We Measure The World: Recent Episodes
METER Group, Inc. USA
Dr. Matt Yost is an associate professor, associate department head, and agroclimate extension specialist at Utah State University. He obtained his PhD in applied Plant Science at the University of Minnesota, after which he spent several years doing post-doctoral research in Minnesota and Missouri. His research and extension efforts focus on water optimization in agriculture, soil health, precision agriculture, and adaptive nutrient management. Matt is also currently serving as director of USU crops and presiding Chair of the agronomic production systems section of the American Society of Agronomy.
Alex received his bachelors in Mathematics & Astrophysics from Oberlin College in 2018. He is currently a Hydrologic Science PhD candidate in the University of Wyoming Plant Physiological Ecology Laboratory. Alex’s research focuses on modeling and measuring the relationship between ecosystem-scale processes and plant physiology, especially as they relate to land management and disturbance. Alex was a 2021 G.A. Harris Fellowship recipient.
Cecilia earned her bachelor’s degree in agronomic engineering from the University of Passo Fundo in Brazil. Cecilia was a recipient of the 2022 G.A. Harris Fellowship sponsored by METER Group. She is currently a PhD candidate in horticultural sciences at the University of Florida, where her focus is on grafted blueberry physiology and production. Her research centers on developing production systems that enhance climate resilience in blueberry crops to address critical global agricultural challenges.
Katie completed her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Technology at Colorado Mesa University, where she focused her studies on water quality and conservation. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Environmental Science at Brigham Young University. After that, she hopes to work in the industry for a few years before continuing to her PhD.
Dr. Kathleen (Kate) Smits is a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Lyles School of Engineering and the Solomon Professor for global development. Prior to SMU, she was a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines and the US Air Force Academy. She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the US Air Force Academy, master’s in Civil Engineering from the University at Texas Austin, and a doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. She served as a civil and environmental engineering project manager and officer in the US Air Force.
Stephen is a professor in the department of geology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. He obtained his bachelors in geology and earth science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his PhD in geology from North Carolina State University. He teaches classes in structural geology, geomorphology, and field geology, and his research projects have focused mostly on tropical landslides and landscape evolution, with the funding of such organizations as the NSF, USGS, USDA-NRCS, and NOAA.
Sara received her masters in soils and geochemistry from UC Davis, and her doctorate in engineering sciences from La Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is currently assistant professor at that same university, where she teaches courses in environmental biophysics and statistical methods, and soon, geology and soil sciences and soil conservation. Her research centers around lab and field studies related to soil science and environmental studies, with specific focus on soil physics. Her recent interest has been to understand urban soil ecosystem services.
Michael is a senior adjunct research fellow at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, Founder of Implexx Sense, and Director at Edaphic Scientific, an exclusive distributor of METER Group instruments. He obtained his doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of New South Wales. He previously worked as an ecohydrologist at the University of Western Sydney and was a plant physiology senior adjunct research fellow at the University of Queensland. His research interests include plant-water relations and biomass allocation patterns at a macro physiological scale, and experiments with sap flow.
Mason Stahl is the James M. Kenney Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Geosciences and Environmental Science, Policy and Engineering program. His research spans the fields of hydrogeology, geochemistry and water resources. I study how perturbations to the environment influence elemental cycling and the quality of our water resources. A main focus of my research has been on improving our understanding of the hydrologic and biogeochemical factors that result in the mobilization of naturally occurring arsenic from sediments into groundwater, which is a problem that threatens the health of millions of people around the world. One of the primary goals of my research is to help answer questions about how groundwater and surface water quality will change in response to natural and anthropogenic changes to the environment and what this means for the health of people and the environment.
Ning is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. He obtained his bachelor’s in Geotechnical Engineering at Wuhan University of Technology, and both his master’s and doctorate in Civil Engineering at John Hopkins University. He is well-known internationally for his work on stresses in variably saturated porous media, with his primary research interest in seeking common threads among basic soil physical phenomena, including fluid flow, chemical transport, heat transfer, stress, and deformation.
Erin is an Agricultural Engineer and Professor in the Department of Soil and Water Systems at the University of Idaho. He obtained his bachelors in Agricultural Engineering with a Soil and Water Engineering emphasis at Washington State University, and then went on to get his master’s from the University of Minnesota and doctorate from the University of Idaho, both specializing in Hydrologic Measurement and Modeling. Erin’s current research focuses on the management of ecosystems through the combination of field experiments and modeling.
Saul Alarcon is an agronomist for Gradient Crop Yield Solutions with over 30 years of experience in agriculture. As part of the Morning Star Company, his research into plant health has been instrumental in developing crop models for growers. He obtained his Bachelors in biology with an emphasis in plant health from the Instituto Tecnológico de Los Mochis in Sinaloa, Mexico and recently received his Masters in agronomy from Iowa State University.
Dr. Darren Ficklin is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Indiana University. He received his bachelor's in geological sciences at Indiana University, obtained his master's in geology at Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in hydrologic Sciences at the University of California Davis. After completing his Ph.D., he stayed in California and did postdoctoral work at Santa Clara University. His current research focuses primarily on the intersection of hydrology and climate.
Steve Blecker PhD is a research soil scientist with the Ag Experiment Station at Colorado State University. He obtained his Bachelor's at Penn State University and graduate degree in pathology at Colorado State University. His research focuses on sustainable agriculture, soil health, and range land restoration. Steve is actively involved in collaborative projects with the farming community and contributes to the advancement of sustainable and resilient agricultural practices.
Jim Ippolito PhD is currently a professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. He obtained his Bachelor's in agronomy from the University of Delaware, and his graduate degree in soil chemistry, fertility, and quality from Colorado State University. Jim is an expert in and teaches soil fertility and soil health principles and practices. He is actively involved in research, teaching, and extension activities, working to improve soil health and fertility for the benefit of farmers, land managers, and the environment.
Podcast Transcript:
BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00
Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.
JIM IPPOLITO 0:07
My gut is telling me that this is where we're going to see the best bang for our buck in terms of return on investment, for improving carbon in our soils, it's going to be in the Western United States, we're going to see drastic improvements. And I'll tell you from some of my experiences with other soil health projects, that if you do things, quote, right, you might see a change in less than five years. In fact, we had a project over on the western slope of Colorado where we saw changes in three years in terms of organic carbon accumulation in the soil surface in three years.
BRAD NEWBOLD 0:41
That's a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continues. Today's guests are Steve Blecker and Jim Ippolito. Steve Blecher, is a research soil scientist with the Ag Experiment Station at Colorado State University. He obtained his Bachelor's at Penn State University and graduate degrees and pathology at Colorado State University. His research focuses on sustainable agriculture, soil health and range land restoration. Steve is actively involved in collaborative projects with the farming community and contributes to the advancement of sustainable and resilient agricultural practices. Jim Ippolito is currently a professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. He obtained his Bachelor's in agronomy from the University of Delaware, and his graduate degrees in soil chemistry, fertility and quality from Colorado State University. Jim is an expert in and teaches soil fertility and soil health principles and practices. He is actively involved in research, teaching and extension activities, working to improve soil health and fertility for the benefit of farmers, land managers and the environment. And today, they're here to talk about their research into agroecosystem management, soil health, and Ecosystem Sustainability and resiliency. So Steve, and Jim, thanks so much for being here.
STEVE BLECKER 2:09
Glad to be here.
JIM IPPOLITO 2:09
Yeah, thanks for having us Brad.
BRAD NEWBOLD 2:12
Alright. So today, we wanted to talk about a few of your projects and research interest. But first, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be involved in soil science and your particular specialties?
STEVE BLECKER 2:25
Yeah, I just sort of wandered into soils, really, I mean, I didn't really like I didn't really know what I wanted to do at Penn State and I just kept kind of wandering around taking different classes. And the day, I took the I took an intro to soils class, and then it just something just clicked. I was like, wow, this is really cool. I mean, people actually study soils, I mean, wow. So I just took all the soils classes, I could get a hold of, and then my undergrad ran out, and I just wanted to keep going. So turned to grad school. And it's learning about soils ever since.
BRAD NEWBOLD 3:03
what got you involved in in kind of the agricultural side and with extension activities?
STEVE BLECKER 3:08
Well, that's pretty recent development. For me, I was I was doing more basic research for most of my for a lot of my career anyway. And, and just kind of once, when I came back to Colorado, and in my current position, there was this opportunity to do a lot more kind of applied research, just kind of work with growers in different agroecosystems, it just kind of you know it was exciting to me to be able to, you know, instead of, I used to publish in, not that I don't publish anymore, but in scientific journals, and maybe read by a handful of people, but now it's just it's more I'm more interested in kind of connecting with growers and just letting helping them understand the soils that they're working with.
BRAD NEWBOLD 3:56
And Jim, how about you?
JIM IPPOLITO 3:58
Well, my, my path into soils is much like Steve's like, when I was an undergrad, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I was geared towards sciences, like science is in my blood, basically, in my genes. And I knew I didn't want to go into chemistry. My, my family has a long history of being in the chemistry field. So I steered clear of chemistry. I really steered clear of chemistry. And then I stumbled across horticulture class when I was a freshman. I said, Oh, that's interesting. Let me go see if there's any other classes that are offered within the College of Ag at the University of Delaware. And just like Steve, I took Intro to soil science. And I was hooked. I just, it just felt right. And lo and behold, there is a lot of chemistry in soil science. And so I'm a chemist. I consider myself a soil chemist and I love it. I just love what I do. I've been involved with a lot of different sectors though. A lot of ag over my 30 plus year career, in fact, most of it has been an ag but also in, in sites that have been contaminated with heavy metals, or more recently sites that are contaminated with these forever chemical compounds, PFAS's and PFOA's. And, you know, just solving problems, I'm, I'm really an applied soil chemist, I love what I do. And, and I've known Steve, we both known each other's for oh my gosh, since 1990, we went to grad school together at Colorado State University, and our paths have just done this, we've interwoven our paths over the over the years. So, which is why we still work together.
BRAD NEWBOLD 5:42
That's good. That's good that you guys still like each other, then after working together so long, more or less. And I do hope that maybe we can come back and talk about those forever chemicals. That was kind of a side, you know, side discussion that I think is really interesting and pertinent to a lot of stuff that's been, you know, popping up recently. I mean, but anyway, we'll come maybe we'll come back to that later. So one of the one of the I guess, themes, or I guess, overarching research interests that seems to be within both of your specialties deals with soil health, or what we have now call soil health I know, in the intro, Jim, we talked about your or I mentioned that your degrees were in soil chemistry, fertility quality, which is kind of what now we would term soil health. I was wondering if you if you guys could just kind of give us a give our audience a basic overview of what we what is considered now soil health, what are the the principles that that go into soil health? You know, how do we, how do we quantify or measure soil health and kind of all those kinds of things?
STEVE BLECKER 6:54
Okay, I'll take a crack at it, and then fill in the gaps, Steve, because, you know, when I think about soil health, and when I talk about soil health to a lot of people that maybe are not strongly familiar with soil health, this is how I approach it, I approach it much like discussing human health. And when we go to the doctor, because maybe we don't feel right, and the doctor runs a bunch of tests on us, right, so a doctor may ask you to run on a treadmill, for example, to take a look at maybe physical health, you'll get a blood draw. So blood might be chemical health, and sooner or later down the line, somebody's probably going to start taking some gut microbiome samples from you. And that's a measure of biological health. So when we talk about health, especially with humans, we oftentimes never talk about health directly, but we look at the measurements that we think get are geared towards human health or the like, good human health, if you will, we do the same thing with soils. So in soils, we look at soil physical characteristics, chemical characteristics, and certainly biological characteristics. And we look for the sometimes we call it the sweet spot, at least that's what I call it, where all three of these physical, chemical and biological overlap. And, you know, you can think of three circles overlapping. Many of us have used this analogy before, and looking at where that circle in the center encompasses the, quote, best of physical, chemical and soil, biological health. So that's, that's my approach. And to be honest with you, I've used this approach for oh my gosh, almost my entire career without even knowing it. What do you think, Steve?
STEVE BLECKER 8:39
Man, that's a hard act to follow. I like the analogy with the human health. I hadn't thought of that. That's pretty good. But no, I mean, you're right. It's the name has changed, didn't always used to be soil health, but the things we measure, I mean, there's three major biology, chemistry and the physical properties of soil. I mean, you're right. I mean, that's, that's how they interact, to determine, you know, how healthy your soil is going to be for, you know, what the end uses, in our case, a lot of its agriculture. So how do these different properties interact.
BRAD NEWBOLD 9:13
So, so along with with what you're talking about with, you know, I guess, using continuing with that analogy or metaphor of, of human health, are there? I guess there's two questions that I have here. And maybe they're kind of kind of overlapping here. But within when we're dealing with human health, you know, we will check our pulse to see if we're still alive, right. That's kind of a very basic, basic overview of how you're doing right if you're, you're healthy, you're alive. But But like you said, there's there's other aspects as well. Are there and I don't I don't want to say are there shortcuts but are there are there particular measurements or characteristics of the soil itself, where you can kind of say, hey, kind of just take a quick snapshot and say, soil is doing pretty good because of XY and Z? Or is it something where you really do have to dig in to each of those physical, biological and chemical characteristics to really say how healthy that soil is?
STEVE BLECKER 10:23
Yeah, that's a great question. I, I don't know if there's any shortcuts, because every soil is different. And every, even if the soil is the same, the management practices under which the soil is, is under Well, that's the management practices that are being applied to a soil, even if the soil is the same changes the soil, we all know that. So quantifying soil health is, it can be somewhat tricky, because if you want to take a shortcut, and you know, a shortcut in one soil, it may not be applicable for a completely different soil. And so I think about the programs that we run at Colorado State University and Ohio State University, and we look at a number of different indicators or soil characteristics that encompass physical, chemical and biological health. And what we tried to do is tease out the minimum data set, that would be for a specific soil, or maybe a specific management system, or something along those lines, which is basically what we're doing with a number of projects that we have at Colorado State University. And we don't want to have a producer sending a soil sample to our testing facility or another testing facility to analyze for 20 different characteristics when maybe only three are necessary. That's, that's the sweet spot that we look for in these different systems.
BRAD NEWBOLD 11:50
I guess what would soil like you said, there's, there's differences between, you know, how soil might look or a particular type of soil within varied, you know, agricultural, or other land management uses. How would How would a, I guess, what would a healthy soil look like? If we want to, you know, stereotype we're whatever, what would a healthy soil look like? In, you know, an agricultural field versus a healthy soil? Say, even just in, you know, general environment? So with, you know, within? I don't know, if if getting into forestry is too deep for you guys, or whatever? And versus, you know, I don't know, if if we're dealing with soil health as much in you know, more of the civil engineering side of things. There's different things that they look at for that, but how would How would a healthy soil? What would a healthy healthy soil look like in those different situations? And is there some, some overlap? Or would you expect completely different soil profile profiles to I don't want to say, you know, but different soil, like suites of characteristics within those different regions or spaces?
STEVE BLECKER 13:05
What yeah, there's, I mean, the big concern in Colorado, is water, I mean, we're a pretty dry state. And anything you can do to improve the water holding capacity of the soil, I mean, that generally will help the soil health, but also help the plant productivity. So I mean, you can just go out into a field and dig up the surface of soil and, you know, you can see how well it's aggregated, you know, what kind of pore space can the water move freely down into the soil kind of. So it can be stored in how much organic matter, you'll always hear, can't get away from soil health without talking about organic matter in our soil carbon, because it's just, it's so key to so many different properties. One of which, of course, is its ability to hold water. So if you I mean, if you go out in the field and look side by side, you can just pull out a cloud of soil and, you know, see how well it's aggregated. Versus in I've seen people like the NRCS, they'll take a chunk of soil that's healthy, and put it in like a big, clear cylinder and let it sit there. And if it's, you know, the healthier soil kind of stays together, the aggregates hold together, whereas a soil that's, you know, quote, unquote, less healthy, tends to, you know, kind of break apart and fall apart much quicker. So that's there's a lot of visual cues, you can look at.
BRAD NEWBOLD 14:26
How, I guess, what are some are there some general principles, I guess, for land managers to think about when it comes to just overall improving their soil health? I mean, what if there were just key steps or? Yeah, just kind of a basic outline for how to improve your soil health. What would those look like?
JIM IPPOLITO 14:54
Yeah, that's a great question. I think having a PhD I often use the term it depends. Because it really depends on where you're located. So I think about the projects that we have where we're using METER Group equipment, we were using them dominating the Western United States, specifically Colorado, and then in other surrounding states, but mainly Colorado, and we're talking about the Western US. So in Colorado, for example, a basic outline would be, like Steve just mentioned, focusing first on carbon. And anything that you can do to improve organic carbon content in the soils of Colorado, for example, you're gonna win the battle, and you likely will see an improvement in soil health. And, and there's a reason behind this because the soils in Colorado are naturally low in organic carbon content. And they've become lower over time because of historical agricultural practices. So anything we can do to increase organic carbon in the soils that are relatively fragile, that typically have less than probably three and a half percent organic carbon or organic matter to begin with, is a bonus in the western United States. And that leads to what Steve mentioned, increases in water holding capacity aggregate stability, carbon is a food source for micro organisms that enhance nutrient cycling and turnover, which enhances the chemistry of soils. And it's all linked together. And, and if you looked at those three circles, biology, chemistry, and physical aspects, the sweet spot where those three overlap is carbon, it's really carbon in the center. That's how I look at it. I'm not a carbon chemist, definitely not a carbon chemist, but we measure carbon, and we've measured carbon in our soils for decades. Now, Steve, and I have done this for 30 or 30 plus years together, yeah, because this ties in with what we're doing with the equipment. And so you know, in the western US, we're drought prone. And so anything we can do to increase water holding capacity of our soils, is a benefit. So in terms of soil health, or looking for systems that producers manage, that get a little bit more bang for the buck in terms of carbon storage, and subsequently utilizing METER Group equipment, to take a look at the changes in moisture holding capacity over time. And one of the things that's just really, it just stands out to me is when you look at the soil health research has been done across the US. And if you look at the areas of the US where METER Group equipment is located, there is a big hole, and it's almost hovered over Colorado. So that's what we're trying to do with our projects is to fill that gap.
BRAD NEWBOLD 17:54
Awesome. We're glad to help out with that as well. So no, I think definitely, definitely, I think that that is one thing and because we see this in in lots of different in varied applications, whether you're talking about soil moisture, or other soil characteristics, but also, we have that with, you know, with weather monitoring, or whatever sorts of systems, we have a lot of these these regional Mezonets that are going up throughout the United States and elsewhere. And by creating we've we've also had people on our podcast talking about Yeah, creating networks of soil moisture, data and so moisture, water potential, so yeah, soil water potential, those kinds of matrix potential, that kind of stuff. So definitely got being able to, to connect, we want to be able to know what's going on in the here and now. But also, there's, there's this added, imperative, you know, this, this added, I guess, urgency to also be able to predict what's, or forecast, what's going to be happening in the next, you know, 5-10-50 years down the road as well. And if we don't have that good data right now to work with, then then we're, you know, just kind of shooting in the dark type of thing. So, let's...
STEVE BLECKER 19:20
One thing we're kind of, I mean, we're kind of looking into because we have, we have METER sensors scattered over pretty large chunk of the state in all kinds of different agroecosystems, irrigated non irrigated range land. So that, you know, it got us thinking what I mean, there's, initially the idea is to, you know, let the producer understand, like, what his practices are doing to soil moisture. But also at the same time, we have, as you mentioned, I mean, we were kind of just inadvertently, I guess, building this network of soil moisture monitoring stations across the state that yeah, so that might be able to help us answer You know, some of these questions about, you know, how the different systems respond to drought and so
BRAD NEWBOLD 20:04
Right, right. And I want to come back to this to in particular, in talking with you're talking with you about, about your, your main research project, because there's a lot that we want to know and understand about, about the instrumentation, but also about just the the challenges in creating, like you said, inadvertently, or on purpose, creating these networks, and, and being able to say, okay, what are the challenges in having, you know, all sorts of instrumentation just all over the place, about, you know, installation, and, and, and connecting them all. And not to mention, you know, collecting the data, as well as analyzing it. And we're dealing with, you know, getting into big data issues, and all that kind of stuff. And so, so there's a lot of a lot of interesting questions that we can talk about here in a second with that. I want to let's, let's switch gears, and we did have some folks here that wanted to know more about, they're in Colorado, the STAR program. They're in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture, they're in Colorado, can you tell us a little bit about that program and what it's all about?
STEVE BLECKER 21:30
Steve's gonna pawn it off on me. Okay. So the STAR program is something that was not initially created in Colorado, it initially began in Champaign County, Illinois, it stands for Saving Tomorrow's Agricultural Resources program. And in Illinois, it was geared around water quality. So programs, ie management of different parcels of land to help improve water quality that's moving off site from a parcel of land. We took that concept. And oh, my gosh, probably about three or four years ago, in Colorado, we created with the help of a lot of people, the STAR program that's centered around soil health, not water quality. Again, it still stands for Saving Tomorrow's Agricultural Resources, but it's based on essentially the backbone of the five principles of soil health at the NRCS promotes. And so I can't remember all of them. I'm drawing a blank here, but you know, it's soil cover living roots, introduction of livestock. There's two others, I should know these off top my head, I've done this for so long, and probably just blanket I'm blanking. But the the five principles of soil health that the NRCS promotes. And then what we've done is we've created in Colorado, a set of STAR field forms that are housed on the Colorado Department of Agriculture's STAR website. And these field forms were developed hand in hand with producers in different sectors of of ag within the state of Colorado. And so we went through, I don't know how many iterations of these field forms hand in hand with producers to come up with a scoring system. So producers will if they're growing corn, for example, in the state of Colorado, they can feel fill out a field form that's geared towards corn, they're asked a number of different questions and the questions are scored. And then the scores are accumulated. And they fall into one of five categories. So they and they receive a STAR placard. And the STAR placard that goes into their field or on their fence is either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars. One star is the producer is doing the average as to what everybody else is doing in terms of focusing on soil health within that type of agroecosystem, and five is your, you've maxed out all the soil health principles that the NRCS promotes. Getting a five star is really, really difficult. Getting a one star is really, really easy. And we've set this up hand in hand with the producers to do this on purpose because not everybody should get a five star if they're only doing a three star work in their field. And so this is this is what we've developed and we have I think 11 different field forms for all sorts of different types of crops and it might even go into we didn't create a we didn't create a field for for rangelands, did we Steve?
STEVE BLECKER 24:44
Other grazing lands? Yeah. It covers rangelands,
STEVE BLECKER 24:49
But it's an it's completely voluntary. almost completely voluntary. Alright, so there's part of it. That's voluntary. If a producer wants to become part of the STAR program, they can. And we also have something called Star Plus. And this is, and this is the incentive based program from what I remember. So, correct, yeah, so other producers who, if they're lucky enough to get into the STAR Plus program, there are certain additional requirements that they need to meet, in order to get an incentive payment from the Colorado Department of Agriculture. It's but the premise is still the same, they fill out a STAR form, they get a rating. And then what we're trying to do in our programs, is to look at these different management practices or tweak these management practices to increase the STAR rating from say, a one to a two, or maybe a three to a four on a particular parcel of land. Did I miss anything? I
STEVE BLECKER 25:52
I mean, basically, no that covers it pretty well, I mean, basically, the idea is to just go out and interact with these producers and just have a conversation about soil health, and try to get them to, you know, they need to try out, they need to commit to trying out one of these, one of the five principles of soil health, just implement a new practice that they haven't tried before, on other portion of their field, a whole new field, and then just see what happens. You know, and that's what we're, that's what we've kind of started in the past couple years, we're kind of at the, the leading edge of, of the star plus projects. So we don't really have any revenue data coming in yet. But that's been interesting just to go out there and interact with all these different folks and all these different agroecosystems.
STEVE BLECKER 26:36
Yeah, the you know, one of the most exciting portions of this project are that it's not one project. It's multiple projects that use the STAR program. But I think one of the most exciting things is one working hand in hand with producers to come up with a rating system, two these placards that will go out into fields. And our programs are supposedly touching about 500 producers across the state. So it's not inconsequential. And so each producer will have a placard that should be visible along some road that they live near the where the field is located, to hopefully generate discussion and interest among other producers, because we all know producers go down to the local coffee shop, and, and chit chat, right. I mean, they do more than chitchat, they talk about what they see and this, this, hopefully will generate some interest to get more people involved in the program. And the last thing I want to mention to you, which is part of our climate smart commodities project is we're hoping that this STAR rating system will eventually end up as a market signal. So if you're a producer, with a five star rating, you might get a little bit extra, when you sell your commodity on the market. We're really hoping that this is what this leads to.
BRAD NEWBOLD 27:52
Yeah, I was I mean, that's good to hear that it's one of my my biggest questions with that was the adoption, you know, producers and growers are notoriously slow at at adopting new technology, new practices, or at least that's the, that's the the traditional view of how things go. They're there some early adopters, and here and there, but it's because it's such a, you know, risk reward practice when it comes to agriculture, is that if they do see that things are working out towards their benefit, then at least from what from what we've seen here, then you can really start to see that shift in, in best practices, from a potential, you know, from traditional practices that have been going on for, you know, a century or two, to or even or even more, to those where where we have kind of either new technology, new ideas, or new innovations in land management. And so that's really good to see. I was I was interested in that incentive, like how much of an incentive does it take to to generate this, you know, to generate buzz or to generate adoption, but it sounds like it's, it's going pretty well there, at least in Colorado. Along with that and both of you, Steve, you talked about going out and you know, visiting face to face with with these growers with producers, and communicating the this this program or the benefits to adopting this program or any other or even if it deals with just soil health in general or other practices. This is one of these questions that kind of pops up with a lot of our guests is Have you have you felt that there's there are practices or techniques that you've used that you found successful in communicating? I guess kind of in translating scientific research to the layperson or to in your instance With with growers and producers, is there because a lot of times within this, you know, scientific community within academia, again, we're using jargon, we're going back and forth, we're, you know, publishing white papers and peer reviewed journals, that really doesn't percolate down to the general audience. And especially in this case where the general audience, those growers and producers are the ones who would benefit most from the research that you're doing. So, to back this back up again, have you found any? Or what are the points of success that you've seen in being able to communicate your research to, to a lay audience?
STEVE BLECKER 30:37
Let me give this a shot first, and because I had an extension appointment at Colorado State University, and it was pretty large. And so I, part of my job was to talk to producers, often outside of the projects that Steve and I and others have going on. But so thinking about in the context of soil health, I remember one of the first talks I gave to producers that a producer conference, oh, my gosh, probably December 2016. And I got a lot of eye rolls, when I was talking about soil health, because a lot of the there was probably over 100 producers in this room out in Fort Morgan, Colorado, lots of eye rolls. So I realized quickly that there had to be a better way to get the point across that soil health is important. And so coming back to the point I made at the beginning of the podcast about human health, people really can understand human health. And maybe they can't wrap their heads around soil health. But when you make that analogy, and that comparison, it is very simple for people to see where we're coming from in terms of soil health, and that's worked really, really well for me for the last probably four years. I don't know have you run into those issues, Steve?
STEVE BLECKER 31:56
I generally, we, I kind of take this a little different direction. We rely heavily on our CSU Extension program in the state. And they tend to have experts, agronomy type experts in different parts of the state that have experience in different agroecosystems. And these are folks that have developed relationships with producers in the area. So they trust you know, they've built up this level of trust with the producers. So we we rely on them to kind of also help get out the message between them in our we haven't Well, I worked for the Ag Experiment Station. So I have about eight Ag Experiment Station set up across the state where they have field days, and we can bring in producers and to kind of explain the research and they can see firsthand Hey, you know, we tried this different tillage method. This is what happened. And so that's kind of, so I rely mostly on all these other people in the field.
BRAD NEWBOLD 32:57
Let's talk about you mentioned agroecosystems. And so let's get into kind of the, the meat of the conversation here. You have this large federally funded grants project here in dealing with agroecosystem management practices and improvements to that and how it connects to soil health and Ecosystem Sustainability resiliency. Can you give us a little background on to this this project and how it came to be and, and just kind of Yeah, introduce us to, to what you're hoping to do here?
JIM IPPOLITO 33:33
Yeah. We got lucky! I can tell you, there's there's more than just luck involved. But when we started in Colorado, this soil health push, really the push the most recent push started in 2019, July 2019. And there was a lot of people interested in soil health, and that got whittled down to a number of different subsets. And the subset that Steve and I run in, we have a core group of people myself, Steve, Dr. Megan mock molar. We have two people from a consulting company called Groundup consulting. That's Max Neumayer. And, and Helen silver. And then we have a couple of postdocs, we have at least one postdoc, but the core that I just mentioned, we work really, really well together. And some people in our group have strengths and weaknesses just like everybody else. I think we have a pretty good handle on who has strengths and who has weaknesses in different sectors. And when I think about being successful, Steve and I, and and Megan, Mark Miller, we have the science down. No, no doubt about it. We're really good at what we do in terms of science. I don't want to sound like, arrogant or anything, but we're, we've done this for a long time. So I think we're really good at what we do. One of the things I think scientists sometimes struggle with is being creative in terms of writing, right? I mean, it just happened. So we have Max and Helen that are creative wizards. And they can put together a proposal that is just really good looking. And we've been very successful. So we do the science, we write the science, and then they write the, the other portion that makes it look sexy, to be honest with you. And we have been so successful, I think we're running off of a total of 30 million, 34 million? I can't remember, I've lost track of the number. We have this climate smart commodities grant that totals something like 25 million. It's not all coming to Colorado State University, because it's split among different entities. But it's 25 million. And we had another one federal Conservation Innovation Grant, that was I think, 3.4 million, and then a few others, and they've built upon one another to the point where we've landed this climate smart commodities grant. And we're looking to the future to keep doing what we're doing now just on, you know, either in Colorado or outside of Colorado.
BRAD NEWBOLD 36:20
And I want to I want to come back to that, because one of the questions I wanted to ask, is it when you're talking about funding, because I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of, you know, do or die when it comes to grant writing and looking for funding and all those kinds of things. And, and so one of the questions was that, that maybe we can come back to her, you can answer it now. And we can splice it in later. But, but what what makes these kinds of large projects attractive for funding? So you talked about you have, you know, you wrote it the science, you had somebody, you know, some some folks make it sound sexy, and those kinds of things, what are what are some of the things that you felt were key to, to, to attracting funding from, from these these, you know, government programs or, or funding agencies?
STEVE BLECKER 37:10
Well, I think the key for this climate smart commodities Grant was the fact that we've built this program, from the ground up hand in hand with producers, and we've been lucky to score or land or receive relatively smaller grants that have led to bigger grants that have led to this climate smart commodities grant. So you know, being successful in grant development, and grant receiving is building a program. And we've been lucky enough to build this program. And so you write a grant, like the climate smart commodities grant, and you can put data into that grant that you have from previous grants that are focused on identical topics. And we so we, to be successful, we've been really focused, like our group has been completely focused on soil health. And when you build out something this large, you have to bring other people on board. And I'm a scientist, Steve's a scientist, I won't speak for him. But we've brought in sociologist, to take a look at how this star program will develop and unfold on a socio-scale or socio economic scale. And I can't do that. I don't want to do that. So we have sociologists and economists that are going to do that for us. And so that just makes this project this much bigger,
BRAD NEWBOLD 38:23
Got it, so let's let's get into let's yeah, dive into the weeds. What are what are the main, you know, problems or questions that you're you're looking to, to answer or dig into when it comes to the project here?
STEVE BLECKER 38:38
Well, there's a there's a project I'm working on, it's kind of it's outside of these STAR programs. But it's it's soil health, because that's what we do around here, apparently. But yeah, we're looking at this project. We're looking at degraded range lands in southeastern Colorado. In just different conditions where they've been overgrazed in the past. And there's also there's a trend, I won't go into a lot of detail, but the municipalities, I mean, water as water becomes more and more scarce and more expensive. There's lands that are bought up that used to be irrigated, but then they're just allowed to kind of return returned to a dryland state, because they the cities want to use the water for something else like municipalities. So then, you know, you're left with a task of so what did we do to these lands that are no longer being irrigated? You know, how do we kind of improve them? You know, do we incorporate grazing or what kind of amendments can we add? So it's been a it's been an interesting challenge, but we've been going out working with these ranchers, it's been kind of a almost a bottom up approach. It's like go out to them and say, Hey, show me some fields that you're having problems with, you know, we'll kind of talk about why and then we, we've set up some plots on some of these kind of degraded or, for lack of a better There were areas, and we're just trying some different techniques to see, you know, if we can improve the productivity of the range land. Further, these are all, you know, grazed cattle graze lands.
STEVE BLECKER 40:13
Let me, let me add something about our our bigger picture across the state of Colorado. So what we're trying to do, and this is complicated, because I can't give you a really good answer as to what we're going to find, I guess that's the premise behind the sciences, you know, it's exciting that it's new. And so what we're trying to do is look at across the state of Colorado, and adjacent states, what management practices work, and which ones don't, in terms of improving soil health, and concomitant concomitantly improving soil water, or available soil water. So these two go hand in hand, that's really what we're doing, you know, to be honest with you, if you're gonna take up like a 30,000 foot view, look on the projects that we're running, it's really all about water, especially in the Western US. And soil health is just tagging along for the ride, to be honest with you. But we are looking at trying to improve soils, so they're resilient and sustainable, and can hold on to water for a longer period of time and supply water to crops. And so we're trying to find sweet spots in terms of management practices across the state. And so the idea is, this is just an idea, not sure if this is how this is going to work out or not. But we break the state down into different types of cropping systems or agroecosystems, or we break the state down into different eco-regions, or we break the state down into some other type of format that makes sense. So we can piece this soil health, water health or water quality or water quantity, puzzle together to help producers across the state of Colorado, and I don't know how it's going to flush out but it's going to flush out one way or the other.
STEVE BLECKER 42:01
I was just gonna say, no matter how we end up breaking it out. I mean, the big, the big hurdle is always variability. Because there'd be there's variability in soils, even within these different practices, their variability, I mean, like, if people use different kind of cover crops, there's different kinds of tillage practices, even on a conservation tillage side of things. So that's why we're trying to, you know, that's always going to be a struggle, but we're trying to try to get hundreds of growers involved in this. So we can at least maybe kind of get slightly, you know, kind of clear things up a little bit, maybe in some of these different systems.
BRAD NEWBOLD 42:36
Right, right. So what are some of the, I guess? What are some of the parameters then that you are looking at? And and how are you? How are you getting at them? How are you measuring and quantifying those?
STEVE BLECKER 42:51
Well, we're, we're certainly casting a large net. And that's the beauty of doing research is, you know, if you have the funding, you can cast a large net. And so we're doing this on purpose, because we want to collect more data then not enough data. And so right, if you're in the sciences field, like Steve and I have been in for over 30 years, you always, invariably look over your shoulder and say, "I should have I should have collected this, I should have collected that". So with these projects, I I feel like we haven't, we won't do that we won't look over our shoulder and say we should have done this because we're doing it. And we're collecting a lot of data. With the hopes to widdle the data set down to something manageable for producers in the state of Colorado. We're collecting soil physical characteristics, biological characteristics, chemical characteristics, nutrient characteristics we're collecting. Sooner or later, we're going to be collecting some microbiome characteristics, which are a little bit outside of against both of our expertise. But we have other people that will be doing this for us to put a puzzle together that makes sense, across however, we break this out across the state.
BRAD NEWBOLD 44:03
So say for instance, if you're if you're dealing you're you're measuring all the various soil characteristics, let's break that down. What are what are some of the those characteristics that you're measuring? How are you measuring those?
STEVE BLECKER 44:14
Yeah, well, there's things like aggregate stability, I mean, you can you take a soil sample and all the stuff you take back to the lab, right, and you're doing some sort of extraction, but like what aggregate stability, there's a, in a civil engineering department build a device that Jim uses in his lab to basically it just kind of agitates the sample over time and you see how well it holds together. And yeah, there's different extracts to pull out you know, like what kind of nutrients are available to plants, nitrogen, phosphorus, all the major nutrients like that, it might end micronutrient micronutrients as well.
BRAD NEWBOLD 44:50
Right.
STEVE BLECKER 44:52
Yeah, on the, you know, in addition to water, aggregate or wet aggregate stability, we measure bulk density So actually collect a sample that's separate from all the other samples we collect in the field to measure how dense or how dense the soil is, I guess it's the bulk density. We collect soils for in terms of biological, we're looking at currently, well organic carbon is at the center. And then we look at microbial biomass carbon, we look at something called beta glucose oxidase activity, which is a measurement. It's an enzyme assay for how easily micro organisms can degrade cellulosic material and soil. So like some of the basics are relatively easy materials to decompose. We look at something called and Steve alluded to this, we look at potentially mineralized double nitrogen. So how much nitrogen is present in an organic form that can be mineralized over a certain period of time? Yeah, and we've looked at other assays in the past some enzyme assays but where I think we're at least the climate smart commodities, we might be doing some microbiome type assays where we're looking at structure and function of microorganisms within systems. And then, of course, we're looking at pH and electrical conductivity. And like Steve mentioned, nutrient concentrations, both macro and micronutrients. And there's there's probably some other things Oh, water holding capacity in the lab on like, pressure plates. We're supposedly doing that as well. It, it's a big list. Yeah.
BRAD NEWBOLD 46:31
Yeah. So So with that, with that big list? I mean, what then are you've talked about dealing with collecting, collecting a bunch of data, you've talked about, you know, the spatial variability or variability with you know, land use? Are are there any, I guess, what would you consider your your biggest hurdle in, in putting out this large amount of of instrumentation or collecting all this, this this data here? Is it? Is it is it the time is it? Is it just the I mean, you've you've, you've got the funding now. So you can, you can purchase the equipment, you can pay for that time, but are there are there other things that that you see, that you have seen or foresee as as major hurdles. In collecting all of this data?
STEVE BLECKER 47:18
The soil moisture monitoring, in these agroecosystems, you got to deal with, these aren't like, like some are like a forest right, we can just put these in the ground and walk away. There's, these are actively, you know, managed fields that are being tilled, and all these other practices. So when we started out, we were putting these systems like right in the middle of the field, because, you know, we wanted to get like the best representative spot we could find. But you know, then they get knocked over and damaged. And we'd have to pull them back out, depending on whether they were harvesting or tilling. And that was only with like, 10 or 12 sites. But now that we've got network, we're ramping this up with dozens and dozens of sites, we tried to, we really had to think about a different way to do this. So we just were working with METER to kind of, I mean, basically, we just extended the cables. So we can put the logger in at the edge of the field and then run the cable in. And then we work with the grower to try to find a depth. We usually put them in at six inches, but we try to find a depth that we can leave them in, right, hopefully for the duration of the project for three or four years. Because it's just we just logistically it's just too hard to run back and forth. Installing and uninstalling. So yes, yeah, it's been challenging.
BRAD NEWBOLD 48:31
Yeah.
STEVE BLECKER 48:32
And Colorado is such a big state that if you have a site like we do, we're going to be installing these at locations that are eight hours from Fort Collins. So if something goes sideways, to jump in a car and drive eight hours to splice a cable together, and then drive eight hours back is a real challenge. So yeah, Steve's taking the lead on this. Well, and it's been great because we bought a trencher to to help with the installments. Because if we have 500 of these devices to put out. Yeah, unless you want like really big forearms like Popeye or something. I mean, trenchers are really handy. I think, you know, I'm a lab rat mostly. And I think about the bottleneck on that side is just Hance having people. So the climate smart commodities grant when it starts rolling, some sometime next year, we're going to have about 300, almost 400 soil samples come back into the lab. And all that analysis needs to be done and I can tell you from experience that that will take at least a year to get done with the people that we have, so we need to hire more people. And I know our space is limited, so we need more space. So fun.
BRAD NEWBOLD 49:53
So So what are the I mean we can talk about any preliminary results that you But, but what are the primary hypotheses that you're testing? Or do? I guess? What your, your expectations with with connecting, like you said, connecting these, you know agroecosystem management practices to soil health and Ecosystem Sustainability resiliency?
JIM IPPOLITO 50:24
Yeah, that's a good question I picked up on the word hypothesis. And so this, this is a tough one to crack because, you know, it's a general hypothesis. But if a producer is following one of the, or all of the five principles of soil health, the hypothesis would be that soil health would increase in a system, right? And that's a cheesy answer. But that's, that's the answer I can give you. Because the way we've set this, this whole project up, and the STAR program in Colorado, is to allow the producer to make the decision on what they want to change in terms of management. So it's flipping the research upside down, to be honest with you, you know, as researchers, we come up with the ideas and hypotheses and then we, we set up the project and test them, but we're not doing that in this project, the farmers, they're installing the new management practice, and then we just, we kind of go with it. So in some respects, we're flying a little bit without a hypothesis.
BRAD NEWBOLD 51:28
Kind of exploratory research.
STEVE BLECKER 51:31
Yeah. And things like I mean, we're always trying to improve or increase organic matter in the soil. But that can take a while. Yeah, it can, you know, it can exceed the life of a grant. So it's kind of so you might not see the, you know, these changes within three years, right, just you know, you wouldn't necessarily expect to but, so that makes it kind of challenging.
JIM IPPOLITO 51:53
You know, one of the nice things about the climates where commodities grant is, I think we could potentially eke out five years with us. And so from my experience, having worked in Colorado for a really long period of time, you know, these are the places where if you're going to see a change in carbon, you're going to see a change in carbon in the western US if you do something positive. And that's because our carbon content is organic carbon content is so low to begin with. So if you make an incremental change, it could be huge to be honest with you, you know, if you go from 1.5 to 2%, that's, that's huge, it's only half a percent change. But if you do that, in a system that has low carbon to begin with, like in Colorado, you're going to see more of an improvement than if you went for a half percent change in carbon content in a soil in Minnesota, that already starts with seven and a half percent carbon. So this is where I, my gut is telling me that this is where we're going to see the best bang for our buck, in terms of return on investment, for improving carbon in our soils, it's going to be in the Western United States, we're going to see drastic improvements. And I'll tell you from some of my experiences with other soil health projects, that if you do things, quote, right, you might see a change in less than five years. In fact, we had a project over on the western slope of Colorado, where we saw changes in three years in terms of organic carbon accumulation in the soil surface in three years.
BRAD NEWBOLD 53:21
Have you have you had any, any issues or challenges in in collaborating with with, I guess, again, the the idea of the collaboration between growers and academics? Within this this project itself? We talked about communication with with them, are you is this is this something? Well, let me back this up. Are, are these when you're going out? Are and installing or measuring? The assumption is that you're working with growers and not just on experimental fields is Is that Is that correct?
STEVE BLECKER 53:55
Yeah, we have, most of these are, these are their fields. Yeah, used to grow, what they're grown. And we, and we utilize, we didn't really bring up the we have a series of conservation districts throughout the state of Colorado, and, and other entities like that. But it's kind of up to them, and they apply to the Department of Ag and say, Hey, we want to, we think we can bring on 10 producers or our conservation district. So then, so we rely on these guys to you know, who already have these relationships with the growers built this trust. So I mean, it makes a big difference. And they, you know, again, the producers don't have to, it's all voluntary, so.
BRAD NEWBOLD 54:36
Right, right. And, Jim, you talked about the, you know, you know, potentially increasing carbon by, you know, there in the in, in the semi arid west by, you know, half a percent would be huge, but do you see other other potential impacts of, of projects like these, this project or projects like these on on agriculture, and I guess Have the implications for, for Colorado, the region and maybe potentially the world at large?
JIM IPPOLITO 55:07
Well, I do and I, when you ask a question like that, I come immediately back to the STAR program. And so I recently moved from Colorado State University to Ohio State University. And I'm trying to instill the STAR program within some proposals that we're writing currently to expand this idea of using star to quantify soil health, not only in Colorado, but then, of course, the western US with this climate smart commodities grant, but bringing that concept to the Midwest. And so there's, there's some real opportunities. And we, in Colorado did a, I think, a really good job developing that program, to the point where, you know, can't I don't think be lifted directly out of Colorado. But you could take that and then tweak the content in the STAR program to a particular state or region across the United States, and probably the globe, to be honest with you. That's, I think that's the benefit of what we've done in the state of Colorado.
STEVE BLECKER 56:10
And I would just add that, I mean, the one thing we haven't talked about is erosion. I mean, all these practices help keep the soil in place, and can have soil health without soil. So keeping litter on the surface, if you're, you know, all these different practices, cover crops, having that living root in there, just kind of anchoring the soil, keeping it around things that, you know, didn't happen back in the dustbowl days.
BRAD NEWBOLD 56:32
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So looking at let's see, Jim, you said you might be able to stretch this out to five years, a five year project, but looking looking there at the end, or even, I guess, looking into the future, what do you see as the future of this research? What do you see? You've talked about expanding, growing, expanding projects and building project upon project? And what do you see as the future of of this research project as it moves forward?
JIM IPPOLITO 57:00
Yeah, that's a great question. So the climate smart commodities project is really mostly Colorado centric. But it also encompasses five states that abut the Rocky Mountain backbone. So New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, all the land grant institutions within those five states and Colorado State University, are working on this project. So the concept is, we've built we've built a really strong program focused on soil health in the STAR program in Colorado. And we want to send feelers out to these adjacent states to see if something like this would work in those states. And to be honest with you, Max Neumayer, and Helen silver, have already held discussions with the state of Wyoming. And they're putting they're putting together a soil health program, much like in Colorado, and they've reached out to other states, I know they're working in the state of Washington to do the same thing. And the state of Washington is on the periphery of the climate smart commodities project. But the the concept is, is to not make this Colorado centric, but make it Western centric, and then make it nation centric. So we actually have help, we, there's people that are working on this at the STAR, center location, or whatever you would call it in Illinois, to make this a reality across the US. That's what I'd like to see. That would be really cool.
BRAD NEWBOLD 58:28
Steve, any thoughts on the future of this kind of research?
STEVE BLECKER 58:34
Other than just I mean, the more we can make this data available to the producers, and show them that, hey, it really works, you know, and hopefully, not only does it work, but hopefully they'll be seeing increases in yield as their soil health improves, because I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean, they're not gonna mean they're not growing soil, they're growing crops, right. But, of course, you need good soil to get a good crop. So hopefully, this this will go hand in hand, as they improve the soil, they'll see yields increasing, and they won't just, you know, try it on one field, you know, adopt it over larger portions of their operation.
BRAD NEWBOLD 59:11
Right.
JIM IPPOLITO 59:12
I'll just add to this. So, the dream, this is probably pretty crazy. That's a crazy statement coming from somebody who writes proposals to bring in research dollars to do work. But the dream would be to not have to work on soil health ever again. And that may sound crazy. But imagine if you could develop a program that just fine tuned every single system to number or a short set of indicators that we know tell you the story of soil health, or if you could use the star forms that this is what we're going to do. We're going to match up the STAR forms data to the data we collect in the laboratory. And imagine if you could take just a form that producer fills out, that would tell you what the health of the soil is without having to do the work in the lab. To me, that is really what I'd like to see happen. So people like myself and Steve and others, we can start focusing on other topics of importance. And keep this simple. If there could be a simple there probably is not a simple but that's the dream. Right.
BRAD NEWBOLD 1:00:27
Right. Well, any other final thoughts or other things that you'd like to share with our audience about what we've talked about or beyond what we've talked about here?
JIM IPPOLITO 1:00:39
I'll tell you, we're, we're working. And this is outside of the climate smart commodities. But you know, Steve mentioned his work in range lands, these degraded range lands. And so we actually have a soil health program where we're looking at using soil health principles and practices and quantification in mind land reclamation, which is really fun, because those systems are really they're like, these degraded range lands that Steve's working on, they're just very wacky, you know, they may be contaminated with heavy metals beyond the point where plants can grow. And so looking at practices to improve these to grow something to reduce erosion, like Steve mentioned, and to improve soil health and Plant Health, and hopefully animal health, because bracing, you know, grazing animals come through these areas, and ultimately, environmental health. So it's like a One Health concept, if you will. This is what we do.
BRAD NEWBOLD 1:01:32
Yeah, I think we're out of time. But maybe we'll have you back to talk more about Yeah, range lands and reclaimed mining and biogeochemical cycling and forever chemicals and all that kind of stuff. So anyway, those are fun things for for potential future episodes. We'll see. All right. I think that's it. Our time's up for today. Thanks again, Steve. And, Jim, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. And it's been a great conversation. So thanks again. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time on We Measure the World!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Taylor Bacon is a Ph.D. student of soil and crop science at Colorado State University. She obtained her Bachelor’s in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton University with a focus on energy and the environment and a minor in sustainable energy. As a Ph.D. candidate, she is researching nature-based climate solutions, land-use emissions, and food/energy systems.
Chris Chambers operates as the Environment Support Manager and has been the Soil Moisture Sensor Product Manager for many years at METER Group. He specializes in ecology and plant physiology and has 15 years of experience helping researchers measure the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum.
Leo Rivera operates as a research scientist and Director of Scientific Outreach at METER Group. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degree in soil science at Texas A&M University where his research focused on the impacts of land use and landscape on soil hydraulic properties. He also helped develop an infiltration system for measuring hydraulic conductivity used by the NRCS in Texas. Currently, Leo leads METER’s collaborative research efforts, and focuses on application development in hydrology instrumentation, including the SATURO infiltrometer and the HYPROP. He also works in R&D to explore new instrumentation for water and nutrient movement in the soil.
Links to learn more about Leo Rivera
Author page on Environmental Biophysics Blog
Leo Rivera on LinkedIn
Leo Rivera on ResearchGate
Links to learn more about Chris Chambers
Chris Chambers on LinkedIn
Chris Chambers biography on METER
Dr. John Norman, currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was Professor of Soil Science and also Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. He is a Fellow in the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Norman has received the American Meteorology Society award for Outstanding Biometeorologist, was the appointed Rothermel Bascom Professor of Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin, and was awarded the University of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Spitze Land Grant Award for Faculty Excellence. He advises graduate students and postdocs and has hundreds of refereed publications to his name. In 2008 the American Meteorological Society and the American Society of Agronomy sponsored symposia in his honor, and in 2016 the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Science.
Dr. Gaylon Campbell has been a research scientist and engineer at METER for over 20 years following nearly 30 years on faculty at Washington State University. His first experience with environmental measurement came in the lab of Sterling Taylor at Utah State University making water potential measurements to understand plant water status. Dr. Campbell is one of the world’s foremost authorities on physical measurements in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. His book written with Dr. John Norman on environmental biophysics provides a critical foundation for anyone interested in understanding the physics of the natural world. He’s written three books, over 100 refereed journal articles, various book chapters, and has several patents.
Links to learn more about Dr. John Norman
Dr. John Norman's faculty page at UW Madison
Dr. John Norman on ResearchGate
Drs. John Norman and Gaylon Campbell's book
Links to learn more about Dr. Gaylon Campbell
Dr. Gaylon Campbell on ResearchGate
Dr. Gaylon Campbell's interview on his book with Dr. John Norman
Dr. Gaylon Campbell on Academia
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Dr. Kim Novick is a professor, Paul H. O’Neill Chair, Fischer Faculty Fellow, and director of the Ph.D. Program in Environmental Sciences at Indiana University. She earned her bachelor’s and Ph.D. in environmental science at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Her research areas span ecology and conservation, hydrology and water resources, and sustainability and sustainable development, with specific interests in land-atmosphere interactions, terrestrial carbon cycling, plant ecophysiology, and nature-based climate solutions.
Dr. Jessica Guo is a plant ecophysiologist and data scientist who studies plant-environment interactions under extreme climate conditions. She earned her bachelor’s in environmental biology from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Northern Arizona University. She is currently at the University of Arizona, where she blends her passion for reproducible workflows, interactive visualizations, and hierarchical Bayesian models with her expertise in plant water relations.
Links to learn more about Dr. Kim Novick:
Dr. Kim Novick on Google Scholar
Dr. Kim Novick on Wikipedia
Dr. Kim Novick's faculty page at Indiana University
Links to learn more about Dr. Jessica Guo:
Dr. Jessica Guo on GitHub
Dr. Jessica Guo on Google Scholar
Dr. Jessica Guo's faculty page at the University of Arizona
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Dr. Dedrick Davis is an Assistant Professor in Soil Physics at Alabama A&M University. He obtained his PhD in Soil Science and Environmental Science from Iowa State University,and his teaching expertise is in soil physics and soil hydrology. He has published research papers in national and international scientific journals, as well as several book chapters, and he has taken part in national and international congresses, including recently, when he was invited to join a national panel discussing Climate-Smart Cotton.
Links to learn more about Dr. Dedrick Davis:
Dr. Dedrick Davis on ResearchGate
Article: Dr. Dedrick Davis in Scientia
Article: Dr. Davis joins national panel
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Dr. Arron Carter, professor and O.A. Vogel Endowed Chair of Wheat Breeding and Genetics at Washington State University, graduated with both a bachelor's and master's in plant science from the University of Idaho and received his doctorate at Washington State University in crop science, where he currently leads the winter wheat breeding and genetics program. His research is directed towards breeding improved wheat varieties for cropping systems in Washington state that incorporate diverse rotations and environments. His goal in this program is to release high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties with good end-use quality that will maintain profitability and reduce the risk to growers.
Links to learn more about Dr. Arron Carter:
Dr. Carter's WSU faculty page
Dr. Carter's list of publications on Google Scholar
Dr. Carter on ResearchGate
Dr. Carter on LinkedIn
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Peter Tereszkiewicz is a PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina. His current research focuses on coastal dunes and understanding how seasonal vegetation such as dune grasses and sediment interactions affect dune growth and post-storm recovery.
Links to learn more about Peter:
- Article about Peter's research
- Peter on Research Gate
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David DuBois, PhD, is the state climatologist for New Mexico, director of the New Mexico Climate Center, and college associate professor at New Mexico State University. He also serves as the state coordinator for the New Mexico Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS).
Links to learn more about Dr. David DuBois:
DuBois' curriculum vitae
DuBois' website
DuBois' LinkedIn
DuBois' Twitter
DuBois' ResearchGate
New Mexico Climate Center
NMSU Air Quality Research
ZiaMet Weather Station Network
CoCoRaHS - Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network
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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.
Links to learn more about Jaclyn:
Video about Jaclyn's research
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Bruce Bugbee, PhD, is a professor of Crop Physiology, director of the Crop Physiology Laboratory at Utah State University, and the president of Apogee Instruments, Inc.
His work includes collaborating with NASA to develop closed life-support systems for long-term space missions. He’s been involved with the development of crop-growing systems for future life on the Moon, in addition to in-orbit or in-space shuttles. He’s worked on projects for Mars farming, including the use of fiber optics for indoor lighting, And as a part of this research, he was involved in the creation of the NASA Space Technology Research Institute’s Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (or CUBES).
Dr. Bugbee also has long been a critic of the use of indoor farming as a means of solving food shortages, due to the large amount of electricity needed to provide light for photosynthesis. His recent work in this area has included studies into the efficacy of LED lights for indoor growing. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Links to learn more about Dr. Bruce Bugbee:
Dr. Bugbee's curriculum vitae
Dr. Bugbee's AMA on reddit
Dr. Bugbee's ResearchGate
Dr. Bugbee's LinkedIn
Dr. Bugbee's opinions on the science of Farming Mars
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Colin Campbell, PhD, is a research scientist and the head of research and development at METER Group, Inc. USA.
Read more about Dr. Colin Campbell
Discover TEROS soil water content sensors
Learn about TEROS soil water potential sensors
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Leo Rivera operates as a research scientist and director of Client Success at METER Group. He earned his undergraduate degree in Agriculture Systems Management at Texas A&M University, where he also got his Master’s degree in Soil Science. There he helped develop an infiltration system for measuring hydraulic conductivity used by the NRCS in Texas. Currently, Leo is the force behind application development in METER’s hydrology instrumentation including the SATURO, HYPROP and WP4C. He also works in R&D to explore new instrumentation for water and nutrient movement in soil.
Discover the SATURO field infiltrometer
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Cristine Morgan, PhD, is the chief scientific officer at the Soil Health Institute (SHI) in North Carolina, where she develops scientific strategy and implementation for soil health research.
Links to learn more about Dr. Morgan and SHI:
Soil Health Institute's website
Dr. Morgan's publications
Dr. Morgan's LinkedIn
Dr. Morgan's ResearchGate
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Kevin Hyde, PhD, is the manager for the Montana Mesonet at the Montana Climate Office.
Links to learn more about Kevin Hyde and the Montana Mesonet project:
Kevin's LinkedIn
Montana Mesonet website
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Notes
Dr. Colin Campbell, PhD, is research scientist and head of research and development at METER Group. Learn more about Dr. Colin Campbell:
Read more about Dr. Colin Campbell
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Neil Hansen, PhD, is an environmental science professor at Brigham Young University.
Links to learn more about Dr. Neil Hansen:
Neil's curriculum vitae and publications
Neil's LinkedIn
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Bryan Hopkins, PhD, is a professor in the Plant & Wildlife Sciences department at Brigham Young University.
Links to learn more about Dr. Bryan Hopkins:
Bryan's curriculum vitae
Bryan's LinkedIn
Bryan's ResearchGate
Bryan's Academia.edu
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Edward Swiatek is a senior application engineer with the Environmental Research Market Group at Campbell Scientific, Inc.
Links to learn more about Ed Swiatek:
Ed's LinkedIn
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TRANSCRIPT:
BRAD NEWBOLD 0:01
Hello everybody and welcome to we measure the world, a podcast produced by scientists for scientists.
GAYLON CAMPBELL 0:07
So I just got a drill and was ready to drill a hole. And he walked into the lab right then he saw what he was doing and he said you probably better measure that and make sure that you don't hit one of the Freon tubes. And I said, "Yeah, yeah", I mean, what would be the probability of hitting the Freon tubes, the coils were that far apart! And I thought, "Oh I can see well enough to know where that bed is gonna go." And so I went ahead and drilled through the thing, and I hit dead on into one of the Freon tubes and all the refrigerant came shooting out of the thing. That was the hardest thing that I ever did in my life to walk into his office and tell him that I drilled a hole in the Freon tube.
BRAD NEWBOLD 0:58
That's just a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure The World explores interesting environmental research trends, solutions to research issues, and tools to better understand the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Stay current on applied environmental research, measurement methods and more. Thanks for joining us. Today's guests are Ed Swiatek tech micro meteorologist and Application Engineer at Campbell Scientific, and Dr. Gaylon Campbell, founder and soil physicist at meter group. Ed and Gaylon, thanks for joining us today. We really do appreciate you being here with us. Today we wanted to talk to you about your association with some of the founders and pioneers of environmental biophysics and environmental measurement, starting with Dr. Sterling Taylor, who was a researcher at Utah State University in the 1950s and 60s. And I know that you worked with him, Gaylon. And so can you just give us a brief introduction into who he was, and why he is considered one of the founders of environmental biophysics.
GAYLON CAMPBELL 2:02
Sterling was part of that. I guess you could say cohort that we call the greatest generation, the the ones who grew up during the Depression, fought in the Second World War and went on after that and changed the world. And there were a number of amazing soil physicists that that I was acquainted with in group and Sterling was one of those. He grew up on a farm during the Depression, he got his bachelor's degree at Utah State University, went through ROTC and was commissioned officer in the army, served throughout through World War Two, got his PhD at Cornell and then was hired back at Utah State as their soil physicist. What made him one of the founders of environmental biophysics; when he was doing his work, environmental physics or environmental biophysics weren't really around. Those weren't things that were talking about. But they did talk about the soil plant atmosphere continuum. Nowadays, when you go into a field, you tried to narrow down as much as you can, so that you can make a splash. But those scientists didn't, they brought him down. Then they said, We need to look at the soil plant atmospheric continuum, all at once. And so they worked on plant physiology and micro meteorology and soil physics and all of the areas that that fit together for that, and became pioneers in in all of those areas, that that eventually did become what we call environmental physics now,
BRAD NEWBOLD 3:53
So Gaylon, what was your association with Sterling Taylor? How did he influence your life and your work in science?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 4:00
He was like a second father to me. He influenced probably essentially everything, been with me throughout my life. I met him when I was a freshman in college. I was studying physics, but the physics curriculum, had space in it for taking other things. And I grew up on a farm and so spring quarter that year, I decided to want to take a soils class and so I signed up for beginning soils. And it turned out that Sterling taught it that year I think that's the only time he ever taught beginning soils. But he was the teacher and it was an amazing class. At the end of the class, he came to me and said, "I'd like you to work in my lab". And I said, "Well, I can't. We have farm work to do and I'm needed there. But the next fall when it came back to school, he we met, We were just downtown, Logan together, and met, and he stopped to talk to me. And he said, Said, "I still would like you to come work for me". And I said, "Well, we're still trying to get fall work finished out. But when that's over with, I'll come in". So I went in and he put me to work in his lab. And the things that he had me do with the there, measuring, like electrical conductivity, and soil measuring water potential, measuring plant water potentials, meterlogical things, radiation, and wind and all of those things, the things that I have spent my whole career working on, were all things that he started me on there. And I've often thought if there had never been a sterling Taylor, there wouldn't be any Campbell Scientific, there wouldn't be any meter group, there wouldn't be any Juniper systems, all of those things grew out of the work that we did in his laboratory.
ED SWIATEK 6:10
Gaylon, you had mentioned that, if there was no Sterling Taylor, there wouldn't be a Campbell Scientific or a Decagon or meter group. I've often contemplated over my life, how different individual events sort of changed, where I ended up. But I never really contemplated how events are people who are removed from me once or twice have also influenced my life. So in a way your interaction with with Dr. Taylor influenced me as well in so far that if it didn't happen if he didn't take you on as a student to work in his lab, there would be no Campbell Scientific and there would be no Ed Swiatek working for Campbell Scientific.
BRAD NEWBOLD 6:52
Are there any other contributions? You talked about how he really influenced, you know, the the work that we're doing here today? Are there any contributions to the field or, or multiple fields that were going on in his day, where he kind of expanded our knowledge in environmental sciences?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 7:10
He started out his career using water potential to determine when crops should be irrigated, and worked out the best scheme for managing water on crops that has been worked out, ever. We've tried to get Pat implemented for the past seventy years. And I think we're making some progress now. But it's amazing that something that good, I mean, we still go back to the tables and figures and work that Sterling did to guide us in that that was where his his research started was using water potential for irrigation management. And then he went on working on link transport of heat water in soil. And this may be an area that people aren't all that familiar with, but a few bury an electrical cable in the soil that you run current through and heats the cable up. That'll drive the water away from the cable and dry the soil around the cable. Then when it does that, then the cable will heat up even more. And you can have runaway situation, where are the cable mounts even. Well, he's he studied that in some of the early work on that, and he decided he needed better theory to go with that. And so he got into non equilibrium thermodynamics, which is a field that still people are making in the Nobel Prize several years ago, was awarded in that area. And he worked with some of the best scientists they were, he did a sabbatical in Belgium, to try to learn more about that. And so you can see that his work spanned from the the most practical things from growing better crops to some of the most theoretical things that people have worked on.
BRAD NEWBOLD 9:14
That's amazing. Do you have any other fun stories about Sterling Taylor that might help us get to know him better?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 9:22
I have a very embarrassing story. I think it illustrates his patience. I was not the only person to be influenced the way I just described. There were a lot of young men that he worked with and brought along and not all of them went into soil physics, but, but a lot of them did go into science. This this has to be one of my most embarrassing situations. One of the jobs that he gave me there was to work on thermocouple psychometry. And that was the thing that produced Decagon in the beginning that eventually turned into Meter. In those days, we have to have a constant temperature bath with control to a 1,000th of a degree. And we didn't have a lot of money to put into lab equipment. And so Sterling had built a constant temperature bath out of an old washing machine. And he had done just a beautiful job and insulated the surroundings and he had put a propeller on in place of the washing machine agitator and this is the old style washing machine, not the new ones that you have now. And he had built this copper core in there and wrapped copper tubing around it so that he could refrigerate it, control the refrigeration. So it was just a beautiful instrument. And that was the piece of equipment I was using in these things that I was trying to do. And I was I don't remember exactly when that happened probably when I was a sophomore in college. But I you know, I'd grown up on the farm, I was pretty confident in myself. And I wanted to install some stuff on that drum. And so I needed to drill some holes through it to mount some things. And so I just got a drill and was ready to drill a hole. And he walked into the lab right then he saw what he was doing and he said "you probably better measure that make sure that you don't have one of the Freon tubes." And I said "yeah, yeah", I mean what would be the probability of hitting the Freon tubes? The coils were that far apart. And I thought "Oh I, can see well enough to know where that bed is gonna go." And so I went ahead and drilled through the thing and I hit dead on into one of the Freon tubes, and all the refrigerant came shooting out of the thing. That was the hardest thing that I ever did in my life to walk into his office and tell him that I had drilled a hole in the Freon tube. And I mean, what he should have done was ?????????bought my air sir. So aren't me at least.?????????? But this, such a kind and patient man and he said, "Well, we're gonna have to patch that up and recharge it arent we.".
BRAD NEWBOLD 12:27
Sounds like you got off pretty easy with that.
ED SWIATEK 12:29
Or not so easily! Because, you know, Galyon was left to his own devices to punish himself! And you know, more often than not, you're your worst critic and punisher.
BRAD NEWBOLD 12:41
That's true. That's true. Now his book called "Physical Edaphology" published in 1972 provides many key insights on physics in irrigated agriculture. How could a deeper understanding of principles that come from that book, in particular, change our approach to watering today, you know, especially in this age of water scarcity?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 13:04
The way he did it, by measuring water potential in the soil, you can immediately know no matter what the soil is, you'll know whether you're over irrigating and running water out the bottom, or under irrigating and reducing the production of the crop that you're doing. You can irrigate perfectly with that. People have tried now for 40 years, or maybe more than that to measure the water content of the soil and do that. But while that's possible, it's not easy, and mostly you get it wrong. Or with water potential, You don't ever get it wrong. It'll be right, every time. And so if we would just apply the things that he worked out. I mean, the tables are in that book for doing the irrigation. He has plenty of theory in the book but he also has those practical things. There was one other soil physics book when he published that one, but it had been published quite a few years earlier and a lot changed. The reason that he that he wanted to publish a book was just to have something to teach out of. That book is unique. It's it's one that every soil physicist should have a copy of.
BRAD NEWBOLD 14:24
He did die pretty young. And that cut short, a very promising career and decades, probably ahead of him and research. What do you think we missed out on because he died so early?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 14:35
I've wondered about that too. One of the things that he was working on was a big experiment, irrigating fruit crops. At the time of his death, he, he had gotten a big grant to do that was working on some of the orchards down on the Wasatch Front. And that was, again cutting edge research that would have had A pretty big impact on things that we're still trying to get right, buying the things that he had already worked out for, for yield crops. And I met, I think probably his non equilibrium thermodynamics would have made a bigger splash. Had he had more time to work on it.
BRAD NEWBOLD 15:22
So you mentioned that there's still things that we're working on to get right. Are there things that stand out about Sterling Taylor that we could emulate to improve our own research in the field?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 15:32
I have transcripts from a number of the talks that were given it at Sterling's funeral. And one of his colleagues in the soils Department said something about that, that I that I really like Win-Thorne was was his colleague. He said, "I learned further why Sterling devoted himself to research and studies with such vigor. I concluded that he had in common with a select body of great people, the trait of a never ending feeling of curiosity. He saw in nature, attributes and relationships that few other minds could see. He had the gift of curiosity. And that kept him in an almost perpetual state of excitement. He knew as few people do, the deep personal satisfaction that comes from ideas and the discovery of new truth". And I thought if would try to summarize the thing that that we could emulate in Sterling. Well, there were a lot of wonderful things about him. But that was a fun thing. And working with him, that he was just so excited all the time about discovering new truths.
BRAD NEWBOLD 16:59
That's beautiful. So with that, let's move on to another pioneer in the world of environmental biophysics. And that is Dr. Champ Tanner. And I think it's you Gaylon who had an association with him. So can you tell us who was Champ Tanner?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 17:14
He was another of that greatest generation who came from southern Idaho, northern Utah. In the beginning, I think he did his undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, and his professor there inspired him to do go on for graduate work. But of course, that was in the middle of the Second World War. And so he went into the service for the period of the war and did his graduate work at University of Wisconsin. And then they hired him on the faculty there. He had polio during that time when he was in graduate school. He was pretty sure that that would prevent him from an academic career. And he was affected some by it but his determination, and the willingness of the University of Wisconsin to back him up and continue to support him through through that time, while he was recovering, he wouldn't have left Wisconsin, no matter what I think from you know, he felt that committed to them from the commitment they showed when he was struggling to get through that difficult time in his life. And they were paid back many, many times over for that faith that they had in him. He established a program there that just just wasn't any other one like it in the world. The students that he trained there; I have never known of anyone who trained a group of students that are as confident and able as that group, they've gone on to make enormous contributions on their own. And he covered almost every area he now it's really popular to do Eddy Covariance work and that's what he had his strength and he works with a lot of people doing that. But champ was doing that eddy covariance stuff back in the 60s and 70s. Before back when we called it, Eddy correlation, even then, its amazing to go back and look at those old papers and see all the things they tried. He worked in plant physiology, plant water relations, made some of the great contributions there. He worked on, evaporation through mulches did great contributions there. Over a broad range of subjects did amazing work. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences which is the highest honor that you can receive in the US scientifically. And if I understand it, right, he was the first soil scientist ever to be elected to that body. Soil microbiology, he made some pretty big contributions there too, I think it actually was a soil microbiologist that elected him. So you just sit back and you wonder how can somebody accomplish that much in one career? And then in terms of commercializing that, in Campbell Scientific and Meter Group wouldn't be there without Sterling but like, wise we wouldn't be there without Champ. So there's a number of companies that that owe their existence to the work that these guys do.
BRAD NEWBOLD 20:49
So what is your association with Champ Tanner Gaylon? How did you get involved in working with him?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 20:54
I worked with a number of his students. And somehow through working with them, I got adopted into that family. And it was a kind of a family the Tanners were, were just the most gracious people on the face of the earth. If you were there, in their circle, I they took good care of you. The Tanner hospitality is beyond words. For me. He just was amazing to be a part of that group to knowing that well, but once I had been sort of adopted him, I had a lot of interaction with him professionally.
BRAD NEWBOLD 21:32
Do you have any other stories of his interactions with his own students?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 21:36
I spent almost 30 years on the faculty of Washington State University. So I had a lot of students of my own. So I had a lot of opportunity of first seeing students and professors and how they interact and what kind of students they produce. And Champ produced the, the best ones that I know of, he set the bar pretty high for them, and they expected them to perform at a high level and his students talk about the soil seminars that they had there. And the grilling that champ would give them in the seminars, they knew they had to be prepared. They would talk about how important he felt like it was to take care of the equipment they had. His lab was like Stirling's in they built a lot of their stuff. And they didn't have a lot of money to spend on things like you do in labs nowadays. And so he wanted the tools taken care of. They said that if somebody left a screwdriver, out of place, didn't get it all the way back to the toolbox. The next morning when they came in, there would be the screwdriver sitting on their desk with a note from Champ encouraging him to not do that ever again.
BRAD NEWBOLD 23:02
And did that work?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 23:03
I think it worked. I don't think they left stuff around more than once.
BRAD NEWBOLD 23:08
What else then, do you think that scientists today could learn from Champ Tanner?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 23:14
He was just determined to not kid himself or let his students kid themselves when they got a piece of equipment to make a measurement, why they better understand everything about that piece of equipment and have checked all of the calibrations and made sure that all of it worked the way it was supposed to. So that when they got data out of that they knew that they could count on those data. And he was just always very rigorous in, in the way he pursued his research, the way he did the analysis, the way he maintained the equipment and then check to make sure that it was properly calibrated he was just a very careful scientists. So you could count on anything that he did. It was done correctly.
ED SWIATEK 24:06
I wonder if I could interject a story I heard secondhand about interacting with Champ Tanner. So I heard this story from a colleague of mine at Campbell Scientific, Joel Green, and Gaylon. He was a master student of yours. Is that correct?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 24:21
Right.
ED SWIATEK 24:22
So the story was about a student that Champ had and I label him Marcel Fuks. You had mentioned that note that accompanied the screwdriver that wasn't put away from what I had heard it sounded like Champ was famous about leaving notes for everybody, not just another student who left the screwdriver out but those on what to do for the next day and whatever. And going through program with champ people, the students were were tested and made sure that they understood everything and then when they graduated, they were you know, top in sort of scientists. So this story is about Marcel coming back to the US and actually staying at the Tanner home in Wisconsin as a guest, Marcel got up in the morning went downstairs to the kitchen. And he saw a note and then the version of story I heard it was a note on a yellow piece of paper written in red pen. And when he saw that note, his heart skipped a beat because he had a flashback to being back as a graduate student. And then he approached the countertop to read the note to see what Champ wanted him to do. And it was a note to champs life K, started off with K, I would like you to please and then the assignment for the day or the request for the day. But what I found so endearing about that story was that while champ had high expectations of his students, they were also part of the family. And he treated them the same as he did his family.
BRAD NEWBOLD 25:49
That's great. And that actually segues into our next and final individual that we'd like to highlight. And that's Champ son, Bert Tanner, who was a scientist at Campbell, Scientific for many years. Can both of you and Gaylon tell us a little bit about who Bert Tanner was?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 26:05
Bert did work in I think geophysics and he got a master's degree at Utah State in biometeorology. I think they called it. And then he went to work at, I think, for the Forest Service was in the Bay Area. But he wanted to get a PhD. And so he and I started corresponding he was interested in coming to Washington State University to get a PhD. And we had everything worked out, he was gonna leave his employment there. And he and his wife Cookie were wanting to do some hiking in the Grand Canyon, before they came up to Pullman. So they, they were hiking around, accidentally kicked over a coffee pot and scalded Cookies, foot or leg. And so she had some pretty severe burns. And they brought her out and took her up to the the burn unit University of Utah, they have a good unit there that that can take care of that. And well, while they were there, Bert called me to let me know what was going on. He was kind of at a loose ends, waiting for her to heal. And and I said, "Well, if if you got a little bit of time, why don't you run up to Logan and visit with my brothers. They've just started a new business there," This was just a year or so after Campbell Scientific started, "you might enjoy visiting with them." So Bert went up there and visited with my brothers. And the next thing I knew he was calling up and saying, Well, they offered me a job. And so I guess I'll stay here. And so he never did come for his PhD he stayed in Logan and was an amazing help and example at Campbell Scientific for a lot of years and had a huge impact on on the whole direction that went.
ED SWIATEK 28:07
That started, she told us almost verbatim to the version that I had heard that, that it was key, that Cookie got burned. And he had the visit to CSI. And then a little twist that I also got from Bert was that because Cookie was injured, there was need for insurance and steady employment. And that probably weighed heavily towards his, I'm sure he took and that this he agonized about the decision whether to go on to get a PhD, or work at CSI. But in the end, at the time, the practical matters of a stable income with insurance was was really critical for them. Bert joined um the marketing department, and then a group from Campbell Scientific left to form Omni data. And so then there was a need for some leadership in the marketing department. And then so Bert moved from the application engineer position into the vice president of marketing within Campbell Scientific, but he always enjoyed the application engineering type of work, specifically interacting with clients. And then at the time, that also was kind of hand in hand with being what we call now in application scientists. And so Bert was in the unique position that he was in upper management. And he just steered and mold, certainly the marketing department and probably to some extent, the company to service, the scientific community. And I have a quick story to sort of drive home that point how Bert was very interested in working with the scientific community. Campbell Scientific was invited to give a presentation and a little workshop to Brazil. This would have been probably in the early 2000s. I was preparing the lectures and the slides and I guess I didn't really give it to Bert for review or I did And he just didn't have the time to take a look at it. And so we were in Brazil, my title page came up, and I had what I thought was everyone's title on there. And after birth name, I had vice president of marketing that I went ahead and gave the presentation. Then that evening, he kind of pulled me aside. And he said, While I am the vice president of marketing this week, I'm a scientist. And that was sort of represented over and over as we got involved with different individuals who needed instrumentation. And the instrumentation that they needed was not necessarily something that we had as a standard product. There were bits and pieces that could be used in these systems. And then Burt took it upon himself and the company took it upon himself to work and develop new systems for our clients to meet to meet their kind of measurement needs. So and again, it ties back into this idea in Sterling's lab where you needed something and you went ahead and built it. Now, it's a few years later, and the scientific community would approach Bert and say, Geez, this is what I really need to do. Can you help me in some fashion, he was more than willing to take on that challenge. When I joined Campbell, scientific It was initially to work in the air quality market, it was a kind of a new market that the company wanted to develop. But I had done my graduate work making Eddy covariance measurements at Utah State University. So I had experienced with these type of systems and instrumentation. And while that wasn't my focus, it quickly changed to become my focus, as the scientific community is approaching Bert and wanted to build systems to meet these specific needs and the I, he ended up tapping me as a resource to help him do the programming within the data loggers. So that underlying theme was something that always drove birth, in terms of basically product development and r&d, that was really housed in the marketing department rather than, say, an engineering. So the washing machine came up. I really enjoyed that story, Gaylon, because I could see myself in that same position saying, "Yeah, I know how to drill a hole without hitting a coil". When I started at CSI in 1992, one of the things that group did was kind of show me around the company. And he took me into production where we were building circuit boards. And there were two washing machines that were used to spin up the boards after they hadn't been washed. They were genuine washing machines, as opposed to some kind of high end PCB type of device. So it's just a washing machine like, wow, this is just wild. And then later on, I had heard a story about when Eric was a teenager. And I guess he always had a really curious mind. And one way to sort of tamp that down was to give him tasks that were a bit laborious. And he was assigned a task of reducing the weight of some sort of farming implement, probably a plow or something like that, basically drilling holes into it. And he was given a hand crank type of drill to drill these holes. And maybe he did one or two, and then decided that there was a better way of doing it. And then he promptly took the motor out of his mother's washing machine, and built himself a drill or maybe a drill press or something like that. So I can't, it's interesting how the washing machine theme seems to be interwoven in this history. So another sort of side story, you had talked about the the quality of the students that came out of the Tanner lab. And Bert, he knew the first level of students that came out of his father's lab, but then there was the second and third level. And when he would interact with these students, he always kind of questioned them as to their lineage. After this, you know, the third or fourth time I saw him go through this kind of q&a to see how this individual got back to Champ Tanner. Then I told Bert, over dinner I said up so he has a tanner number of three, and looks at ease and what. So he has a Tanner number of three. So there's no this individual than his major professor who has a Tanner number of two than the one before him, which is typically like George or towel or some of that level. At a Tanner number one of the naturally Champ had a Tanner number of zero. So Bert really got a kick out of that that term.
BRAD NEWBOLD 34:37
Although he worked in industry, he was well respected and he was even a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy. So what were his contributions to the field of environmental measurement?
GAYLON CAMPBELL 34:49
We might mention a few of the things that that Bert brought in the trace gas analyzer, that Campbell Scientific has built for quite a while that was a Bert project. He worked, I mean it came from George Thertell, but Bert knew about it and champion that and got it going. The Sonic anemometer, the Campbell Scientific CSAT three that we started out, I have built a little one dimensional Sonic on sabbatical years ago and Campbell Scientific started building that. But they really wanted a better thing. And so they hired Larry Jacobson, who built that CSAT three, but that was all. Bert Tanner, he was the one the force behind the co2 and water vapor analyzer if I remember what all...
ED SWIATEK 35:45
Just the co2 gas analyzer.
GAYLON CAMPBELL 35:48
Yeah. So that that was, again, some of the stuff that Bert pushed through. So some of these tools that are absolutely essential to the AmeriFlux, Veriflux and these huge programs and in China, those all came from Berts push that he put behind getting a set of tools out that could do that job properly. I mean, he was as demanding as his father was in terms of making solid measurements.
ED SWIATEK 36:22
With all of those instruments, they were really to serve as the scientific community. They were not red butter, if I use that term, the sonic anemometer for example, there are already at least two or three other vendors on the market, that the manufacturer of sonic anemometers. But Burt felt that we could build an instrument, do a better job with our design, make it more economical for the community, and integrate it much better with our data loggers. And so like you said, Gaylon, he pushed a champion for that sort of product development. And then that held true with our gas analyzer as well, there was already a company that had a product, but he thought that we could do a better job integrating the gas measurements with the sonic measurements, and then that ultimately, poured out of the products that we have for measuring co2 and water vapor fluxes.
GAYLON CAMPBELL 37:15
So even though he didn't get a PhD, he should have been granted a DSC Dr. Science degree. They do that in England, once you've produced a body of scientific work that's worthy of a PhD or give you the BSC degree, and we should do that in this country too.
ED SWIATEK 37:37
Yeah, no, I agree for what it's worth, Bruce Bugbee. And Larry Hips at Utah State University, champion to award Bert a PhD, posthumously. And they were successful about two years after he passed away.
BRAD NEWBOLD 37:53
And earlier, Ed, you talked about how Bert was really involved in helping his clients succeed. Can you add a little bit more about what he had done to influence or improve, you know, customer experience with Campbell Scientific,
ED SWIATEK 38:07
Actually, I can think of, well, there's there's several cases, but two really pop to mind. This was work that was done for a client in Korea by the name of Joon Kim. He was a student of Sashi Berman, from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, June was interested in making methane fluxes over rice paddies. And so we ended up building and selling him. The first installation was a was an Eddy covariance methane sensor. The second one was a gradient system to measure methane fluxes along with co2 and water vapor. And then a few years later, Joon Kim was interested in making co2 and water vapor measurements within a forest canopy to get at the storage term. We didn't have a system per se, but a Joon talked with Bert for a little bit actually emailed back and forth a little bit with Bert. Bert talked with our engineering staff. We got a resource from engineering. And then he grabbed me and we engineering provide us with hardware and I ended up doing the day logger programming. And then there was a trip to Korea for a week for training and installation. One more I think Gaylon had mentioned some work into into China. And this started in like January 2002, where our representative interacting with the Chinese Ecological Research Network, and they were interested in close path Eddy Covariance systems, and also profiling systems. And at that time, people were building their own. There wasn't really commercially available systems per se, there were the components, no gas analyzers, data, loggers, pumps, and this kind of thing, but typically, they put it together, like in the old days with Sterling Taylor, but in this case, the representative wanted some turnkey kind of systems. And so there was some initial negotiations and a quote that was probably done in February. We submitted that to CERN, the Chinese Ecological Research Network, we weren't really expecting them to place the order, but they did. And then we had a ship date of something like November of 2002. And we got the order at the end of the spring. And then it was just, you know, all hands on deck in terms of taking the designs that were sketched out on the back of a napkin, and then turning them into real engineering drawings, and then ultimately building systems with the hardware, then working out data logger programming and software and this kind of thing, shipping the equipment, and then going to China for three weeks to do the installation and training. A following year, there was a follow up enhancements to the systems that another three week training, but I think that was actually one of our first experience with a really large purchase of a network kind of hardware. And I heard this little comment from Paul Campbell, a couple years ago, where after that sale was made, Paul had mentioned, you know, we should do more sales like that. And currently, as far as like a business model for Campbell, scientific, that's what we're shooting for now is facilitating equipment designs or system designs for large networks.
GAYLON CAMPBELL 41:20
I think I remember when that when that order hit. And you're right, that was all hands on deck. And Paul might have said, "Oh, we should do more of that" but the engineers would not have said, that we should do more of that.
ED SWIATEK 41:35
That was incredibly stressful time for everybody involved. David Liddell was our international sales manager at the time, and he was doing all the coding and working with Bert staying in the office till 10 or 11 o'clock routinely. Then when the order came in, then it switched, where, you know, we we had our day jobs of supporting individual clients, and then usually around three o'clock, then we switched to the back of the building back of building one, and then work on the China order until 11 or 12 o'clock at night.
BRAD NEWBOLD 42:10
Exciting times.
ED SWIATEK 42:11
That just taught me some to its like, and really, um all the wives should get credit for the incredible patience that they exhibited doing that.
BRAD NEWBOLD 42:19
Definitely, they should be the ones getting overtime, right and double pay and all that!
ED SWIATEK 42:23
Right.
BRAD NEWBOLD 42:25
Okay, so final question regarding Bert Tanner. Is there anything in particular that you feel that we can learn from his work in life?
ED SWIATEK 42:34
Yeah, that the one thing that I would say, and I've kind of instilled that in my own work ethic is just real dedicated and unfettered devotion to the client and meeting their needs, listening to them, and not trying to sell them what we have, but listening to what they need, and then adjusting our product line to meet their specific needs.
GAYLON CAMPBELL 42:56
I couldn't say it any better than that perfect. Eric worked for Sterling to and that was, that was a really formative part of his training. So I'm not sure if which, you know whether Sterling's influence on him or on me that have the biggest effect on creating Campbell Scientific but, but it all goes back to Sterling.
BRAD NEWBOLD 43:22
Our time is up for today. Thank you again, so much, Ed and Gaylon for taking time to share your association with some pioneers in the field of Environmental Biophysics. And I think that our listeners will really find this episode inspiring. If you in the audience have any questions about this topic or wants to hear more, feel free to contact us and metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. Or you can connect with Campbell Scientific at campbellscience.com you can also view the full transcript from today's episode in the podcast description. Stay safe and we'll catch you next time on We Measure the World.
Richard Gill, PhD, is an ecologist and department chair in biology at Brigham Young University.
Links to learn more about Dr. Richard Gill:
Richard's biography
Richard's ResearchGate
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Marco Bittelli, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Food Science at the University of Bologna in Italy.
Links to learn more about Dr. Marco Bittelli:
Marco's curriculum vitae
Marco's website
Marco's ResearchGate
Marco's publications
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