effect, and so on. And so you have these small little microclimate sediment effects the regional climate around it. And yeah, other you know, other things, things like that.

TAYLOR BACON 33:35

Yeah, so the panels are really interesting, because you take this pretty homogeneous landscape, everything's getting the same sun, everything is getting the same water. And then when you install the panels, all of a sudden, it's very heterogeneous, and you have shading over certain areas and kind of redistribution of water, as water flows off one side of the panel or the other. And some areas aren't getting rain, some areas aren't getting, or are getting more rain than they would if it was just open because of the runoff. And air temperature is affected. It's kind of buffered from broader air temperature swings by the panels is what a lot of research is starting to show. There's been a couple papers suggesting that you maybe get some heat island effect, and there's a little bit of overall increase in air temperature, but I think that's also very climate dependent. And looking at, okay, what's the vegetation because having plants under the solar panels can actually cool them down a little bit and increase the efficiency of the panels. So it's, I think, the overall impact is really ecosystem dependent because you have the interactions of all of these different factors and it's going to look really different in a hot, dry, arid climate than it is in a more wet case. humid climate. So I think we're just starting to, to get to the tip of the iceberg on kind of what this looks like, across different climates across different regions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:10

Right. And so as part of as part of this project, are you looking at different crop cover than or different vegetation and implant cover there? Beneath the, beneath the panels? And, and then at the same time, I think, I think there's something that mentioned about looking at at different, you know, whether whether, you know, different types of crop cover, whether it's grazed, whether it's mowed, whether it's, you know, left just to grow on its own, what are your assumptions or hypotheses within within that level of things.

TAYLOR BACON 35:46

So for the first two years of our study, before we get to the goal of actually building and testing a cattle based system, we're doing all of our measurements and experiments in an existing solar power plant that is currently grazed by sheep. So we're focusing on comparing vegetation management by sheep versus vegetation management by mowing, and then we have a control that's just grazing without any panels. So the vegetation cover and the soil characteristics are pretty comparable across all of our treatment areas. And we're really just looking at the management impacts. So how grazing versus mowing kind of changes what's going on? And hopefully something about how kind of the panels change the the ecosystem and the microclimate?

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:38

Right. So is this something that I was thinking? So we're talking about sheep, a lot smaller than cattle, have given different grazing behaviors as well? And is there is there potential down the line to compare different types of livestock when it comes to grazing patterns and and the effect on on the solar farm there?

TAYLOR BACON 37:01

Yeah, I think there definitely is. And I think this study sets us up well, to do that, because we're establishing baselines with mowing, and with sheep grazing. And for the cattle system, cattle are a lot bigger, there's a lot of concern about damage to panels. So we have the the branch of our project team that's looking at the ecosystem impacts, soil, carbon, stuff like that. And then we have another branch of our team that's actually focused on the design of a cattle compatible PV systems, we have the animal welfare experts and the engineers who are actually trying to design a system. But because nobody's grazing solar panels with cattle yet, because those systems just don't exist. There isn't a way to do a comparison yet. But hopefully, by the end of this study, well, we'll be able to start looking at different species grazing comparisons.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:56

Nice. So how would you how would you consider a or what would you do to say, this is a successful project? What would that what would that look like?

TAYLOR BACON 38:08

So I think, kind of from our, our project standpoint, one of our big goals is having this cattle tracker system actually be operational. So having a 250 kilowatt outdoor test lab functioning solar panels with cattle, grazing, the grazing the air, the vegetation beneath the panels. So that's kind of one of the big goals. But I think, ultimately, anything we learn from all of this data we're collecting will still be incredibly useful. And because it's a relatively short study, we probably won't see huge changes in things like soil, carbon, or other soil on particular changes very slowly. But I think we're establishing a baseline which sets us up to come back and resample and see how things change over longer periods of time. And gives us kind of initial comparison data. And I think, in particular, we're collecting a lot of vegetation samples and seeing how vegetation productivity changes under these different treatments over the course of a growing season. And I think all of that data will be really helpful for informing decisions about how you manage vegetation under solar panels, and what the impacts of grazing compared to mowing, which is a lot of times more standard. Are

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:33

you talked about collecting data, and what are the specific data points that that you're getting? You've mentioned, you know, you want to you want to see how you know, water infiltration into the soil looks, you want to see how I mean potentially down the line about you know, carbon sequestration within the soil, or just the effect of the plants themselves and how they're thriving or not. And, and then also the You know, the the microclimate around around those, how are you measuring? How are you getting each of those data points? How are you measuring it? What are you using to measure it? And what are you seeing or expecting to see?

TAYLOR BACON 40:13

Yeah, so this is another thing that I think is really exciting about this study is we have a lot of different types of data that we're collecting and a lot of different methods we're using. So we just finished our first field season, this spring, spent a couple of weeks out in Georgia at our field field site collecting data. And on the ecosystem side of things, the primary things we were working on is we took a bunch of soil cores, and collected the soil samples at different depths across the different zones. So if you imagine the panels, there's the drip edges, there's directly under the panel, there's between the panels. So in addition to kind of overall effects under the solar array, we're really looking at spatial variability and how the microclimate changes what's going on in the soil and with the vegetation. So we took soil samples across all of those zones, we took vegetation samples, across all the zones. So we can look at how much vegetation is growing, what the functional groups are. So what kind of plants are there, and the our partners at the ranch are continuing to take vegetation samples before and after every vegetation management event. So before a plot gets mowed or grazed, the team there takes a vegetation sample, and then after the event, they'll take another sample. So we can kind of track how these vegetation management practices are influencing biomass productivity. And then we also installed a bunch of microclimate sensors. So we have soil moisture and temperature probes at three different depths across all of our sites. And then we have a bunch of microclimate sensors, so little weather stations, measuring solar radiation, precipitation, air temperature, wind speed, which we expect to have a lot of spatial variability in all of those different variables. And I actually remembered what I was saying earlier, all of this data that we're collecting is also going to feed into a biogeochemical model. So trying to capture, there's a lot of ecosystem models that do that model, plant growth and soil dynamics and carbon fluxes. And the goal is to integrate solar panels with grazing into those ecosystem models. So even if we don't have long term data, we can still use this data to parameterize, the models and hopefully say something really interesting and kind of play out different scenarios with these dynamics. So we have a bunch of different centers and samples that are now back in the lab to be analyzed. And then in addition, we're working with a team from the UK for a company called Pantera. And they installed Eddy Covariance flux towers at each of our treatments. So we'll be measuring Yeah, it's very, very exciting to have that data to. So we can see carbon and water fluxes from our sight and hopefully pair that with all of the vegetation and soil and microclimate measurements and kind of see how the system as a whole is working.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:28

That's super interesting. That's exciting. Yeah, that's fun to hear. What challenges or roadblocks Have you have you had so far in this project?

TAYLOR BACON 43:38

I think one of the hardest things we ran into was when we were initially designing this research plan and kind of deciding what data we wanted to collect. Deciding what sensors we wanted to use, where we wanted to install them is that there is so much heterogeneity and variation within the solar array, even just within a single block of panels across even just a couple feet apart because of these different zones. And it was challenging to balance okay, what can we feasibly measure and what how much data can we feasibly collect, while still capturing enough of this variability to actually be accurate and to have representative data? And when I first submitted, I was like, Okay, we need 81 TDR hours to measure soil moisture, and RPI was kind of like, why do we need that many, like, that's a lot. So kind of finding that sweet spot and being like, Okay, this is this is going to give us enough data to do the things we're trying to do, while still being feasible to actually implement. We only have so many people to go out and hammer soil cores into the ground and to install all of these sensors so and as a scientist, you always want like the most state you can get and like the highest quality and accepting that like, sometimes you just have to bank on what's feasible and kind of as long as it meets what you need, and kind of step back and be like, Okay, this is going to be enough, even though I would love to have TDR hours, at way more intervals or something like that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:20

Yep. I think that's that's been a that's been a forever problem. And I'm sure maybe it'll get, you know, overcome in the future. But But yeah, especially when you're dealing with spatial variability. And that's, that's always one of the big questions that we get here. It's like, okay, yeah, how many sensors do I need? In order to, as I said, depends on your, your project depends on your questions. But yes, we want sensors everywhere, we want to be able to gather data from from every single point. But yeah, but like you said, that's, that's not, that's not feasible right now. And at the same time, too, I mean, with it does make your or can make your models more robust. But again, you know, it's one of those things where, sometimes as you're modeling, there's diminishing returns with, with, you know, the amount of how much you parameter and parameterize, your, your models and how many variables you, you input. And so, yeah, like you said, it's finding that that sweet spot of, of making things work, especially depending on on your budget, as well. So, as we're wrapping things up, can, can you just kind of give us an overview of your thoughts on the I guess the the impact or implications of of your project here, but also potentially the future of this kind of research into agriculture takes and, and, you know, combination of, of renewable energy and and land use?

TAYLOR BACON 46:43

Yeah, I think this field is really exciting, because in my mind, there's not really any question that we're going to have a lot more solar, and that there's going to be a lot of land that has solar installed on it. There's a net zero America study that Princeton did a couple years ago that looked at the footprint of energy, we would need to meet a net zero target by 2050. And in their kind of highest land use scenario, I think it was something like 17 million additional acres of solar power plants. So it's coming. The exact scale, I think, is kind of unknown. But I think there's going to be a lot and we need a lot. But I think this field is exciting, because it's really asking how we can do that, as well as possible, considering not just the solar energy and the like, energy generation carbon side of things, but kind of more systems wide analysis of what this looks like, and how solar installations can be built and designed and managed to really improve ecosystem function rather than detracting. So I think kind of every agricole takes angle, and each different agricultural component looks at this a little differently. But I think as a whole, the field is really exciting for kind of thinking about not just sustainable energy that's sustainable from a energy carbon point of view. But that's from sustained that's sustainable from the land it's on. And our cattle tracker kind of north star is a solution that's good for solar energy generation, good for the land, and good for the animals. And I think zooming out, and having that kind of systems perspective is something that's really great about this Iberville takes field. And I think because so much additional solar energy is kind of a given, there's a lot of benefit from this field, and from all of the data that's starting to come out. And I think each project contribute something a little different. And hopefully, we'll have something useful to say about grazing. And so solar collocation that can help inform how people are doing this, and how solar companies are thinking about their projects and how the people whose land is being leased or thinking about managing their land and working with solar, solar companies rather than kind of losing that agricultural component. So I think there's a lot of a lot of benefits to be had from these systems and from the kind of broader systems level thinking. Awesome.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:24

Any other final thoughts before we wrap things up?

TAYLOR BACON 49:28

I don't think so. This has been great.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:30

Yeah. So our time is up for today. Thank you again, Taylor, for joining us. We do really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. It's been a really fascinating conversation.

TAYLOR BACON 49:42

Thanks again for having me. This is great.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:46

Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World

Chris Chambers operates as the Environment Support Manager and has been the Soil Moisture Sensor Product Manager for many years at METER Group. He specializes in ecology and plant physiology and has 15 years of experience helping researchers measure the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum.

Leo Rivera operates as a research scientist and Director of Scientific Outreach at METER Group. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degree in soil science at Texas A&M University where his research focused on the impacts of land use and landscape on soil hydraulic properties. He also helped develop an infiltration system for measuring hydraulic conductivity used by the NRCS in Texas. Currently, Leo leads METER’s collaborative research efforts, and focuses on application development in hydrology instrumentation, including the SATURO infiltrometer and the HYPROP. He also works in R&D to explore new instrumentation for water and nutrient movement in the soil.

Links to learn more about Leo Rivera

Author page on Environmental Biophysics Blog

Leo Rivera on LinkedIn

Leo Rivera on ResearchGate

Links to learn more about Chris Chambers

Chris Chambers on LinkedIn

Chris Chambers biography on METER

Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists for scientists.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 0:08

So if you have matric potential soil suction, and water content, do you even need to know anything about the soil type anymore?

LEO RIVERA 0:17

You know, when it comes to understanding the hydraulic properties of soil? No, those are the things that we need to get to, to know. Now there are other physical properties that we probably need to understand soil type when it comes to like plasticity index and things like that. But for most people, most applications if you know the water content and water potential, and you understand that relationship, that tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 0:43

Any comments on that can go straight to Leo Rivera.

LEO RIVERA 0:46

Or Brad just one of us!

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:51

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guests are research scientists Leo Rivera and Chris Chambers, both of whom are water content and water potential sensor and application experts here at meter group. Chris chambers operates as the environment Support Manager and has been the soil moisture sensor Product Manager for many years at METER Group. He specializes in ecology and plant physiology, and has 15 years of experience helping researchers measure the soil plant atmosphere continuum. Leo Rivera operates as a research scientist and director of scientific outreach at METER Group. He earned his undergraduate and master's degree in soil science at Texas a&m University. And there his research focused on the impacts of land use and landscape on soil hydraulic properties. He also helped develop an infiltration system for measuring hydraulic conductivity used by the NRCS and Texas. Currently, Leo leads METER's collaborative research efforts and focuses on application development in hydrology instrumentation, including the SATURO Infiltrometer and the HYPROPROP. He also works in r&d to explore new instrumentation for water and nutrient movement in the soil. So Leo and Chris, thank you so much for being here.

LEO RIVERA 2:13

Thanks, Brad.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 2:14

Thanks, Brad. Happy to be here.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:17

All right. So we probably need to start out by talking about the differences between soil water content and soil water potential. Can, can you just give us a brief definition of both these parameters? What is soil water content? And what is soil water potential?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 2:34

Right. And so what we're talking about is ways to describe the state of water in the soil.

LEO RIVERA 2:40

Yep.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 2:41

And they are both extremely valuable and give you complimentary information. And so the soil water content is the amount of water there, it's how much water is in any given volume of soil. And the water potential is the energy state. So when we talk about these things, people will generally say soil moisture, and they generally mean water content.

LEO RIVERA 3:07

Yep.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 3:07

We're trying to get a little broader view of soil moisture out there. And it really includes both of these parameters.

LEO RIVERA 3:15

Yeah, yeah. And oftentimes, I mean, when people look at water content or water potential, they're typically looking at it in terms of volumetric water content, how much water is there per volume of soil, but geotechnical engineers often often like to look at in terms of gravimetric water content. So it often depends on the field that you're coming from and how you want to look at it. geotechnical engineers also like to call soil water potential soil suction, and they look at it in terms of a positive value. So it's the inverse of water potential, which this takes some time. It takes a little bit to wrap your mind around that sometimes. But depends on the field you're coming from and what you're really trying to understand and how you're using that information.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 3:52

Yeah, but in the end, it's the mass and the energy state.

LEO RIVERA 3:56

Yep.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:57

All right. So that being said, what types of situations would you only need soil water content? And in the same, you know, the same vein? What type of situations would you only need soil water potential?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 4:10

Can we play our favorite game for a bit?

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:13

Sure!

CHRIS CHAMBERS 4:13

Okay, water content or water potential? Okay, we've done this a couple of times, so you might have seen it before. Bear with us a little bit, okay! Um, so let's start with maybe maybe not as easy as you might think. A setpoint for irrigation control?

LEO RIVERA 4:30

Ooh, good question. So, ideally, we're going to control irrigation to hit a target water potential. But we need the water content to know how much water we need to add to hit those target points.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 4:45

See, we threw the curve in too early. Yeah, we'll come back to that. Yeah. Let's do a new one. How much? How much tension is going to be on the water column of a plant?

LEO RIVERA 4:59

Water potential.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 5:00

Water potential all the way. Let's say how, what if what you want to measure if you want to measure the amount? See, I'm giving, I'm giving it away here. It's hard. It's hard to phrase these without giving it away in the question. The amount of water loss.

LEO RIVERA 5:17

The amount of... I mean, water content is gonna give us the information there. Right, right. Let me throw one your way. If there's a risk of slope failure?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 5:27

Woohoo. So once again, we're back to needing both of those, right?

LEO RIVERA 5:34

Yeah, I think, first of all failure water, the amount of water there is helpful, but the biggest factor is the water potential or the soil suction, as I refer to it, because that kind of gives us that intrinsic strength component.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 5:50

But sometimes the positive pressure is a factor there too, right?

LEO RIVERA 5:52

For sure. How's it? Yeah, yeah. So we're really we're ideally looking at both the negative and positive pore pressures.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 5:59

Great. How about freezing potential in, like, say in like a wheat hardiness study?

LEO RIVERA 6:10

Ooo oh a curveball in there. Yeah. That's a good question. Freezing potential. I mean, I think water potential is probably going to govern that more. Right. But also, we could use I mean, if it actually frozen, we can use temperature to infer the water potential.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 6:25

Yeah and that will kind of give you the same information. Right? When you when you hit the freezing point, they're both going to just look like really dry soils.

LEO RIVERA 6:32

Yeah. Yeah. And then from there, you can use temperature to kind of infer guess what, what's happening there.?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 6:38

So as long as we play this game, you think we'd be better at it by now.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:43

All right, so you have given us a couple of instances here examples of when a water content and water potential work well together. So are there any other or not are there? But can you give us some other examples or situations when it's appropriate to measure both of those parameters at the same time,

CHRIS CHAMBERS 7:01

so people are really used to using water content? Because it it's easy to understand, right? Basically, at the end of the day, you get a percent. And that's really easy for people to wrap their head around. Yeah, you're looking at a volume of soil, that's 25%. water content, volumetric water content, then right about the fraction of quarter of that soil is made up of water. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to interpret than many people realize. Because 25% water content in a sand is more water than any plant needs. And in a clay, it's probably well beyond the permanent wilting point. So you can't really just use water content. In some situations, you either need the matric potential as well. Or you need to know some more information like the soil type.

LEO RIVERA 7:55

Yeah. And I think I'd even argue that in most situations where people are just using water content, they're doing it based on historical knowledge of what that means for that soil. And really, it's because they've spent enough time knowing what that means in terms of water potential without knowing that they're actually trying to understand that they're like, my plants are happy, my plants are sad. These are my set points for water content.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 8:19

Especially in seasonal areas, we've got a couple of years of data, you know, where it peaks out in the wet season, you know, where it flattens out where, where the plants draw as much as they can in the dry season, if you live in a climate like that. So that's really how the context is giving to a lot of a lot of water content studies.

LEO RIVERA 8:39

Yeah, yeah. And what I mean, one other, you're looking for a specific application, anytime you're trying to understand hydrology, and water movement, in soil and where it's going, you need both parameters, because the governing factor of which way the water is going to move is the water potential. And the amount of water that we're moving is going to be based on the water content. And anytime we're doing a hydrology study if like you're really trying to understand, you know, the Vados zone and and how water moves through the soil, you need to understand both these parameters,

CHRIS CHAMBERS 9:14

The soil storage for one, and then the direction that it's going to go which is the water water potential, and that you don't need to know as much so let me ask you this, maybe this question might ruffle some feathers, but I'm going to put you on the spot. So if you have matric potential of soil suction and water content, do you even need to know anything about soil type anymore?

LEO RIVERA 9:41

You know, when it comes to understanding the hydraulic properties of soil, no, those are the things that we need to know. Now there are other physical properties that we probably need to understand soil type when it comes to like plasticity index and things like that. But for most people, most applications if You know the water content and water potential and you understand that relationship? It tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 10:07

Any comments on that can go straight to Leo Rivera.

LEO RIVERA 10:12

Or Brad just one of us

CHRIS CHAMBERS 10:15

know Yeah, okay, let's, let's take that a step further. So now we have and really this is a lot more of an issue because water potential matric potential used to be a lot harder to measure, right? I mean, how long did it How long did we spend developing the terrorists? 21?

LEO RIVERA 10:34

You mean? How long are we still spending?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 10:35

How long? When is the tariffs 21 going to be fully cooked? Yeah. But now we're pushing the measurements down getting some reliable readings at the permanent wilting point and below. So it's that readings a lot more accessible. Do people really know what to do with those together? Now we're kind of getting into, we can get water content and water potential pretty, pretty reasonably and get kind of make accurate soil water retention curves in the in the ground? Yeah. So what? How do people use that? What do we do with this extra with this extra power?

LEO RIVERA 11:17

Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. I mean, you've talked about the amount of time we spent developing these centers, which has been challenging. And we're still continuing to push that. In order to really, I mean, we are now at a point where I think we can really utilize these tools in the field, to characterize the soil hydraulic properties in a way that we haven't been able to do before, and where we've relied on laboratory methods to do that. So I think there is a lot more power in our capabilities now. Now, I will say that I think we need to keep pushing the boundaries in terms of what we can do with the sensor. Right. But for most, a lot of applications, these sensors are super powerful now. Yeah. I mean, the with what we've worked on what the solid matrix sensors like the TEROS 21, the gen two version. I mean, its capabilities are so much further than they were 20 years ago.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 12:14

Yeah, exactly.

LEO RIVERA 12:15

Yeah.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 12:16

Okay, let's take a step back, because I just kind of threw a new term in there, and we didn't stop. Soil water retention curves. It's the relationship between the water content and soil suction, you know, hit the matric potential. And it's my experience with with making that with collecting data, and then fitting the curve to make that relationship is it's a pretty involved process. And for a long time, it's been, you know, kind of a specialized area of science. But now it's more and more available. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about? Okay, what do we do with the soil water retention curve? How, why is it so important? And yeah, well, how is it traditionally done?

LEO RIVERA 13:06

Yeah. Well, you know, we often refer to the soil water retention curve being the finger fingerprint of the soil, right. And because it is unique, every soil has its own retention curve, because there's different property and intrinsic properties that shape how that retention curve looks and what that means. Historically, there's been a lot of different ways that we've had to make these measurements and the you can't use one device, one instrument one tool to make the full retention curve. So typically, you know, in the past, we've used tools like pressure plates, and filter paper method, which not a big fan of and if I hear you're using filter paper method, I will be sad. No, sorry, to all my engineering friends out there. And then we have tools like the dewpoint techniques like with the WP4C that have really pushed our capabilities of understanding the dry end capture the dry end of the of the curve, but we still needed to make improvements. There's tools like hang water columns, which are great. And one of our colleagues here in METER group absolutely loves his hanging water column. And, and they are really powerful for doing certain things. But then we have tools like the HYPROP now, that have really simplified our ability to characterize the wet end of the soil moisture release curve. And now something that a measurement that historically has taken several months to complete, which is why it's probably been so specialized, because it takes so much time and it's not easy to do, can be done in in a week typically right to make characterize the full curve. And we aren't now have new tools, like the VSA that can help us even further understand what's happening on the dry end of the moist, really secure fish tells us a ton of information.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 14:56

Okay, and so now we've got all the specialized equipment general, generally, generally, the data and using the data and making that thing has been confined to its own special branch of, of science. But now that, like right now we have 1,000's and 1,000's of sensors in the field together collecting data that is really parallel to that process. How? How does the how does the field observations that are being collected right now? How would they compare to the lab? Are we sacrificing some data quality on those is the analysis a little bit trickier, because, you know, you have to have a range of basically water states of the soil, right? Saturated to some, some, some spread of data points to capture the variability right to make this curve. And so, you know, you might be waiting some months, if you're in the wet season, you might not really get much of the curve. So, how do you put that together in the front field data?

LEO RIVERA 16:04

Yeah, it takes time. That's, I mean, that's really the the, the, the final answer is that it just to get a proper retention curve in the field, you need a good season, or a couple seasons of data, sometimes you have to give a whole range

CHRIS CHAMBERS 16:21

Or part of the range who so do you need to get down to permanent wilting point, do you think?

LEO RIVERA 16:27

I mean, it depends on what you want to know?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 16:29

Mmm good point.

LEO RIVERA 16:30

Do you care? I mean, do we care about permanent wilting point, which if you're worried about, you know, plant stress and that type of things? Yeah, I think it's good to get down there. And, which that's pretty doable in most cases unless you're irrigating heavily, or not heavily, I mean, trying to irrigate and keep things within that range, you might never hit that. So it depends on how you have your sensors. Right? And what the field practices. Yeah.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 17:01

So there's still going to be times when the lab lab analysis is absolutely necessary, because then you control the environment. You can you can make the curve as as broad or as small as, as you like, right.

LEO RIVERA 17:14

Yeah. Now, I mean, you can do quite a bit more within the lab and do it faster, which is the power but you know, there's more power and also an understanding what's happening in the field. Right. So

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:31

So I don't know if we've, if we've hit this one, but along with moisture release scores, how does how long does it take to make a moisture release curve in the field? With NCT sensors?

LEO RIVERA 17:41

Yeah, I kind of touched on a little bit. But really, ideally, you're going to need six months to nine months worth of data in most cases. Because if you're really trying to get a proper retention curve in the field, you need a good wetting and drying period. And, and, for example, we have some sensors installed on the soccer field right now. And our sorry, we have a soccer field that we outside of our building. Just to explain that we're we're we have an irrigation project in place where we're trying to control based on evapotranspiration and the water content, water, potential data, and really fine tune our irrigation practices. But you know, it's going to I won't have a full insitu retention curve from those until probably November. And I installed the sensors a couple weeks ago, actually a week ago now. So it just, it takes time, it also depends on your climatic conditions, which you're going to hit. But but it also is, you know, something that you need to understand is that water, so much release curves, we talk about letting versus drying curves, but there's really the scanning function that happens when you're going back and forth. That's why when, you know, we oftentimes see people try to use one portion of the soil moisture release curve to try to understand what's happening in that completely in the soil. And there's risks when you do that, because wetting and drying behaviors are different. And then when you're in that scanning curve, it can be different and that's why when you have that actual physical measurement of water potential in the soil, you know exactly what's happening. And then we can fully understand those properties and how that and how that behaves. And yeah, anyways.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:21

You have talked about some of the practical applications for soil moisture release curves. Are there any, any others that that you feel like our audience would would really need to know or understand about how soil moisture release curves would be able to impact or affect or help their their research and their studies?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 19:42

And not just research for this? Because there's a lot of, one, and this is where we're kind of on the cusp of, you know, making these data, making these data presentable and, and presenting it in a way where people can absorb the information from the soil water retention curve and decisions on it. And there's there's a lot of really interesting possibilities coming up. A few years ago, how long was it get when we had the big floods?

LEO RIVERA 20:14

Oh, yeah. It was right around the Palouse here that was probably four years ago now?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 20:18

Gosh, doesn't seem that long ago. But as a center company, you can imagine what like we install stuff all over the place. And just to see, well, how's this gonna react here and there. So we, when we had a torrent of rain, just over a short span of time, I can't remember it was over a couple of days. Yeah. And a week for sure. And, you know, but it wasn't, it wasn't an insane amount of rain, we've gotten that much precipitation before without flooding. And in this particular case, all of downtown Pullman flooded, there was flooding all across this region, Moscow and, and we went back and looked and looked at some of our sensor data across the region. And what was interesting is that, we could see that in this case, we'd had a freeze, a lot of the pore spaces had filled up. And the different part about this was that there was no place for the water to infiltrate into the ground. And our if we didn't have both tension to realize that, hey, we're at saturation, and the water content for how much water was in the pore spaces, you know, that, that there was a large volume of water there. We also had some stream depth type sensors around and looking back, it was easy to see that, oh, of course, this is going to flood if we get this much more precipitation. Yeah. And so that's an area where not just soil water retention curve, but the soil water retention curve, plus some stream depth and some precipitation. And we can start making really good models without having to do extensive soil, you know, soil type, yeah, kind of classifications to be able to predict this kind of event. But getting that information in a consumable form is kind of a trick at this stage.

LEO RIVERA 22:17

Yeah. Yeah. It was funny when this was all happening. When the floods were starting to occur. We were all nerding out looking at everybody. Yeah, and, but what's really, I mean, when you go back and look at it, if you look at the storage that was occurring in the soil, and how you could actually see the profile filling. And we saw that in both water content and water potential data where we were approaching saturation at deeper depths, and it was moving its way up to the surface. That was like, oh, yeah, there's not much storage, capacity storage capacity left in the soil. And now we have a much greater risk of flood and then we got more rain, and we had flooding, right. And so that's, you know, I think we're seeing more of this, we're seeing more adoption of soil moisture sensors and things like that, and water and water potential to in these big weather networks now, because they're starting to see that this is an important parameter for understanding things like this and also understanding other weather dynamics. And so it's, it's I'm really excited to see the future where that goes and how they start utilizing that information. And when we start getting these big networks of water, water content and water potential out there, how it's going to unlock so much.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 23:29

It's with the irrigation potential to precisely manage irrigation. You know, it's the, it's really kind of the simplest way to set your irrigation set points based off of matric potential, right. But then with other factors, like the VPD, you've got your refill points with matric potential, and then you have how much water is stored in the soil with water content? Yeah, so you can calculate with a few estimates of ET, how long it's going to be before you hit your refill point and how much water you'll need to add precisely. So this, the soil water retention curves can be extremely valuable in that type of an that type of application as well.

LEO RIVERA 24:11

Yeah. And Brad to add one more to that, you know, list of areas that retention curves are starting to bring a lot more power. We're seeing on the geotechnical engineering side of things and what we've learned from the the drying characteristics of the soil moisture release curve, that not only can we use it to understand, you know, plant stress and things like that and potential for flooding, but also soil mechanical properties and in properties about the clay, the type of clay that's in the soil, the can ion exchange capacity, the specific surface area like there's all these properties that all that information is actually in the retention curve. and combining that with a few other things is really going to unlock a lot of things in terms of simplifying the way we characterize soils for engineering purposes as well. And there's researchers like Ningaloo, Bill Lycos, and others that are doing some really awesome work in this area. And, and putting a lot of papers out and working on new methodology to simplify these. These tests that sometimes also, again, take time, take weeks take months to collect data on and, and being able to do all of that with one curve that takes less than 24 hours to to get oh its going to be so cool.

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:37

All right, anything else you want to add about soil moisture release curves that we feel we didn't touch on?

LEO RIVERA 25:43

No, go out and measure so much release curves, they're fun.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 25:46

Or they Yeah, or just think about the way that the the water stayed in your soil is develops over time, right? And you're gonna have inputs and outputs. But these two variables are just kind of bring back what we've been talking about these two variables are the, the state of your water. And so if you can pay so much attention to the fluxes, the precipitation, the evapotranspiration, then the the model of how the water behaves in your soil is going to be more complete.

LEO RIVERA 26:28

Yeah. And I'll just add that, you know, historically, I understand why people have steered away from making some of these measurements, especially water potential, because it involves tools that took a lot of maintenance so they are not easy to use, and um

CHRIS CHAMBERS 26:43

And -20 kPa is a little bit trickier to understand than 20%.

LEO RIVERA 26:48

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And water potential is still one of the hardest things to teach in soil science. Like, it's the thing that takes the longest time for people to comprehend. But once they do, they see like, oh, wow, this is such a powerful parameter. And now we're working, you know, tools, the tools are getting easier to use, they're getting better, they're getting more accurate, more reliable. And, and so hopefully, it's going to make it easier to adopt. And as we work on making them easier to install, the hope is that these are going to become more powerful tools for your more general users of this information. And so that's, you know, we're gonna keep working on that and trying to make the tools better. But it's really fun to see what people are doing with it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:30

With everything that you guys have been saying about what a potential, and we feel and believe and understand it to be so critical. Why does it seem like we're just now starting to talk about it so much versus, you know, compared to water content? Which is, you know, been around forever?

LEO RIVERA 27:47

It's a good question. I think some of it has to do with the tools, like just how challenging it has been to measure them. But I also think, you know, if we think about, let's just use the food industry as an example. And water activity, which is the same thing is, it's the same with water potential, a different way of looking at it, in food. And what they've learned is that water activity tells us so much more about what actually is going to happen with that food product is the risk for mold risk for bacteria, how it affects the texture and taste of the food. And, you know, it took them a long time to move away from water content measurements of food to water activity. And sometimes it's just, it takes a long time to change mindsets. And some of it is that again, water potential has been so hard to understand. Like, of course, they're gonna be scared of it.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 28:38

Let me throw this out there. Let me challenge you with this though. Because is it just the accessibility of the information? Because sometimes you can if you've got matric potential, and this was this came up. Last year, I was just Well, I wanted to learn about some set points for growing tomatoes. You get into you dig into the literature, and it's like, oh, you know, you can you want it at -20 kPa for this part of this development cycle and -40 kPa for this part of its development cycle. There's a lot of information like that that's already been done research is already available. Is it just not getting to the right places? And if not, how? How do we how do we get that message out further?

LEO RIVERA 29:25

That's a good question. If you were to ask somebody, just let's say somebody calls you up on the phone. Yep. And you ask them, Hey, do you know what your target market potential ranges are for your tomatoes? Oh, but they know the answer right now.

CHRIS CHAMBERS 29:36

I guess not. But you know, that information is there and is done.

LEO RIVERA 29:42

Yeah, it's there. But how accessible is it and how, you know, this is in research. This is the challenge is writing research and getting the information in front of general users, which is oftentimes a role like extension groups and things like that. And I think that's where we've maybe missed The mark a little bit is, you know, yeah there is a ton of... We see this in other industries, too, where people are trying to repeat work that was done in another industry 30 years ago. Yep. But that information, either is not easy to find, or they just didn't take the time to find it, of course, right. But yeah, it's just I, you know, I think it's up to us as we educate, not just I mean, not just ourselves, but other folks that are teaching these things that there is this information out there and, and how you have to get it out there. Now, you'll find those niche people who like dig through the dig through Google and find this information. But how many people actually do that?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 30:40

I don't know!

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:42

All right. And so in this, in this instance, then if we have people if it's an issue with, with getting that information information out there, or, you know, adoption of of this of this information, how would you then explain water potential to, you know, colleague or somebody who has already used water content? And then doesn't see the need to use anything beyond that?

LEO RIVERA 31:05

Yeah, that's a good question. And there's, the first thing that comes to mind for me, is, is great if you know what your water content means, at that spot in the field? Can you apply it to another area if you move to another field? Or the thing is, we know that these properties are the we're seeing the term a lot now, dynamic soil properties change around so as practices change on the land. As land use changes, or as we start, yeah, improving our growing practices, whatever, like starting move towards no tillage, or other things, these dynamic soil properties, which that moisture release curve is a dynamic soil property change. So what you thought the water content meant, a while back, doesn't mean the same thing as these properties change. And so like, if you really want to understand what's going on, you need to understand these values. And when we see this all the time with people who think oh, yeah, I'm doing great, my my turfs looking good, my potatoes are looking good. And then when you actually look at what they're measuring in terms of water potential or water content, they're either way over irrigating. So they're wasting water, risking more chances for disease, or in like turf, turf. Areas where these invasive species can compete better if it's too wet. This is a lot of things where if you actually were measuring and knew what was going on, you could still improve your practices, even though you think you know it so well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:35

As we come to the close of this episode, is there anything else that you feel like we need to cover hit when it comes to water potential water contents, or soil moisture release curves? Any final thoughts?

CHRIS CHAMBERS 32:51

I think at this stage, it's a game of it's a game of communication. Right? We we we actually know a lot about how to build these and how to collect the data. And we're getting better at making the data available. It's it's the putting the information in the contact where people can, can make decisions based off of based off of the information or pull it all together in one place and be able to be able to add the context for either decision making or understanding the other variables in the process. So that's, that's where it that's where it falls for me. And I hope we've got plans to work on that over the over the future and help to make that easier for people.

LEO RIVERA 33:42

Yeah, I think that about sums it up. I mean, we need to make this information, easier to understand easier to digest and, and continue to make these tools easier to use.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:52

All right, well, our time is up for today. Thank you again, you and Chris, for taking time to share your insights with us and everybody in the audience here. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Contact us at metergroup.com or on twitter @meter_env

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Dr. John Norman, currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was Professor of Soil Science and also Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. He is a Fellow in the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Norman has received the American Meteorology Society award for Outstanding Biometeorologist, was the appointed Rothermel Bascom Professor of Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin, and was awarded the University of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Spitze Land Grant Award for Faculty Excellence. He advises graduate students and postdocs and has hundreds of refereed publications to his name. In 2008 the American Meteorological Society and the American Society of Agronomy sponsored symposia in his honor, and in 2016 the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Science.

Dr. Gaylon Campbell has been a research scientist and engineer at METER for over 20 years following nearly 30 years on faculty at Washington State University. His first experience with environmental measurement came in the lab of Sterling Taylor at Utah State University making water potential measurements to understand plant water status. Dr. Campbell is one of the world’s foremost authorities on physical measurements in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. His book written with Dr. John Norman on environmental biophysics provides a critical foundation for anyone interested in understanding the physics of the natural world. He’s written three books, over 100 refereed journal articles, various book chapters, and has several patents.

Links to learn more about Dr. John Norman

Dr. John Norman's faculty page at UW Madison

Dr. John Norman on ResearchGate

Drs. John Norman and Gaylon Campbell's book

Links to learn more about Dr. Gaylon Campbell

Dr. Gaylon Campbell on ResearchGate

Dr. Gaylon Campbell's interview on his book with Dr. John Norman

Dr. Gaylon Campbell on Academia

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

JOHN NORMAN 0:08

Nobody in these disciplines tends to study the interface. And the interface is everything. All the things that happened go through that interface. So if we're going to try to understand our environment, we need not to recognize this interface yet. Trying to work with other people to learn more about the boundary, bounding disciplines to what we want to do. You constantly running into this limitation that their understanding of the medium stops at the edge of their discipline. And so, I've always found that very challenging to cross those disciplinary boundaries.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:01

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today's guests are doctors John Norman and Galen Campbell. DR. John Norman, currently professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Madison was Professor of soil science and also atmospheric and oceanic science. He is a fellow in the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Norman has received the American meteorology Society Award for Outstanding bio meteorologist was appointed Rothermel Bascom, Professor of Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin and was awarded the University of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences spritzy land grant award for Faculty Excellence. He advises graduate students and postdocs and has hundreds of refereed publications to his name. In 2008, the American Meteorological Society and the American Society of Agronomy sponsored symposia in his honor, and in 2016, the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada awarded him an honorary doctorate of science. Dr. Gaylon Campbell has been a research scientist and engineer at meter for over 20 years following nearly 30 years on faculty at Washington State University. His first experience with environmental measurement came in the lab of sterling Taylor at Utah State University, making water potential measurements to understand plant water status. Dr. Campbell is one of the world's foremost authorities on physical measurements in the soil plant atmosphere continuum. His book written with Dr. John Norman, which we will discuss later on, on environmental biophysics provides a critical foundation for anyone interested in understanding the physics of the natural world. He's written three books over 100 refereed journal articles, various book chapters and has several patents. And today, both John and Galen are here to talk about their widely used co authored book, An Introduction to Environmental biophysics on its 25 year anniversary. And we wanted to celebrate a few of their many contributions to the field of environmental science. So thank you, John, and Gaylon, so much for being here. First off, we do want to cover a little bit of your backgrounds. Can you tell us a little bit of how you became involved in the sciences in general, and in environmental and climate studies, specifically, and, John, we'll start with you first.

JOHN NORMAN 3:27

That's a long story. But I guess I'll try to make it short. But I was a really young child, I like to take things apart. So I would always find something in the garbage or something my family didn't want anymore. And I take it apart to see how it worked. So I've always been curious about how things work. When I was in the sixth grade, I had a really good man, teacher, my first man teacher in elementary school, he did a nice job with science. And I was fascinated by it. And I would bring things home and my older sister, who was six years older than me, so here I am, 12. And she's 18. And, you know, siblings that are that far apart at that age, don't have much to do with each other. She happened to see one of these science things that was doing and encouraged me in a really strong way. And I think from that point on, I thought about science as something to do when I really had never thought about that before. And then a spectacular eighth grade math teacher who became my biology teacher, and my chemistry teacher, really took me under his wing and science really became my pursuit through his tutelage. And I started in mechanical engineering because I knew identical things. Well, that didn't last long because I found out what engineers did and I knew I didn't want to do that. because I wanted to spend time outside, I grew up in the woods, north woods in Minnesota. And I wanted to be outside to do my science. Through a number of serendipitous events, I, I ended up at the University of Minnesota, got my master's degree there and then a PhD in Madison and went off to Scotland for the first postdoc, then to Penn State and Nebraska and finally finished up my career in Wisconsin.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:31

And Gaylon, for you. I know we've heard your story, I think on a previous episode, could you give us a recap of how you came to be in environmental science?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 5:42

You know, I grew up on a farm in southern Idaho. Like John, I had some really good teachers, and in our high school, math and physics and chemistry teachers were really outstanding. When it was time to go to college, I actually started in engineering to, like John decided that wasn't the right place. So I switched to physics then the physics curriculum that there was time to explore and experiment, some and so since I had grown up on a farm, I wanted to take a class in soils. And so I took the soils class, and that was taught by Sterling Taylor, one of the really outstanding soil physicists at the time, and he invited me to work in his laboratory. Really, he was the one who influenced me strongly in that direction. Finally, I got a bachelor's in physics, Utah State, got a master's with Sterling and came to Washington State University for a PhD. After time in the army, this is where I spent my career. I retired from the university almost 25 years ago and went to work for METER.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:01

And so how did the two of you become introduced? How did you begin this collaboration that has spanned over 25 years?

JOHN NORMAN 7:10

That's one of the real gifts in my career is that invitation is very powerful effect, because I learned so much from from Gaylon and I heard so much about him from my advisor, particularly champ Tanner, an awful lot of Gaylon's work, I used his earlier version, the first edition of environmental biophysics, love that book. And I used I taught out of it, the invitation was a real joy to me. Highlight in my career.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 7:48

I think I knew John from things that he published even in those early years of his career, they were just mind blowing to me. And what a brave young man Uh, yes. I'm glad I could teach him something because he stopped me an awful lot. We collaborated on some modeling projects and published a number of papers together. And I would say that of all of the people that have influenced me in my career that John is one of the most important.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:20

So how did you decide that creating this collaboration and working on this book together was something that could be meaningful that you could do together?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 8:28

As John said, there was a first edition of the book, the book came out of the course that I taught there at Washington State University. And when it was written, I think the approach I took was the one that was in vogue or in place, but by the late 80s, early 90s, why it was clear that things had taken a bit different direction, and there was a lot that needed to be updated in the book, the approach to calculating conductances the use of mole fluxes rather than mass fluxes or things like that, number of things had to be done. And a lot of the progress in a lot of those areas had come because of John's work and publications and research, particularly in plant canopies in modeling all of the above ground things and so it just seemed like a no brainer to see if John would be willing to join me in bringing a lot of those things up to date

JOHN NORMAN 9:32

in the 80s again, and helped me in a really sticky problem, probably one of the most difficult problems I confronted in for the fact that I worked on it for nine months, trying to solve it myself and I couldn't I knew a lot about the canopy and the atmosphere part of this problem, but I knew less about the soil But I knew nothing about how to connect the two together. Because the soil surface is a tough place to deal with. It's a boundary disciplinary wise in our pursuits. And it's also a boundary between a fluid and a solid or a porous solid. I just could not get the differential equations for the canopy in the atmosphere aside, to merge with the soil side. I tried everything I could do. And I finally I contacted Gaylon. And then Gaylon gave me a solution for this problem to solve it. I mean, it wasn't trivial to do it. It took reprogramming and things, some effort. And then finally, it took a few weeks to do. But after nine months of struggling, it was it was a godsend to me. And it's it's a very powerful idea for how to link things that are very different than science in general. Boy that sealed my respect for Gaylon. And when the invitation came, I jumped at it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:14

Where did this field originate from? And how would you break it down? For those who might just be hearing about it for the first time? How does it apply to not only the sciences, but also their daily lives.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 11:26

The course that I taught here at WSU is still taught now and it's taught by my son, Colin who's employed by METER, but as an adjunct appointment at the university and teaches that course each year that he let me give the first lecture this year. In that lecture, I said that environmental biophysics deals with heat and mass exchange between organisms and their environment, but I'm not sure that description does anything to help anybody that doesn't already know what environmental biophysics is. If you think about us as living organisms, our job is to capture resources from the environment. That's how we stay alive. That's how we thrive is by capturing resources and environmental biophysics, his mathematical description or physical description of how that resource capture occurs, quantifying how quickly or how much resource we can capture.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:27

Anything to add to that, John?

JOHN NORMAN 12:30

The irony of this field of study though, is that in science, we really don't deal well with living systems. We deal principally with a nonliving physical constraints, the living system, the things that limit us environmentally, but the essence of what we are and how we function and our creativity and our resourcefulness and our versatility and adaptability, self organized nature of life itself, which is really non quantifiable for us. That that part, science kind of leaves uncertain, and I think doesn't really deal with it. I think in environmental biophysics, the thing that attracted me to the field was this connection between human essence and the physical world around us. It's a mystery to me and studying it has been really fun for 50 years.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 13:37

The man that I worked with at Utah State University, Sterling Taylor was in a field called soil physics. The one that John worked at at Wisconsin, worked with Wisconsin was champ Tanner, they were two of the giants in that field of soil physics, but they saw that as a broader thing than soils that also involve the above ground environment. Both of them work pretty hard to understand both the above ground environment of plants and the below ground environment, plants and so it. It's always seemed kind of funny to me that environmental biophysics would come out of soil physics, but it was because of the vision and ability of people like Champ and Stirling that it did

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:30

with environmental biophysics being such a complex field and it integrates studies from many other disciplines, from mechanical and electrical engineering to plant physiology. We're dealing with atmospheric sciences and others. How challenging was that? Then to put all of this together all in one place and be able to make sense of it all.

JOHN NORMAN 14:52

That pursuit of wholeness trying to deal with the whole environment that we humans have To confront and face one way or another, directly or indirectly, our physical survival depends entirely on how we relate to this world around us. I don't see the boundaries between these different disciplines. In terms of the work in terms of what we're doing. The disciplinary boundaries do exist. And they're very sharp, and they're very strong. One that's really obvious for us for both Galen and I, because of working with vegetation and the atmosphere on one side of it. And working with the depth of the soil on the other side, is this soil interface. That soil interface is not only physical phenomena, it's not only a physical interface that really exists. But it's also a disciplinary interface. So you have disciplines like geology, soil physics, chemistry, soil biology, hydrogeology, beneath that surface, dealing with that medium as a whole. But you also have atmospheric science, you have crop science, you have plant physiology, you have a host of these disciplines, civil engineering hydrology, that are on the upper half, and the disciplines on each side, put their boundary conditions at the surface. So really, nobody in these disciplines tends to study the interface, the interface is everything. All the things that happen go through that interface. So if we're going to try to understand our environment, we need not to recognize this interface yet. Trying to work with other people to learn more about the bounding disciplines to what we want to do. You constantly running into this limitation that their understanding of the medium stops at the edge of their discipline, I've always found it very challenging to cross those disciplinary boundaries. At the same time, it's it's a big challenge. And it's fun to do. Because it's a wild and wooly territory, the biggest problems I encountered in my whole career, were the formal issues like grant proposals with grant proposals, you submit a integrated project like that, the grant monitors don't know who to send it to. So they send it to a lot of specialists in different disciplines. And they all come back and say, well, this isn't particularly novel in my discipline. I mean, which it isn't. In all fairness, it isn't but putting them all together is really novel issue. But who do you send the proposal to do that? And so proposal rejections, you know, are just something that I had to get used to, which is frustration, but the on the other end on the publication end the reviewers for the journals would do the same thing. And then you would have to deal with the editors and hope that the editor was more forgiving for crossing these boundaries, then the disciplinary specialists were who were reviewing it. And I have lots of discussions with journal editors. And some of them would bend their rules, and some of them wouldn't. So you had to deal with that rejection, too. So it was mostly personal, I suppose. The problems that I ran into,

GAYLON CAMPBELL 18:53

I suppose I ran into some of that too. But think about some of the pioneers in the area like Sterling and like Champ Tanner, and other one of the giants was John Monti. He published a book called Environmental physics. Little before I published my first addition. And I was already teaching that class and struggling to find a way to teach something that covered the whole area. And a student one day brought that book in and showed it to me. And I said, Oh, hey, can I borrow this? He said, Well, you can have it overnight. And, I took it home. And I read it all night. That's the only science book I have ever been able to read through the night and finally finished it by morning. He did such a beautiful job in that book of showing how to do exactly what you're talking about here of bringing those things together.

JOHN NORMAN 19:53

I think that the conciseness of the book is Gaylon gift I've never been noted for that talent, particularly as people have made clear as so many of my publications are opaque to him. But I learned a lot from reading those chapters that were in the original book and trying to absorb the conciseness. Trying to absorb how Gaylon did that, and then try to imitate it, you'll probably notice that there's a little less conciseness, in the later chapters make it a little bit more than that, at least that's what I'm told by the students. So I don't think I entirely succeeded. But I did try. I think that's something that's very hard to learn.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:48

The story goes that the first copies of your book were handed out looseleaf, to your classes that you were teaching at at the time, did did having on the fly reader, read reviews like that help make the book better? Or did it just create a bunch of chaos, as you're trying to get it published?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 21:06

Working with students has been one of the greatest gifts for me, was really good to have that kind of review and feedback from students helped a lot helped me a lot, at least in putting the things in that needed to be there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:21

Do you remember any specific feedback or themes or patterns in general?

JOHN NORMAN 21:25

Well I think one of the things that students did, that certainly was important to me, in terms of fitting into the book better. And that was the array of problems at the end of the chapters. I mean, there weren't endless problems, there were only a few half dozen, maybe or even less sometimes. But they were thinking kinds of problems, they had to think hard about what they were doing and translate the ideas in the chapter into something of their own. The examples in the chapter were indispensable, even though they the problems at the end were different. The examples were a really, really important part. And that was a strong feedback. And like Gaylon, and I would say, the best part of my academic career was the time I spent with students, particularly graduate students. They're brilliant, they have so much potential. I mean, most of the students I've worked with were a lot smarter than I was, but they didn't know it. And they didn't have as much experience. And so it was a best kept secret, from my point of view for 50 years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:48

Was there a fear in any way that you're leaving out a lot of really, really good and interesting discussion of environmental science,

GAYLON CAMPBELL 22:56

the changes that were made between the first and second edition were pretty clearly needed by the things that were being published, by the time that we got out the second edition, my feeling is that things have not changed that much since we published the second edition that that it's still pretty well up to date.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:19

This is the 25 year anniversary of its publication. It's still used widely internationally as well. How does something like this stay so relevant for so long?

JOHN NORMAN 23:30

Was Galen spagett, and sort of the basics of how you do this? I mean, science is mostly about knowledge, and a little bit about understanding. There's not a lot of wisdom in science. And Gaylon is a very wise person, he has a lot of wisdom. I think that someone with a lot of wisdom sees more than what's surrounding them. They see what's surrounding them, the interrelationships of everything. But they also see the past in the future to in in ways that mentally we we can't begin to appreciate, I think one of galas gifts is that his wisdom is powerful. And it's demonstrated in this book. I mean, one of the biggest challenges we face are the scaling issues of going from plot scale to continental scale. But the basics for doing that are in that book.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 24:36

Well I'd give some different interpretations of that. For one thing, I think the fundamentals aren't going to change very much. And they're the applications are the important part now and a lot of people have focused on that in the year since and discovered some wonderful things, but I think another part that that maybe is a little more cynical. Tanner published with one of his colleagues published papers like water, use efficiency in crops, research or re search, when you've lived as long as John and I have why you've seen an awful lot of re search that people don't learn the things that they cut out of a book or out of the literature, they go back and redo it again. And there seems to be a kind of a cycle in that it's about the length of a career. And so when one generation dies off, why the next generation starts over again. And so I think that environmental biophysics was a pretty hot topic. 25 years ago, it's probably less of a hot topic now. And at some point, somebody's going to come out with a whole new field. That really is environmental biophysics. But they think they've discovered it all again.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:04

Any thoughts on making a new revision? If not, or if so, what areas would you want to update or which areas would remain foundational and timeless?

JOHN NORMAN 26:14

A young scientist approached me some years ago and wanted to do a third edition. And so I had him write what he thought he wanted to change. And he sent it to me and I sent it to Gaylon, and we decided, well, give it a shot, see what you can do? Well, that was the last I heard og him! He never presented anything concrete beyond this, his first speculations about what he would like to change. I talked to him a few times since then. He's never brought it up. So I would guess that he might have realized it's a more daunting task than he thought, at first, not easy to put together a book, especially a book like that. No one else has ever approached me about doing a revision, there are certainly some things that we could adjust in it. And what would be nice would just be to do a third printing, because that's the first printing of the second edition had about 150 typos in it, then those got corrected in the second printing by the publisher. And then the second printing, I think there's at least another 50 titles, which we didn't get the first time around. And the students tend to find the mistakes, they're pretty good at that. And they really enjoy being able to rub it in a little bit. You know, to get the teachers stuck. Something so so that's a really a good system for debugging the book. But it shows you how incredibly difficult it is to write a book the only book I've seen that I've never that I've studied quite carefully that I've never found a typo in was will brutes arts book on boundary layer phenomena. That book I've never found a typo in it's probably the only technical book that I never found a typo in it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:29

Do you have any stories on how the the material of the book itself has impacted the research efforts of colleagues or students that you've mentored?

GAYLON CAMPBELL 28:38

One of the really enjoyable collaborations that I had at the university was with the Professor Jim King in zoology department. And he had students who were working on organism environment interaction with animals. He started sending his students to my class and understanding the environmental physics, the hand of organism environment interaction, really had a big effect on the work that they were able to do. And that was one of the some of the most enjoyable collaboration I had students working on snakes, that behavior and how it related to the environment, things that another student working on coat color and birds find black galds in places where you think they should be white, worked through the energy exchange with him and determined that the gold's actually knew something about their environmental physics. That would have been a stupid thing to have. I don't know why we thought they should.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:53

We do see fewer environmental biophysics positions at the university level than during the heart of your career. Do you have any thoughts on why you think that is? Is there a legitimate decline in this specific discipline? Is it just rebranding is it semantics where the positions are there, but we call them something else.

JOHN NORMAN 30:12

That's an example. I mean, one of my students who was actually in meteorology, he's now Chair of the Department of Agronomy, the students who go through these curricula, or through that book, in particular, I think it's important element can come from all kinds of disciplines and do their graduate work with using that book, or even just take a course or two that way, and then it gives them a versatility allows them in their career, more mobility, I think it can be invisible, I think the power of working across disciplines like this, it's possible for people to be able to be skilled in multiple disciplines, by tapping their creative resource within that they can be creative, and they don't have to be on the cutting edge of the center of that discipline, they can be changing that discipline and expanding it and growing it into past its traditional boundaries, the fact that the book hasn't stopped being published, and then the publisher must be selling books for the book still be out there because they're in the business of making money, which means that it's getting used in places that don't have the label of environmental biophysics. I think it's still relevant. And the whole biophysical field is still important. But it's not visible in the same way as the traditional disciplines are visible. Because those disciplines are our academic fossils, so to speak, all right, I mean, they're rigid. These boundaries across disciplines are not easy to change. They have real staying power, because their political and social as much as they are a scientific and so they're really imprinted on there. But when you're crossing the disciplines, which environmental biophysics does, by its very nature, I think people who had appeals to it gives them options that they would never have otherwise.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:37

Along with that, how do you think that we could keep growing environmental biophysics or at least being able to generate excitement for this particular discipline?

JOHN NORMAN 32:48

One time I had a class of 30 students, and it came from the students came from 19 different departments, that tells me that these ideas of trying to understand the connections between things, because often the connections are more important than bulk of the information between the connections, these feedback systems that run across disciplinary boundaries and physical boundaries, those elaborate feedback systems in the living existence, I guess I have faith that this is going to keep happening. One of the Achilles heels of science right now is boundaries, boundaries are everywhere in science, all these disciplinary boundaries I mean social boundaries, political boundaries, boundaries in the Academy are a serious, serious limitation and their limitation and how we do our science as well. I think there's a growing appreciation of that, across all the different disciplines of science.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 33:54

I mean, you see a lot of classes that disappear because students quit taking him. But that hasn't been the case with environmental biophysics, that the number of students that Colin teaches now are pretty similar to the number of students that I taught when I taught there. It continues to be relevant to the students. If he quit teaching it, I suspect that it would disappear, because I don't know who else would teach it there. But as long as the course is well taught, I think there continue to be students who won't need it and will continue to take it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 34:33

I think we will finish with this question here. What advice would you give to young researchers it can be either in environmental biophysics or elsewhere who are just starting out their program.

JOHN NORMAN 34:48

A real hazard in science is to allow our personal biases to enter into what we're doing. How do you minimize that? This is a question I never asked myself until 80% of the way through my career. I can't claim to have minimized biases in my own career. But I think that the the thing that helped me most to not serve my biases was to have my primary motivation, you know, the center of my being, is what was important to me, my assets, this inner strength that you possess, that's a gift of life itself, that's really undefinable words, just never really touch it. With that kind of a central internal motivation, you have the best possibility of limiting your biases in the pursuit of the science that you're working in, because to do the science in a way that we all like to think it's being done, but often is not being done. You can't have your primary motivation to be the science itself. If it is, the possibility that you're resisting, your biases gets smaller and smaller and smaller, the more important that pursuit is to you. So in other words, if your total survival depends on your success in your pursuit, in this case, science as a scientist, then you're not going to be able to resist those things that are less than honorable or less than with integrity. When they cross paths with your sense of survival, in this mental process, we're going to do what we have to do to survive. And bias plays a big role in that and it's damaging, highly destructive to science. Find a way to be motivated by your essence, by your heart by this mystery of what life is about. And then you'll be able to do the extraordinarily challenging business of unbiased science.

GAYLON CAMPBELL 37:28

That was really good John. And I've you know had some similar ideas and thoughts. Seems to me that good advice would be to, to take the time to get a good set of tools, and not avoid the work of that. And then I would say, to work on real problems. John said back at the beginning of our discussion today that he that he liked the outdoors. And so that helped him through his career, to get out and look at real problems. And that was valuable to him. I grew up as a farmer, and so I didn't have any trouble enjoying being out where the real problems were. And throughout my career, it's always worked best to find out what the real problems were by going to the field and then coming back to the lab or the computer and working on those problems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:29

Well, I think our time is up for today. We really do appreciate you both John and Gaylon, for stopping by to have this conversation with us. And it's been fascinating. It's been an amazing discussion, especially in the light of again, the 25 year anniversary of an introduction to environmental biophysics, a wonderful text that I'm sure we'll be used for many more years in the future. So again, thank you very much for this discussion. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Contact us at metergroup.com or find us on twitter @meter_env

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Dr. Kim Novick is a professor, Paul H. O’Neill Chair, Fischer Faculty Fellow, and director of the Ph.D. Program in Environmental Sciences at Indiana University.  She earned her bachelor’s and Ph.D. in environmental science at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Her research areas span ecology and conservation, hydrology and water resources, and sustainability and sustainable development, with specific interests in land-atmosphere interactions, terrestrial carbon cycling, plant ecophysiology, and nature-based climate solutions.

Dr. Jessica Guo is a plant ecophysiologist and data scientist who studies plant-environment interactions under extreme climate conditions. She earned her bachelor’s in environmental biology from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Northern Arizona University.  She is currently at the University of Arizona, where she blends her passion for reproducible workflows, interactive visualizations, and hierarchical Bayesian models with her expertise in plant water relations.

Links to learn more about Dr. Kim Novick:

Dr. Kim Novick on Google Scholar

Dr. Kim Novick on Wikipedia

Dr. Kim Novick's faculty page at Indiana University

Links to learn more about Dr. Jessica Guo:

Dr. Jessica Guo on GitHub

Dr. Jessica Guo on Google Scholar

Dr. Jessica Guo's faculty page at the University of Arizona

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

JESSICA GUO 0:07

That's not something I've all had been thinking about. But just thinking, yeah, there's, you know, we think about models that have these inputs, outputs. And then these parameters are what if the parameters themselves are dynamic? Does that mean we have to measure everything everywhere all at once to get them to work? In which case if we already measured everything everywhere all at once, then we would need these models now, would we? So? Yeah, thinking about how to incorporate the biology and the expected relationship to have that next layer of like, how do the parameters involved in something like that?

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:40

That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmospheric continuum. Today's guests are doctors Kim Novick and Jessica Guo. Dr. Kim Novick is a Professor Paul H. O Neill, chair, Fisher Faculty Fellow and Director of the Ph. D program in environmental sciences at Indiana University. She earned her bachelor's and PhD in Environmental Science at Duke University's Nikolas School of the Environment. Her research areas and specific interests are in land atmosphere interactions, terrestrial carbon cycling, plant eco physiology and nature based climate solutions. And Dr. Jessica Guo, is a plant eco physiologist and data scientist who studies plant environment interactions under extreme climate conditions. She earned her Bachelor's in environmental biology from Columbia University, and her PhD in biological sciences from Northern Arizona University. She is currently at the University of Arizona where she blends her passion for data science, with her expertise in plant water relations. And today, Kim and Jessica are both here to talk about their many research projects. So thank you so much for being with us today.

KIM NOVICK 1:58

I'm happy to be here.

JESSICA GUO 2:00

Thanks for having us.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:01

All right. So definitely today we wanted to talk about and get into your projects and research interests. But first, can you just tell us a little bit about your background. So we'd like to know how you got into the sciences in general and how you worked your way into the fields and specialties of environmental and climate studies. So I don't know, Kim, if you if you want to go first with that.

KIM NOVICK 2:23

Sure yeah, I'd be happy to. You know, my path started as an undergrad I elected to major in Civil and Environmental Engineering has born out of just sort of a general affinity for math and physics and of the engineering majors that were available at the university I attended. Civil and Environmental Engineering seemed like it offered the most potential to sort of do good in the world. And it was, I think, my junior year, I participated in a field trip out to a set of ameriflux towers in the forest run at at the time, and for the duration of their existence by Professor Gabby, a tool. And we got to climb the towers, which was really fun and exciting. And I thought, well, that might be an interesting way to spend a summer. So I emailed Gabby to see if he was accepting undergraduate research assistants. And he sent me a very short reply, send me your transcripts. And I did, I guess it passed muster. Because that turned into a really excellent summer research experience that turned into a senior's honors thesis, that after a few years out, working in the NGO sector, eventually turned into my PhD. And so you know, most of what I've been doing since is working to apply what I learned about measuring land atmosphere, fluxes of carbon, water and energy, to understand eco physiological processes and a range of skills, but also to apply that knowledge to solve practical problems, as I like to think of it, for example, concerning questions surrounding nature based climate solutions, and drought monitoring, in this sort of applications.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:05

Great. And Jessica, how about you?

JESSICA GUO 4:09

Yeah, so I'm, I'm from Arizona from Phoenix and I couldn't wait to get out of the state Nevada and back here now but at the time, it was like New York City that's about as different from Phoenix is like, I my mind at the time, imagine? And I got in with the E three B department ecology, evolution, and environmental biology. And yeah, I took took all the courses they had did a summer research internship in forest ecology and Wisconsin Madison. There's a lot of pretty classical and community ecology driven questions. But my one of my mentors Shahidi Naeem wasn't interested in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and that really got me thinking about the functioning and kind of functional trait side which is still you know, still a very popular field now. And when I went to Northern Arizona University I, you know, wanted wanted to dig deeper into mechanism. And so that leads me to plant eco physiology. My master's project was on a trying to do plant eco physiology at the community scale. It involved a lot of fieldwork, a lot of lab work and yield the data that were not easily analyzable. So that's when I kind of took another turn towards more quantitative approaches. Data Science wasn't actually a very popular term, at least not in my not in my world back then. So I didn't call it data science. But I went on in search of a more quantitative, more quantitative tools, because ecology data just is messy, it is not going to fit neatly and to the criteria that are required for some of these tests. So I sought my advisor Kuna Ogle, and the rest is history, as they say, because I took to Bayesian modeling, is I found it very useful. And so I can still work on the questions. And I'm very driven by you know, how do plants cope with changing climate? At which timescales are they're responding? And then I have this tool that has served me and, and yeah, so it turns on, I'm back in Arizona, I do love Arizona. It's a great state in many way, many ways. But it turns out, it took leaving to figure that out for me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:19

That's often the case, isn't it? Right. So we've had podcast episodes, where we've had multiple guests on the same time. But this is the first episode, where we've had collaborators together to discuss their projects. And so could you tell us a little bit about how you first came to become collaborators and begin to work together on research projects.

KIM NOVICK 6:40

I would love to tell that story. I met just at the AGU conference. And I think we disagree on the year in my mind, it was 2019. But it might have been 2018. I walked by her poster, and I saw something on her poster I had never seen before, which was a continuous record of plant water content data. So she had been measuring. It was really stem water potential using psychometry that our field research sites Outlast. And I didn't know at the time that this was possible. And I was just amazed by these beautiful figures, I saw just this poster. Because what it showed for me is that it would be possible to measure the water potential of plants at timescales over which things like temperature and humidity very, which could really allow us, you know, the opportunity to answer questions about how plants stalemates respond to drought stress that that really have not historically been possible to answer using more discrete datasets. So that's certainly how we met. And from there, we've just been thinking over the years about ways to enable those observations to be collected and more sites and also to create Pentwater potential databases that are that are more accessible and open for the broader community. But we can definitely trace it back to that poster, where we also bonded over the fact that we had both received a AGU biogeosciences travel grant for parents of young children at the time. So I think that my my daughter is about a year older, or maybe about the same age as justice. So that was obvious from her poster. So we had a chat about that as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:29

Is that how you remember it, Jessica?

JESSICA GUO 8:31

I do. I remember it because I think that year was I mean, that was my year I had I had a baby. I had a poster I was ready to go. That was really my first real AGU. And I remember I they were giving out these pins that said job seeker. It was kind of like, Oh, Kim Novick. I mean, I've read her work. This is amazing. She's at my poster. She thinks my poster I figures are cool. Kind of like hey, like I have this job seeker. And she's like, well, I they need to make one for me. That's called grant seeker. I remember her saying that. And so I think that also, it was like, okay, grant so good. That's what we need then to make this work. How can we work together of course, things take time, I stuck it out long enough in academia to for some of those things to come to fruition. But I also want to give a shout out to George Koch, who really, you know, it was it was his instruments he had gotten a grant and was kind enough to lend them to me for the duration of my dissertation research and taught me showed me the ropes taught me how to use these instruments. And later on I figured out that not not not everyone most people don't have a George Koch in their lives. And so, this technology is not really accessible even I mean even if you did get a grant and purchase these instruments, just the know how and how to install them and keep them functional and like and then what how to deal with you go from you know spot measurements of plant water potential to time series of the half hourly scale like then you have to deal with the data side of side of things. Yeah, so it takes a lot to get there. And I think that's one of the things that motivated us is like, okay, so how can we feel this up? You know, not just me and Kim and maybe a handful of other people who are really, really invested. But how can this, you know, there's so many, there's so many questions. There's so many species, so many and a great sense of urgency, I think, to our work as well. So how do we put that make that available to others?

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:25

Right? I know that those that know us here at METER Group know that we are water potential super fans, and feel that it is a measurement that should be included in any kind of research dealing with questions surrounding soil moisture, or exploring the behavior movement of water all throughout the soil plant atmosphere continuum. Can you give us a little background? For those in our audience who might not be super familiar with water potential? Can you give a little background into into what it is and how you use it in applications in your specific research interest?

KIM NOVICK 10:59

Yeah, I'll be happy to take a try at answering that question and then maybe Jess can follow up, I'll start by focusing on the soils. Where it's, you know, soil water potential is long been a core hydrologic variable. You know, if you take a college level hydrology course, you're going to be introduced to the concept, it's usually negative in soil. So you can think of it as a measure of the tension under which water is bound to the soil. And it is gradients in water potential that move water from one soil layer to another, or from one place in the soil to another, that also gradients in water potential between soils and plants, the move water through plants, and then eventually to the atmosphere. You know, it's a variable that shows up in Darcy's Law and it shows up in Richards Hydrology Equation. But at least in my world, it's not a variable that we routinely measure in the field. I think that we certainly should do that more often. And I applaud NIDA for providing us with some instruments to make that possible. But historically, in ecological research or ecosystem science research, we measure soil moisture content, which is a little bit different. It's the volume of water in the soil, not so much the pressure under which it is bound. And there are some some things you can do some tricks, you can try to convert between soil moisture, and soil water potential. But depending on which tools you are using, these can end up being very uncertain conversions. But the truth is for many of the questions that we seek to ask such as, you know, what determines us to model results, responses to decline soil water, or what determines the water potentials within the plant that can ultimately drive drought driven plant mortality, we really need to know water potential. And so we are very enthusiastic about on the one hand, motivating the community to either make more instrument measurements of soil water potential in situ, or to do some of those lab derived water retention curves, that can allow us to make this site specific comparisons. But also just to recognize that, you know, when we want to understand how plants are responding to the environment, it is water potential that is ultimately the more relevant driver most of the time than soil moisture content. And then I maybe I'll punted to Jess who might be able to tell us a few things about about the water potential in plants.

JESSICA GUO 13:27

Well, that's just like as as, as was alluded to, to it's just a key measurement that should be measured with a lot of other when you're measuring a lot of other things about how a plant is functioning, say photosynthesis or other fluxes, it's nice to get a sense of what's the water status of the plant. And so I think that in that regard, measuring plant water potential is, is key to understanding right and so, in planning your physiology, we don't have the same kind of functional tray where you can take one measurement, and that represents a certain characteristic of a plant, we often look at how it changes along gradient, so kind of like you know, ACI curves, where you change the level of co2 inside your chamber and measure the photosynthesis, how photosynthesis react so that in plant water relations, we often look at as the leaf or the branch dries down and the water potential becomes even more negative. How does that affect the hydraulic properties of the tissue of the conductive tissue in that stem or in that leaf and so that can give us parameters such as, so vulnerability curves can give us something like p 50, or the water potential at which 50% of the maximum conductivity is lost. And as if you're doing this on leaves you can get at things like trigger loss point at what point to the leaves lose their trigger and collapse and generally is considered not not reversible from there. So those are important factors that we you know, in a lot of traditional ecology work we want to know like which species are more vulnerable, which species are less vulnerable? under climate change? What can we expect from species A versus species B? And so, yeah, the water potential is quite critical to all of those. And those are more kind of snapshot maybe parameters, but with the, with some technologies that are monitoring both soil water potential continuously, and are also possible to measure plant water potential continuously, can get at some of those other timescales of question, like what happens when, you know a rain of event happens? Or what happens during a heatwave? That wasn't previously possible with the manual measurement?

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:37

Right, right. Can you speak to, I guess, go into a little bit more detail on some of the successes that you've had in making water potential measurements in soil or plants.

KIM NOVICK 15:47

I'd love to hear Jess tell us a little bit more about her work on the creosote and the other charismatic species we find in the in the southwest, because she's, again, I think, really pushing the envelope in terms of what's possible for for measurements and plants out there.

JESSICA GUO 16:04

Oh, sure. Thanks, Kim. Um, yeah, so the creosote bush Larrea tridentata, is this very drought tolerant shrub, and it's, it's just known in the literature for going down to pretty negative, pretty extreme water potentials. And so, because of an, you know, desert shrub, not very fast growing, it's, it's unusual, in many ways, and it's, surprisingly, really has really taken to being sent monitor for the stem water potential. And so the way these these products work is that you expose the surface of the xylem, and you attach a sensor to it, you seal it really well. But that can be affected by things like the wounding response of the plant or plant tissue growing into the sensor, you do have to rotate them. And so I, you know, and I look back on it, I think all of us can have, you know, down moments where we're like, oh, man, that was just bad luck, I missed out on this opportunity or that opportunity. But I really have to say that I had just the incredible luck of being able to learn about the sensors from George Koch, and working in a system when I was at ASU, temporarily at ASU to work with a tree, a shrub of plant species that just really worked very well with the sensors. And so yeah, the time series produce there, because of the variability in the Sonoran Desert, you know, really dry periods, followed by really wet dynamic periods, experiencing all those different environmental conditions, you can also see that variability so clearly in the water potential time series. And it's led me to think differently about, you know, kind of classifying entire species, as, you know, very drought tolerant or very drought avoided, because, you know, plants are living organisms, and they, especially, I think, if they're in environments where the conditions are known to be evolved for these conditions that are, you know, go from extremes, they have can have different strategies for those different times.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:05

You're talking about extreme areas, and I think a lot of our audience might be familiar with permanent wilting point. What are the plants that you're studying out in the extreme, you know, Sonoran deserts and other places? What is their tolerance level?

JESSICA GUO 18:19

I'm sure the creosote has a permanent wilting point, because if you push the envelope far enough, you know, plants aren't not going to be able to handle that. But I've recorded water potentials of predawn water potentials increase out of down to negative nine,

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:33

mega Pascal's mega Pascal's sorry, okay. Yeah,

JESSICA GUO 18:37

negative nine megapascals. How does that 90 bar and so and I think this particular plant, it is on the extreme, right, so it has properties that lead it. So even after the leaves lose turgor, they're able to after rainfall, recover and keep growing is not typical, I think of plants. And so yeah. There is a species in Australia that I've read of having more negative water potentials than that, but I think that's about that's about it. That's why Yeah, I don't know what the permanent wilting

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:12

point. haven't got there yet. That's super interesting. What are some of the other difficulties you have encountered in measuring water potential?

JESSICA GUO 19:22

Well, um, so when you're working with something as water potentials as negative as Korea, so running out of gas is like the number one fear that I have. For my dissertation study, and enough for some current work, my plan is just whole hog deliver a whole giant tank of pressure, pressurized air to the site, and to avoid that problem, the small portable tanks just never know when you're going to run out. And then it takes it also takes a lot longer. So some people you know, are like, oh, yeah, you can go out and measure like 30 plants, and I'm like well the amount of time that you it takes to get down to like a negative six or negative nine. It just you can you can do fewer samples, and then you have to let the air out slowly sometimes as well. So that's one thing that in my favor are that the creases are short. So I don't have to do any kind of pull pruning. I just heard from a I have done the like a blooming and pole pruning before and some Aspen's, that was really tough and physical. I just heard from someone at NAU, the other week about carbon fiber window washing poles. I don't know if Kim if this is something that you guys could explore. Apparently, they're pricey, but it might be worth it. He's like, Yeah, you can just lift it with one hand. Oh!

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:45

There you go.

KIM NOVICK 20:47

Well have to look into it, I have to say, you know, I'm joking, but I only only 50% Joking, when I say 50% of sort of the work that Jess and I are doing right now. It's just to allow my lab group to avoid future pre Dawn measures. Because while I have many, many, you know, very dedicated postdocs and students that I'm lucky enough to work with, personally, I hate them. And I hate having to ask people to do them. It's, it's hard. And we work in tall forests. So our trees are 30 plus meters tall. And it's hard enough to access the leaves when the sun is shining. And it's really hard to get to them in the pitch black darkness. You know, the the benefit of this predawn measurements is that it gives you a proxy for what the soil water potential is over the you know, integrated root zone. So we're always sort of scratching our heads to think of there might be other ways that we can get it that that don't involve driving an an, 80 foot, boom, lift around in the dark, at 4:30 in the morning. But it's hard when you work in big forest, accessing at the top of the canopy is a real challenge for us. We tried everything we do we have the slingshots, we get the boom lift out, it's really a cherry picker track and we go up that way. But then we're sort of limited to trees that grow by the little road. Some some groups are able to access leaves from their Eddy covariance towers, but ours isn't quite close enough to any of the trees. So that doesn't work for us. We are prohibited from firing a shotgun in our research area. So that's off the table. But it is it is one of the biggest headaches of our work is just getting to the leaves of these of these tall trees.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:27

How about measuring water potential in soils? What are some of the difficulties there?

KIM NOVICK 22:33

Interesting question, because I think we're still not at the point where we have, you know, perfect sensors for the task. But we have sensors that are better than they were historically. And so when I tried to think about why is it the case that most of the time and field research settings, typically in the Eco logical and ecosystem science community, we measure soil moisture instead of soil water potential. I think it's because simply the measurements historically been easier for soil moisture content. You know, we're just starting to get to the point where we're installing Institute of soil water potential sensors. TEROS 21? I think I got it right. And we can quite pleased with those so far. You know, but we work in in fairly music environments, we would never see plant water potentials of negative nine MPa, you know, in our worst droughts, you know, maybe the soil gets down to negative two or three MPa. So we're working within a much more limited range. But you know, we're, if I can just take a second to mention to sort of broader efforts to increase the collection of these sorts of measurements through the ameriflux networks to your water. There's sort of two things going on, on the one hand ameriflux, which is a network of Eddy covariance Fox towers for North and South America. It has has purchased and sent out to individual sites, a wide array of in situ so the water potential sensors, I think we just started to see them installed this summer. And it'd be really exciting to get those data back and see how they can help us interpret the fluxes. Another major initiative is being led by my lab together with rich Phillips, who's at IU down in the biology department and ameriflux, where we are doing generating site level water retention curves, using equipment provided by meter, which is just a few doors down from where I'm sitting right now. And the idea is that we are asking ameriflux PI's to send us their soils, we send out a sampling kits and they are to collect somewhere in the ballpark of fall soil course, from three different depths, maybe four different profiles, send it back to us. And we're analyzing those samples for saturated hydraulic conductivity and the water retention curve, flow texture and find rate density, which is data that will again return to the network. And so the hope is that, you know, we're beginning to generate the information necessary Sorry to transform those historic observations of soil moisture content into estimates of soil water potential, which I am really excited to see how this plays out, because it's so common in our field to relate some sort of ecosystem process, maybe it's GPP, which is canopy scale photosynthesis, or evapotranspiration, or, or model or surface conductance, the soil moisture content. And so frequently, we see that those relationships appear to be threshold driven, right, there's some range of soil moisture, where we don't see much of a change in photosynthesis or conductance, and then we reach what appears to be a critical threshold. And then And then things start to decline rapidly. And the hypothesis that we're looking forward to testing is that a lot of the nature of that apparent threshold relationship is really driven by by the soil and water retention characteristics of the soil so that if we switched out the x axis from soil moisture content to soil water potential, we might see much, far more linear relationships, and reduce a lot of the heterogeneity from one site to the next. Stay tuned. We will be making an announcement soon to collect more soils as part of that project. And I want to particularly acknowledge Daniel Beverley, who's a postdoc that's been really driving that project forward together with Alexander Crookshanks, who's a postmark research assistant, who I'm pretty sure at some point in the near future will be pursuing graduate school applications. Awesome. Keep your eye out for her. That's awesome.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:31

Kim you talk about seeing Jessica's poster for the first time and one of the things that really piqued your interest was her continuous data? Why was that of interest to you at that time,

KIM NOVICK 26:41

we've been historically my group and many others have been interested in understanding how plants respond to drought stress of course, but specifically how they respond to both drying soil and also trying air right. So dry soil we can measure as a function of soil moisture content or more ideally swing water potential and the air and you know, the best proxy is the vapor pressure deficit. So, the difference between the amount of air the atmosphere can actually hold and then and then the actual water vapor content. And so you know, as a as a drought unfolds, usually soil water declines, but often the vapor pressure deficit also goes up. And these things tend to happen together. So through land atmosphere feedbacks, a soil moisture, dret VPD goes up, the plants can respond independently to each rests. So if you can grow a plant in an environment where PPD rises, the soil moisture stays the same, you will still see declines in some model conductance and photosynthesis driven by plants actively closing their stomates to avoid excessive water loss to this drier first year atmosphere. But because these things tend to go together, using you know, data collected at weekly or monthly timescales, it's very hard to disentangle the two, all right, however, it is very straightforward. To do it when you have continuous data, because over the course of a day, or even a couple of days, usually soil water tends to be relatively stationary, whereas VPD can vary quite a bit. And so you can leverage this, these different timescales of variation, together with continuous measurements of whatever response variable you're interested in looking at, and be able to disentangle the vapor pressure deficit from soil moisture impacts on plant function. And we've been able to do this quite well. There's no no shortage of studies that are doing this looking using data from Eddy covariance flux towers, which come in and a half hourly, or hourly timescale, and also from set flux measurements of tree water use, which are also made continuously. But the potential table to do the same thing. And perform complimentary analyses on continuous measurements of plant water potential, would really allow us to connect the dots in a way that we haven't been able to do so before.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:04

Anything to add to that, Jessica.

JESSICA GUO 29:06

I think I just want to reflect that like the it's, it was amazing that Kim saw that was immediately like honed in on Oh, wow, that is a game changer. Because I had tried to pitch this same idea was like, Oh, we're gonna go from these manual measurements, Spot measurements, continuous measurements to various other you know, as a grad student, small grants to support and they generally just came back as review it as like, not very, you know, there's sensors for everything. You know, like what's so exciting about you using a sensor that doesn't sound all that novel, but it really is novel in the sphere because of what what's never, it's never been able to measure before. And because of all the difficulties you were you just spent some time describing to get pre dogs. And I think pairing that with other sensors like at the same time scale. I think that's really where a lot of my interest also lies like sap flow, and I haven't used these myself but other people use the drop stem dramaturgs and But maybe there could be people measure wood water content. And so pairing these together looking to just like, it's still a wide open question, I think like, what are some of the good proxies, maybe there's some good relationships between these, I personally think that being able to instrument, a plant with water potential, maybe soil water potential, the sap flow in the stem, and then a branch of STEM water potential looking at that gradient, we can calculate hydraulic conductivity in situ, and see how that changes, you know that versus you know, harvesting a stem and doing those dry down measurements I mentioned before in a lab setting like doing that on living tree, or shrub as the, as the environment is changing as the VPD, or the soil moisture content might be changing. I think that just gets us closer to like, closer to the mechanism of what the plants are actually doing. Right? Instead of extrapolating from snapshots.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:52

And extrapolating from snapshots, how then can we work with these more powerful modeling systems to work with the data that we have, or maybe kind of overcome, I don't wanna say overcome the limitations of the sensors, because, you know, garbage in garbage out when you're dealing with with the data. But in your practice, and in your experience, how have you been able to better model these complex processes within soil? Plant water interaction, sir?

JESSICA GUO 31:20

Yeah, thanks for that question. I think about a lot like how the plant itself is responding. So the biology is really interesting to me. And the, but the biology is still, you know, there's still inputs right there. So the plants are sensing the external environment and then responding in a particular way, depending on those conditions. And so one way I've been, like taking this snapshot approach, but like having these longer time series, using the same kind of theoretical framework is being able to see, okay, well, how did these parameters themselves change over time? And can we expect a especially something you know, it's pretty obvious that a creosote because they're an evergreen species, and in June, they look just mostly dead. They don't look all that they keep their leaves. Leaves are brown at that point. But they're still living. And they're still photosynthesizing. And so like, it's just natural to Okay, well, clearly, creosote at this point isn't behaving the same way or responding to the environment in the same way as it does in a wetter, more, more suitable a time period. And so yeah, I think that matters a lot for these flexes, right, like, you know, creases are really dominant. And across these deserts are some places where it's pretty much creases, the only major woody plant out there, they might not be highly productive. They're not as productive as other ecosystems, but that variability, they account for a lot of the variability in the carbon cycle. And so yeah, and then, if we, if we try to then put a snapshot parameter into a into one of these biophysical models that you know, have lots of equate lots of systems of equations that explain our best, or that represent our best understanding of how Photosynthesis Photosynthesis works, what's going to underestimate or maybe overestimate, but mostly underestimate what's going to happen, because you're like, it's a drought tolerant plant, its parameters are really low. That's not something I've alone had been thinking about. But just thinking, yeah, there's, you know, we think about models that having these inputs, outputs, and then these parameters, but what if the parameters themselves? are dynamic? Do does that mean we have to measure everything everywhere all at once to get them to work? In which case if we already measured everything everywhere, all at once that we would need these models now? Would we? So? Yeah, thinking about how to incorporate the biology in the expected relationship to have that next layer of like, how do the parameters evolve? That's something that that I've been thinking about.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:48

Alright. We have been hearing about your efforts towards standardizing a national meteorological network that would include water potential measurements, and you've published and presented on this topic, can you tell us a little bit more about this idea and the goals surrounding this potential network?

KIM NOVICK 34:06

We'd be thrilled to do that. So the network is called tsinet. Because we often abbreviate water potential with the Greek letter tsi, T-S-I-N-E-T, tsinet. And I think just a little bit of background, that's an idea that's been in you know, we've been kicking the the idea around for a few years now and it involves a much broader team of collaborators than just Jess and I. But, you know, the original idea sort of, was born out of two things. The first is sort of the recognition that in many fields of ecosystem ecology, or you know, eco physiological research, we have developed these really accessible and open databases, whereby, you know, individual site PIs will collect data and then you Frequently voluntarily share the data to networks like ameriflux, or flux net or set flux net in a way that they are, they're accessible and open to the global community. Now, just to take a step back, I mentioned earlier in our discussion how I started my PhD work on on some ameriflux towers in the do force. And I really didn't know much about the scientific enterprise at the time. But what I knew I learned from from my advisor and the lab group, but Jessica we collect these measurements, and we use them to answer questions we're interested in, but we also give the data to the network. Simple, that makes sense. That must be how science is done. And it took me a long time to realize that that the flux community in America community and SR networks across the world were really kind of on the leading edge of sort of this transition to open, accessible data sharing. And so I'm very lucky, I think, to have been sort of brought up in a community that places such a high value on that service. You know, the other observation is when we when I think about plant hydraulics, research, and eco physiological research more generally, specifically, when it concerns the function of things like plant stalemates, I get the impression that we're a very theory rich, but data poor fields, which might be a bit of a surprising statement to some. So to say exactly what I mean, I think, you know, there's the the functioning of plants domains, which on the one hand is relatively quite straightforward, they're either relatively more open a relatively more closed, it's, on the other hand, so complex, right, especially when we want to connect those dynamics to what's happening with water flows through the stem, and what's happening through the soils and what's happening in terms of plant risk of, of mortality. And so we see these very beautiful papers being written all the time, they're largely modeling papers, the present different ways to model that dynamic system model function, which is a really noble goal, I mean, some other the pathway by which co2 enters plants through photosynthesis. And that's the pathway by which most of the energy just to support most life on Earth is created. So that's an important thing to study, we've got all these models is very nice mathematical models. But as soon as that we lack the data necessary to evaluate and cross compare them, because particularly when we're thinking about water potential, but also I would argue some of the other traits that are really important pieces of the puzzle, we do not yet have these open, accessible databases of the time series of water potential, that are necessary to link environmental drivers to sort of ecosystem scale responses, like photosynthesis, and evapotranspiration, so we're hoping to fill that gap by creating a database that would aggregate pre existing and new observations of plant and soil water potential. And we will happily accept observations made with pressure chambers. So discrete plant water potential observations, as well as, you know, increasingly frequent attempts to measure those data continuously. And so we're really excited to kick the project off, we're gonna pair it with a lot of you know, in addition to building, let's say, a network of data, we're also excited about building a network of people. So there will be a lot of programming associated with a network webinars and early career training opportunities. And a graduate distributed graduate seminar down the line workshops, conference sessions, that sort of thing. But yeah, it's been it's been years in the works. And so we're really, really excited to get it kicked off this year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:36

That's awesome. Along with that, as well. And you talked about Yeah, building this kind of community of researchers as well. Are you interested then and also improving or creating kind of best practices when it comes to observations and measurements within and interpretations of water potential data?

JESSICA GUO 38:55

Definitely, I think that's part, a large part of where the network of people comes in. I think, you know, people are trained in their labs and their advisors were taught by their advisors. And there's these different lineages sometimes of how we do things, even though it's, you know, especially with the pressure chamber, it seems like it's a fairly standard thing, but it turns out it's not. And there was a really nice paper that came out recently by Celia Rodriguez Dominguez on on this that reflected some of these experiments, they took, oh, it doesn't matter if you do it this one particular way versus this other way. And so we want to collect some of that, like, how do we like first of all, even just like for too big a database at all, like what is the standard data reporting format? Can we agree on that as you know, as kind of a field and we want as many people's thoughts and opinions on this as we can get? I only know the way that I was trained, really. And so it's been eye opening in some of these conversations. We've had to build dinette across the globe, really international team of researchers that we have different takes on this and I think it's also because is very plant specific. And that's a lot of the problem with some of these instruments that are plant instruments is like, what works for you what one species is just plainly not going to work for someone else depends on if there's resin? Or if you know, for pressure chamber methods, it's like, how big are your leaves? How big are your petioles? Like, will fit like I, you know, all kinds of things, are you trying to get a snapshot of lots of lots of different species are you focused on like the variation within a species or within even different branches of the same individual. And so those are all things we're going to have to consider. We do want to develop some kind of data reporting formats, and also best practices for the stem psychrometer. I think that's something that folks are interested in learning. But again, if they don't have a personal connection, or like, have this lineage of learning of passing on the knowledge from someone who knows, it can be really tricky. And I have had the opportunity to work with some folks who have these instruments have had trouble with them. And just went, you know, there's something you know, there's a lot we can do over the internet, and with these webinars, and we're gonna have a lot of them. But the the training, one of the one of which will be fist fest, really gives us an opportunity to provide some hands on some of these things. It's hard to describe or say what it is we're doing, but it's really, really necessary to show rather than tell. Because there's a lot of things I'm excited about.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:24

Right now, what is the timeline looking at for where it's off the ground, and you know, you got the ball rolling, and things are looking good?

KIM NOVICK 41:30

Sure. So I in fact, it hasn't officially started yet. But we hope to move quickly. Once it does, you know, sort of our early goals will be supporting some of these early career training workshops. As I just mentioned, fist fest, we also have connections to Flux corpse just sort of emerged from the attic, various community, but we're excited to, to bring water potential to Flux course, at least a little bit next year. We are very, you know, I hope we hope that within the first few months of the project, we'll be opening the call for submission of pressure chamber water potential measurements and associated meter logical observations. And in that regard, we will owe a pretty big debt to the folks that run SAP flux net, who have already begun to do some of this work for the sites to learn that work. So they can sort of piggyback off of what they've learned from that experience. The project I mentioned, collecting the water retention curves, and the mere flux sites will be an important, I think, early way to populate. So a lot of potential information into the database. But you can look for us to be having webinars and organizing cockpit sessions, and beaten on your door asking for your data. But as we do, and we recognize that these data are hard fought, you know, we discussed some of the difficulties associated with feet on measurements and working in tall forests already. So we're also thinking through the right incentives, to motivate people to want to share their data with the network. And also ways to properly reward and attribute What are frequently the early career scientists that collected the data.

JESSICA GUO 43:11

Oh, and just just be on the lookout, we, one of the first things we're going to do is put out a call for membership on our working groups. And so and one of the first working groups will be the data working group where we're going to Yeah, see people's input on these data reporting formats and awesome. And yeah, survey them about how, what would they be incentivized by? What would work for them? What would incentivize them to share their data and, and make it easier? Or, you know, it's always a little bit of a leap to like, take the data from a format that you're used to working with to make it a format that someone else can also find it useful, right? What would what would make that process a bit more streamlined?

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:51

Yeah. What do you see as the future of this research either within your, your own particular specialty, or within this, this idea of of a network of interconnected researchers who are looking at Eco physiology or solar or plants water potentials?

KIM NOVICK 44:07

Yeah, I can take your first stab at that, you know, we already mentioned sort of the challenge of, of getting these processes, right and models and so I'm hopeful that the database that will build can enable progress on that front, where it's currently been hindered by just a lack of systematic representative open data, you know, from from a wide range of sites. Another really, I think, exciting friends here concerns our ability to measure really important features of not only canopy water use, but also canopy water content remotely. So we have it's just amazing to me how rapidly the satellite platforms are developing. We have eco stress and orbit on the on the spaceship station that can provide a proxy of VT at the scale of it. Individual farm fields, which is really amazing. We also have a growing interest in the use of vegetation, optical depth measurements, or VOD as a proxy for water contents. And here, I really want to credit Alex koenings Visit Stanford and is part of signups for kind of really helping to develop those approaches and spread them throughout the community. And so what's really exciting is, I think the opportunity to pair a much more representative dataset of ground observations of water potential. And, and ideally, oftentimes co located with with measurements of the fluxes themselves, whether it's from flux's towers or soft flux, as ground truthing, and reality check data on what we're seeing from space, because that could really open the door to new ways to characterize not only plant water stress, or, or vegetation, water stress or drought stress. But also I mean, thinking about you know, we you don't have to connect too many dots to see that this presents the possibility for whole new ways to conceive water retention curves, ecosystem water retention curve or to, to think about how to understand the relationships between water content and water potential are really core skills. So I'm really excited to see, you know, where how far we can get in that direction over the coming years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:23

Jessica, your thoughts on the future? In this regard?

JESSICA GUO 46:26

Yeah, well, Kim covered a very nicely, there's a lot of there's a lot of things, we don't even know that it could it could be, it could be useful for validation datasets for these newer data, newer data platforms. But, you know, I think it can also be really useful for kind of really standard questions in plant eco physiology, you know, this assumption that predawn water potential is a proxy for the soil water potential in the root zone, that Kim mentioned earlier. You know, that's not always going to be the case. And there's, there's individual papers that have gone out there and done fine scale measurements to show that that's not always the case. But we don't have a good idea across the board, like under what conditions can we does assumption hold or species. There's this assumption hold, and under what conditions do we have to, you know, revisit this assumption. And so, you know, the power of the database of people working at different in different places with different interest species is that it will really allow us to, I think, have I anticipate lots of synthesis coming out of this, including some really standard kind of, you know, I was also thinking to like, early on driven, like, my questions maybe don't seem very sophisticated, because some of the things were literally like, how does water potential affected by soil moisture content and VPD? Like the dryness of the atmosphere? And it's like, shouldn't we know that already? Like, that's a pretty stale as a plant environment interaction question. That's you people have been asking, we have had the tools to answer for a long time. But to answer those questions more systematically in a synthetic way that accounts for what we know are different about different species in an environment. That's been really hard to do because of the paucity of data.

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:04

Well, thank you both for taking your time. I just wanted to ask if there's any place that our listeners can go if they want to learn more about your various research projects?

KIM NOVICK 48:15

Yeah, we're a little too early to throw out a signup web address or email address but um folks are welcome to email me. At early Google gold name, not too hard to find the username so feel free to find me and record Indiana University and shoot me an email.

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:39

Alright and Jessica?

JESSICA GUO 48:42

Same you can find me just google whoa.github.io

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:48

Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!

Contact us at metergroup.com or find us on twitter @meter_env

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Kai-Julian Hendler is a geotechnical consulting engineer at Boley Geotechnik in Munich, Germany. He holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering, with a specialization in geotechnical engineering from the University of Lisbon. Over the past 8 years working at Boley Geotechnik, he has been a site engineer on port construction projects in South Africa, Guinea, and Australia. In his current role, he focuses on the geotechnical challenges of infrastructure projects for railways, metros, and roads.

Christoph Verschaffel-Drefke is a Geotechnical Engineering and Hydrology Coordinator for Transnet BW, a transmission systems operator in Germany. After getting his degree in Geoscience Engineering, he worked on several research projects based around the heat dissipation of underground cables. During his 6 years working at TransnetBW, he has overseen projects relating to thermal soil investigation, thermal dimensioning, bedding materials of cables, and heat emissions.

As a third-generation builder, Bryce Wuori has always been passionate about construction. To further this passion, he studied Construction Engineering at North Dakota State University and earned a Master of Project Management from the University of Mary. As the CEO and co-founder of Pavewise, Bryce believes that technology is key to the future success of the pavement and construction industry.

Michael is a senior adjunct research fellow at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, Founder of Implexx Sense, and Director at Edaphic Scientific, an exclusive distributor of METER Group instruments. He obtained his doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of New South Wales. He previously worked as an ecohydrologist at the University of Western Sydney and was a plant physiology senior adjunct research fellow at the University of Queensland. His research interests include plant-water relations and biomass allocation patterns at a macro physiological scale, and experiments with sap flow.

Lauren is a PhD candidate at Idaho State University focusing on plant physiological ecology. She received her bachelor’s and master’s in biological sciences from Cal Poly Pomona. She was a 2022, recipient of meters G.A. Harris Award. Her research has focused on long-term water storage in trees and its importance for whole tree water relations at both tree and ecosystem scales.

Dr. Matt Yost is an associate professor, associate department head, and agroclimate extension specialist at Utah State University. He obtained his PhD in applied Plant Science at the University of Minnesota, after which he spent several years doing post-doctoral research in Minnesota and Missouri. His research and extension efforts focus on water optimization in agriculture, soil health, precision agriculture, and adaptive nutrient management. Matt is also currently serving as director of USU crops and presiding Chair of the agronomic production systems section of the American Society of Agronomy.

Alex received his bachelors in Mathematics & Astrophysics from Oberlin College in 2018. He is currently a Hydrologic Science PhD candidate in the University of Wyoming Plant Physiological Ecology Laboratory. Alex’s research focuses on modeling and measuring the relationship between ecosystem-scale processes and plant physiology, especially as they relate to land management and disturbance. Alex was a 2021 G.A. Harris Fellowship recipient.

Cecilia earned her bachelor’s degree in agronomic engineering from the University of Passo Fundo in Brazil. Cecilia was a recipient of the 2022 G.A. Harris Fellowship sponsored by METER Group. She is currently a PhD candidate in horticultural sciences at the University of Florida, where her focus is on grafted blueberry physiology and production. Her research centers on developing production systems that enhance climate resilience in blueberry crops to address critical global agricultural challenges.

Katie completed her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Technology at Colorado Mesa University, where she focused her studies on water quality and conservation. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Environmental Science at Brigham Young University. After that, she hopes to work in the industry for a few years before continuing to her PhD.

Dr. Kathleen (Kate) Smits is a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Lyles School of Engineering and the Solomon Professor for global development. Prior to SMU, she was a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines and the US Air Force Academy. She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the US Air Force Academy, master’s in Civil Engineering from the University at Texas Austin, and a doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. She served as a civil and environmental engineering project manager and officer in the US Air Force.

Stephen is a professor in the department of geology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. He obtained his bachelors in geology and earth science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his PhD in geology from North Carolina State University. He teaches classes in structural geology, geomorphology, and field geology, and his research projects have focused mostly on tropical landslides and landscape evolution, with the funding of such organizations as the NSF, USGS, USDA-NRCS, and NOAA.

Sara received her masters in soils and geochemistry from UC Davis, and her doctorate in engineering sciences from La Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is currently assistant professor at that same university, where she teaches courses in environmental biophysics and statistical methods, and soon, geology and soil sciences and soil conservation. Her research centers around lab and field studies related to soil science and environmental studies, with specific focus on soil physics. Her recent interest has been to understand urban soil ecosystem services.