We Measure The World

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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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 0:07

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:24

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 1:29

Thank you. Happy to be here.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:31

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 1:40

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:06

Right.

CRISTINE MORGAN 3:06

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:23

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 3:28

I wanted to run the EPA.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:28

Oh, really?

CRISTINE MORGAN 3:28

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:03

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 4:16

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:42

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 6:51

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:57

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 8:08

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:08

Right.

CRISTINE MORGAN 8:11

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:02

Right, yeah, how's your math now?

CRISTINE MORGAN 10:03

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:55

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 11:04

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:04

Wow.

CRISTINE MORGAN 11:16

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:03

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 12:07

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:25

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 16:33

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:29

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 17:39

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:16

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 21:01

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:21

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 23:32

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:55

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 27:04

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:21

That would be super cool.

CRISTINE MORGAN 30:22

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:33

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 30:37

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:48

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 32:55

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:27

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 36:40

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:03

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 39:23

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:33

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 42:46

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:20

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 44:41

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 47:34

Right.

CRISTINE MORGAN 47:35

But it was purposeful.

BRAD NEWBOLD 47:36

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 47:48

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:32

Right. Yeah.

CRISTINE MORGAN 48:34

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 48:44

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 48:48

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:00

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 49:05

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:56

Really?

CRISTINE MORGAN 49:56

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 50:08

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

CRISTINE MORGAN 50:24

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 51:55

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

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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

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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:

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

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Podcast Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:01

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

NEIL HANSEN 0:09

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:06

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

NEIL HANSEN 2:00

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:03

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

NEIL HANSEN 2:12

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:08

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

NEIL HANSEN 5:26

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:00

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

NEIL HANSEN 6:22

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:49

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

NEIL HANSEN 11:05

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:50

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

NEIL HANSEN 14:03

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:32

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

NEIL HANSEN 15:50

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:38

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

NEIL HANSEN 16:45

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:32

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

NEIL HANSEN 18:40

Other constructed wetland type area,

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:42

right? Yeah.

NEIL HANSEN 18:43

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:00

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

NEIL HANSEN 19:22

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:03

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

NEIL HANSEN 20:15

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:50

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

NEIL HANSEN 24:02

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:32

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

NEIL HANSEN 25:50

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:11

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

Speaker 2 28:17

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:05

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

NEIL HANSEN 31:12

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:06

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

NEIL HANSEN 32:39

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:47

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

NEIL HANSEN 34:18

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:29

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

NEIL HANSEN 38:43

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:46

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

NEIL HANSEN 41:53

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:57

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

NEIL HANSEN 43:07

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:04

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

NEIL HANSEN 44:17

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 46:05

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

NEIL HANSEN 47:02

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:03

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

NEIL HANSEN 49:18

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

BRAD NEWBOLD 50:05

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

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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

Links to learn more about Dr. Bryan Hopkins:

Bryan's curriculum vitae

Bryan's LinkedIn

Bryan's ResearchGate

Bryan's Academia.edu

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

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

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

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:

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Marco's ResearchGate

Marco's publications

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

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Download The Researcher's Complete Guide to Soil Moisture

Download The Researcher's Complete Guide to Water Potential

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https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/meterenvironment/

Disclaimer

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

Next Steps:

• Download The Researcher's Guide to Soil Moisture
• Download The Researcher's Guide to Water Potential
• View all METER products
• View Campbell Scientific products

Subscribe:

https://www.metergroup.com/we-measure-the-world/

Follow us:

https://twitter.com/meter_env

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/meterenvironment/

Disclaimer

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