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.
Episode 31: The fight against soil and nutrient loss
Episode 31
Wednesday, February 21, 2024 • Duration 51:21
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.
Episode 23: The power of soil health in sustainable agriculture
Episode 23
Tuesday, March 21, 2023 • Duration 44:03
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.
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.
Episode 22: Breeding the most elite winter wheat
Episode 22
Tuesday, February 14, 2023 • Duration 43:34
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.
Our scientists have decades of experience helping researchers and growers measure the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum.
Episode 20: The impact of seasonal vegetation on coastal dune storm recovery
Episode 20
Monday, November 28, 2022 • Duration 46:02
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.
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.
Episode 19: How researchers fight dust storms and desertification
Episode 19
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 • Duration 47:38
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).
Episode 18: Busting vineyard water management myths
Episode 18
Tuesday, October 11, 2022 • Duration 38:38
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.
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,
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.
Episode 17: The science behind growing food in space
Episode 17
Wednesday, August 24, 2022 • Duration 46:20
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)
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.
Episode 15: How land use impacts hydrology in Texas shrink-swell clays
Episode 15
Wednesday, June 22, 2022 • Duration 31:10
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.
Discover shows related to We Measure The World, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
