Tree Health and Vineyards

2025-02-21 18:13 UTC gpt-4o-mini Open in ChatGPT ↗

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From the following transcript please pick out 10 key quotes that are durectly relevant to tree health, tree bilology, forest ecosystems. Copy them verbatum and take note of who said it and at what time in the podcast. Format them as simple quotes, no numbering or bullet points eg. “XXXXXXXXXX…” - Doug Cobos (16:16)

Following Transcript: Podcast transcript BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00 Hello, everybody, and Welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists,

JACLYN FIOLA 0:08 Vineyard growers tend to be cutting edge technology users, and they keep up with the scientific literature. And you know, they’ll ask me about this article they just found that was published in a scientific journal. And yeah, they’re always looking for new ways to try to increase their wine quality. Many, well, I won’t say many years ago, but for a while, we thought that the best way to increase your fruit quality was just to limit the amount of fruit. And so if you cut off most of the fruit and just left a little bit for the vine ripened, that would be the best quality.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:44 Right, right.

JACLYN FIOLA 0:45 But in recent years, we’ve, we’ve really found that that’s not the case necessarily.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:51 That’s a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmospheric continuum. Today’s guest is Jaclyn Fiola, hydropedologist and PhD candidate at Virginia Tech school of plant and Environmental Sciences. Her current research involves the influence of soil and vineyards in the US Mid Atlantic. She is broadly interested in soil management of specialty crops, soil physical properties, and soil health, and soil and horticulture pedagogy. Today, she’s here to talk to us about her vineyard research. So Jaclyn, thanks so much for being here.

JACLYN FIOLA 1:32 Thanks for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:33 First off, give us a little background into how you got into the sciences or how you got into your field here.

JACLYN FIOLA 1:39 Sure. I started out as a plant science major in as an undergraduate student at University of Maryland. And I thought I wanted to be a plant breeder. Because I liked maths, I liked science, and people told me I should, you know, go into science. And I took a soils class and sort of fell in love with it, and decided I wanted to be a soil scientist. But I also wanted to use my background in horticulture. And so I heard about this thing called terroir, which is this French concept that the place and the soil where a vineyard is where grapes are grown affects the taste of the wine. And I just thought it was really, really cool. And so I ended up double majoring in plant science and soil science, and then coming to grad school specifically for that topic. And so I’ve spent the past seven years researching how soil influences grapes, and a little bit of how soil influences wine. And so that’s how I ended up here at Virginia Tech.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:51 That’s super interesting. So with that history, I mean, that’s probably a new term for most of our listeners, terroir. Do you know the history behind that at all, I assume, coming from France, and they’ve been working with vineyards and winemaking for, you know, for hundreds, if not 1000s of years, do you know where that term came from, or just kind of the history about how that science of the soil and the environment affecting grapes and wine came about?

JACLYN FIOLA 3:15 Yeah, it’s actually a pretty old concept. It goes back to two ancient monks, I think in in like the middle ages, in that area of Europe, in Italy, in France. And they, they noticed that where they were growing grapes, affected how it tasted. And so you know, if you grew grapes, at the bottom of the hill, they tasted slightly different than if you grew them at the top of the hill, or, you know, down in some field versus somewhere else that the wine that they were making, because it used to be the monks and religious people who were making the wine back then it affected the taste of the wine. And so through the ages, it sort of developed into this term, I think the actual term terroir refers to land. And there’s not quite a direct translation into English, but it refers to soil in the land. But it also is affected, you know, by climate. So the taste of the wine, the effects of the wine are affected by climate, culture, even you know, what variety of grape, are you growing? Does it grow? Well, in your climate? Do people want to eat that? And, you know, what are they eating? So certain places have different types of foods, their diets are slightly different. And so the wine sort of evolved with the culture and the food and certain minds parallel with certain foods. And so it’s been a concept for like you said, hundreds, if not 1000s of years, and it’s, it’s fascinating.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:51 That is, that’s super cool. And maybe we will be able to touch back on that a little bit later, as we get into the discussion here. So you got into vineyard Your project was there a step by step process. So you talked about wanting to be interested in plant breeding, and then you got into soil and then into vineyards and vineyard management. What what caught your eye about vineyards and vineyard management at the beginning there.

JACLYN FIOLA 5:13 I like vineyards and working with vineyards because it’s there’s a lot of science to it. There’s farming and agriculture, but there’s also a certain amount of art or luck. And that’s especially true here on the east coast, where our climate is, I want to say unpredictable, but it’s also variable from year to year. And so it makes something like growing grapes and making good wine very challenging, right. And so we’re facing a lot of challenges here that they don’t necessarily have in famous wine growing regions, like in Napa Valley or in California somewhere. And I was drawn to that just because it, it’s a young industry here, they have a lot of problems. And I felt like with my expertise in soils, I could help them address some of those problems.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:10 Right? So I myself and not a wine connoisseur. So does this come into play, then when we hear about like a good year, or a good vintage or things like that, if we’re talking about you know, the idea and techniques that go into making good grapes or good wines comes from the environment. But humans in the past didn’t have as much technology or at least techniques to be able to mitigate for environmental factors. Is this something that modern technology might be able to help with in trying to minimize, like you said, the variability within the environment.

JACLYN FIOLA 6:44 To a certain extent, modern technology can help with that. One of our actually probably our largest concern, definitely on the East Coast, probably everywhere in the world is winter injury of grapevines. So if it gets too cold, or you know, there’s an ice storm or something that can devastate a vineyard, it can kill vines, you can lose crop. And that’s where technology has really helped. We put when machines, in vineyards, we’ve learned where to put them on the slope to sort of aid in cold air drainage, just the warmer part of the slope. And some technology has really helped with that. What technology hasn’t yet really helped with is the rain. And so on the East Coast, we actually get too much rain here, because in vineyards, there’s certain times of the year where you want rain, and there’s certain times of the years you don’t. And so in the mid atlantic here in Virginia, we talk about 2017 and 2019 as good years because we had sort of a cool, moist kind of spring, and then a dry summer. And then 2018 If you go to any vineyard, or on the East Coast, you’ll you know, if you ask for 2018 Fred, they’ll just laugh. Just because it was considered a bad year, because it was very rainy, we had our hurricane in the fall, and none of our technology so far has been able to predict hurricanes.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:28 So let’s talk about and I do want to come back to that idea of how things are different over there on the east coast of the United States compared to you know, the West Coast or even elsewhere in the world. We’ve kind of talked in a broad sense, but what are some of the more specific problems or questions that you’re trying to address with your researcher?

JACLYN FIOLA 8:47 Sure, I’m, again looking at vineyards from the soil up, which is different than a lot of people look at them. But through the soil, we’re looking at different soil management that we can do to sort of help mitigate the effects of that excess rainfall. And so we’re looking at strategies to try to make the water go away or make the water drain faster, but only during certain times of the year when you don’t want water. And like I said we’re hoping that that will affect the wine quality and so affect the fruit quality and then finally the wine quality.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:28 So it sounds like vineyard management is a pretty tricky business there that right depending on what variety that you’re growing and what is the final purpose you know, are these table grapes are these wine, grapes, other things like that. Can you talk a little bit about plant stress and especially when and when not to stress a vineyard or just kind of the reasoning behind deliberate stressing of your grapes.

JACLYN FIOLA 9:51 Yeah, plant stress is a an interesting topic. Because in vineyards, we intentionally try to stress the grapes. But again only at certain times of year. Um and so usually in the spring when the flowers and the baby fruit are developing, we don’t want to stress it. But at fruit set, which is sort of once the fruit is developed, it’s been pollinated. And it’s about to start developing as a fruit, that’s what we call fruit set. That’s when you want to start stressing it, because you want the grape vine to put most of its energy into ripening that fruit instead of just growing more grape vine. And so if the grape vine has access to a lot of water, a lot of nutrients, warm weather, it tends to just grow a whole bunch of leaves and vines, and the fruit may not ripen the way we want it to. And so if you stress it at that point, so if you limit the amount of water, maybe limit the amount of nutrients then the vine to personify it gets stressed. And it’s like, oh, I need to put all of my effort into reproduction instead of just growing leaves. And that’s, that’s how we get the best quality fruit.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:14 Let’s talk a little bit about some of the techniques than that you are have been testing out and researching to help with this issue of excess water and excess water availability to the plants. You’ve talked about their ideas of compacting soils, there’s ideas of adding ground cover to compete or water uptake. And then also some less natural means such as using polymers or stearic acid or other things like that, can you go into a little bit more detail about those techniques that you’ve been trying out?

JACLYN FIOLA 11:43 Yeah, we’ve been throwing whatever we can at these vineyards to try to make a difference. The traditional ways of getting water out of vineyards include, you know, putting in tile drains and drains in the soil to try to make it drain better. But that’s really expensive. And you can’t time it. Like I was saying we it’s just specific times of year where we really want to stress the grape vines. Cover crops have been pretty well researched on this side of the country. And they actually do a pretty good job. If you plant them right under the vines, they compete with the vines for water and can kind of help limit the growth of the vines. And so they put their energy into the into ripening the berries. But again, that’s a lot of management, you can have issues with, you know, little animals living in the cover crops and humidity issues, and then you have to mow them, or cut them somehow you don’t want to hit the vines. So it’s sort of a challenge. And so we thought, what if we can just prevent the water from getting into the soil in the first place. And that’s where we we’ve been looking into the soil stabilizers, which were developed by the transportation industry to use on dirt roads, and like the edges of highways where they’re trying to plant grass, right. So when there’s like bare soil, they spray these on them to prevent erosion, to like hold seeds down so that you know grass seeds can germinate. But also on dirt roads, they spray these so that the road is stronger, and the rain just washes off of it and doesn’t cause erosion and doesn’t make it muddy. And so we thought vineyards are usually on sloping land anyway. Just because they want that extra runoff. They they want the drainage. Okay, and so, yeah, we thought we would try these different substances in vineyards and stearic acid is a natural version of that. It’s just naturally repels water. And so we included that as one of our treatments as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:01 We’re over here on the eastern side of Washington. And as you drive around Eastern Washington up here in the northwest of the drier parts of the Northwest, you see vineyards along with orchards and other things, but, but you do see vineyards on Yeah, on slopes and hill slopes, it never crossed my mind that Oh yeah. They’re probably trying to help with drainage to help out with that. That’s super cool to understand. So can you go into a bit more detail about stearic acid specifically, that seems really interesting to have these additives? Because a lot of times in the growers or plant researchers or other things they’re interested in surfactants that will help increase soil infiltration, but this is just the opposite. Can you explain a little bit about about stearic acid and what it tries to do?

JACLYN FIOLA 14:01 Sure, so like I said stearic acid is is naturally occurring. You often get it in soils after wildfires, some of like the charcoal and and the stuff that’s left over is water repellent and one of those is this long chained. Acid stearic acid that just naturally repels water. And then the the other soil stabilizers we’re using are just co polymers. So similar, you know, long chains of change molecules that just naturally repel water. And like you said, most of the time in agriculture, we’re trying to increase infiltration. And in vineyards, there are times when we would want to do that. But the benefit of these substances, hopefully, is that we can control the timing when they’re applied. And then if there’s an issue, you know, if we’re in a drought, or if we need water to get to the vines, we can do something about it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:44 Right, right. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about the timing of application, like you said, there’s within the various seasons in the growing stages that you would need to apply it. But then also, is there a necessary removal of that as well, for the next season? Does that become an issue?

JACLYN FIOLA 15:58 We’re not sure yet! That’s a great question! And that’s one of our research questions is: How long do these last and vineyards because, you know, in vineyards, you still have tractors going up and down the roads, and you have workers walking on it. And, you know, we have a lot of rain here. So how much rain does it take to wash this away eventually, and we still don’t know the answer to that we have some results. But so far, we we think that they’re lasting at least a couple of weeks, if not a couple of months. And so the thought is to apply these right after fruit set, like I said, so once we see those little tiny green berries, and we want to start stressing the vines, we can apply it and then we think the efficacy, the water repellency sort of decreases about the time when we want it to which is when the very start to change color. So usually that’s late summer about right now, actually in August in Virginia. And so if the if the soil is still shedding water, if the materials are still working, and the vines are too stressed, you can go through and till under the vines, just go through with a hoe and, you know, make sure that water can get under, or you can turn on your irrigation and just overwhelm the system and make sure that the vines are getting some amount of water with kind

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:31 of the the wetter environments. You mentioned irrigation, out here in the arid West irrigation is a big deal right? I would assume it’s not as much back east, I would assume there’s still some but but maybe not as much with it being as humid and wet an environment. Is that a correct assumption?

JACLYN FIOLA 17:46 You’re absolutely correct, most vineyards here do not have any irrigation installed, a few do and young vines, especially in their first couple of seasons often do need some amount of irrigation. So for those, if anyone wants to start a vineyard on the East Coast, I do recommend putting an irrigation just in case for your young vines. And if there ever happens to be a really bad drought. But in general, we’re completely rain fed, which is what makes it challenging because on the west coast and in dry areas, sorry, in dry areas, where they’re they’re growing grapes. If you want to stress the vines and give them less water, you can just turn off your irrigation and then turn it back on when you want them to have water versus here where we’re totally dependent on rain. We can’t just turn it off.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:39 Right, right. Yeah, there are pros and cons to both right. So in dealing with trying to figure out the amounts of you know, infiltration and water availability, and those kinds of things, what are what are some of the measurements that you’re looking at, to really tell you and where you can gauge you know, higher low infiltration and water content, water availability, that kind of thing?

JACLYN FIOLA 19:06 Well, the first thing we do is characterize the soil. And so soils will have different capacities to hold the water and different different rates at which the rain will go into them. And so in our study, we we’ve looked at soils with different textures, we looked at sandy soils, which rain will go into them very quickly, but it tends to drain out pretty quickly as well. And so it doesn’t hold on to that water that the vines can then access later. Versus a lot of our sites in the mid atlantic tend to be pretty clay-ey. And so water might not infiltrate as quickly into the soil, but once it does, it tends to stick around for a while. And so that’s one of our big questions. So we’ve installed some of METER. Water volumetric water content sensors so, so the amount of water in the soil, and we’ve monitored that over time to see what the water content of the soil is doing. And then the big thing we measure is infiltration rate. And so we’ve used a couple of different methods for that, including those fun little Mini Disk Infiltrometers, that METER makes, I love them, so they’re adorable. And we’ve done a bunch of measurements of that. And so just on the soil surface will measure how long it takes for water to move through the surface of the soil into the subsurface.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:37 What are some of the challenges in trying to take these measurements? Is there an issue with the number of measurements or where you’re taking them from? Do you have things that are installed all throughout the season? Are you doing spot checking? You know, how does that that working out for you?

JACLYN FIOLA 20:51 field research is always challenging. Every time I go out in the field, I feel like there’s some challenge that I wasn’t expecting. We’ve had our our wires cut a couple times by mowers in the vineyard activity. So that’s been challenging to try to keep them just in the field. The other thing I mentioned that vineyards tend to be on sloping lands, measuring infiltration on a slope is much more difficult than measuring it on flat. And so we’ve sort of had to set up these apparatus ring stands and all this fancy equipment to try to get infiltration measures on this, these little slopes. But then we also have, you know, we have to watch the weather and the spray, schedule the vineyards and try to make sure we’re not entering the vineyard when it’s just been sprayed. And we want the soil to be a little bit moist when we do the measurements and not too dry. But so trying to get the proper timing to do the measurements is challenging. And then doing enough of them and within a certain amount of period or a certain timeframe, just because you don’t want to measure one soil in the morning and one soil in the afternoon. Because even that temperature difference might affect measurements we’re getting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:15 So what are some of the results that you’re seeing from your various projects here?

JACLYN FIOLA 22:21 We’ve actually had really good results, one of the soil stabilizers has been excellent at reducing infiltration. And so we’ve we figured out just how to use it in a hand sprayer. So we have a backpack sprayer where you mix water and this material, and then we just sprayed it under the vines and sort of saturated the soil with it and then it it cures. That’s I guess, their term for what these do. And it actually turns purple, which is fun. And then once it’s cured it, it’s completely clear. And the same with the stearic acid. So that actually comes in like a powder or flaky form. And then we dissolve it with water and some soap, and then just spray it under the vines. And the stearic acid just we’ve had some trouble with the rate, we’re not quite sure how much to apply. So we’re still working on that. But some of the commercial stabilizers have done really well at preventing infiltration. And we’ve seen that in the the soils data, the soil water content data as well. The challenge we had last year was, as soon as we applied our treatments, we immediately went into a drought. And so we didn’t, we harvested fruit and we checked the quality and looked at fruit chemistry to see if we had made a difference by using these things. And there was there were no differences. And we’re pretty sure it’s because there was no rain, right or about two or three weeks after we applied them. And so we’re repeating the experiment this year. And again, the stabilizers are doing what they’re supposed to at the proper time. They’re preventing infiltration of rainwater and so we’re hoping we’ll see some differences in the fruit chemistry this year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:17 Cool. Well, good luck with that!

JACLYN FIOLA 24:19 Thank you!

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:21 It’s always tough like, like you said, you are at the mercy of the environment and mercy of that, that years of precipitation and and other things.

JACLYN FIOLA 24:31 Yeah, with grapes. We only get one chance per year.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:34 Right. Yeah yep!

JACLYN FIOLA 24:36 It’s a challenge.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:37 That’s probably extending your research out, potentially.

JACLYN FIOLA 24:40 Yeah, but it’s fun. You know, I get to work with vineyards and vineyards tend to be great cooperators they’re usually really curious and what we’re doing

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:49 and maybe this is something you can speak to a little bit as well but I mean usually these vineyards are a pretty large cash crop for a lot of these vineyard managers and and other larger or companies and other things like that. So I would assume that they would be wanting to invest a bit more into, you know, r&d when it comes to vineyard management and the various new technologies that might be coming out to help them increase their crop yield, or how good that vintage might be.

JACLYN FIOLA 25:16 Yeah, absolutely. vineyard growers tend to be cutting edge technology users, and they keep up with the scientific literature. And you know, they’ll ask me about this article they just found that was published in a scientific journal. And yeah, they’re always looking for new ways to try to increase their wine quality. Many, well, I won’t say many years ago, but for a while, we thought that the best way to increase your fruit quality was just to limit the amount of fruit. And so if you cut off most of the fruit and just left a little bit, for the vine to ripen, that would be the best quality. Right? Right. But in recent years, we’ve, we’ve really found that that’s not the case, necessarily, that you know, getting a good balance between the amount of fruit and the amount of, of green stuff that leaves in the vines is really what gets the quality to be higher. And so looking at the soil, and the varieties and matching the variety to the site, and the soil types are really important. And growers are definitely interested in having those conversations and, you know, testing things, a lot of growers will have their own little research plot where they’re testing new varieties, right, and new management techniques. And so, being in viticulture, right now is is really fun, especially here on the East Coast.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:38 That’s cool. That’s super fascinating. So what are some of the, I guess practical things that you might be able to suggest to vineyard managers about how they can improve the quality of their products.

JACLYN FIOLA 26:53 We’re still working on the soil stabilizers, but it looks like they’re, they’re definitely working. My my usual advice to, to growers is to keep the soil covered. And so growing cover crops or grass between rows, something that is going to compete for water, hopefully at the proper times of the year, and prevent erosion of the soil. And you can also get, like some negative effects of erosion, even on drainage, you can get like little reels and you know, topography of the soil where it holds water. So you really want to, to be kind. The other big thing that we’ve been trying to work on is making the vineyards more uniform. And so one small vineyard we usually call a block. So block has like all the same variety of it’s managed the same way and in that one block of vineyard. And so within one vineyard block, you can still have variation. And if you’re managing it the same way, you might have, you know, different ripening different amounts of growth in vines on the north side versus the south side. And so you can change your soil management within that one block of vineyard to try to make it more uniform. And so that helps with harvest, it helps with management, it’s slightly less labor, if you can get really good at it. And so managing your soil properly and strategically, can can really help improve your wine quality and your bottom line.

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:41 We’ve got a PhD candidate who’s been working with vineyards for a couple of for a few years coming up against a tradition of 1000s of years; you mentioned that you felt that growers in the grape world seem to be on the cutting edge of technology. Have you come up against any difficulties in introducing new technologies or anything that where your research and your findings are kind of butting heads with tradition.

JACLYN FIOLA 29:07 You know, I haven’t really experienced that too much, at least on the east coast here. And that’s one of the benefits of being in a young industry is that we don’t have sort of the rules that some other industries may have. We have a few varieties that are very popular, but you know, we don’t have to grow certain types of grapes in this region. And in my experience, the growers have been pretty receptive. Traditionally, in you know, the East Coast and the West Coast of the US. You would just have bare soil under the vineyards, the whole vineyard would be bare except for the grape vines. But we’ve really come a long way. And you know, putting a cover crop putting grass in the aisle rows, you know, to kind of improve soil health and and prevent soil erosion, right. And that’s really been adopted in the the East Coast. And it’s starting, at least most of the time in the West Coast, we’re not just seeing completely bare landscapes with with grape vines planted in them. And so yes, there’s a huge tradition of, of wine growing. And Virginia specifically, was the first place in the US where we started growing vineyards. Because Thomas Jefferson was trying to grow grapes, he failed. But he tried and so we have a long history in Virginia of trying to make wine. And in general, everyone seems to be very receptive to new ideas and trying out new things.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:47 That’s good to hear. I was gonna ask also, like, Do you have any special or specific techniques that you’re using to help educate growers in the field?

JACLYN FIOLA 30:54 While we do a lot of field days here in Virginia, Virginia Cooperative Extension, which is joint between Virginia Tech and Virginia State University has a bunch of extension specialists and extension agents who can help out in vineyards. And so I’ve talked to a bunch of them about my research and findings. And we’ll have demonstrations and commercial vineyards. The Viticulture industry tends to be very cooperative. Everyone, you know, shares ideas. They’re not competing the way some industries are. And so growers will have meetings, sometimes informal industry meetings, and then there’s the more formal conferences, where we’ll share ideas. I also have a website. It’s called soilsom.com like soils, Somalia.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:45 Okay, all right,

JACLYN FIOLA 31:46 Where I mostly share pictures of vineyard soils, because that’s. And then social media is a big thing that I keep in touch with the growers I’m working with as well as different vineyard and soil experts around the around the world.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:04 Do you see any applications for what you were finding and your research in Viticulture, having any application to the world of agriculture at large?

JACLYN FIOLA 32:16 Yes, I think so. vineyard research is definitely unique in that we’re trying to limit water at certain times of the year. But certain other specialty crops are like that as well, Hops have very interesting soil requirements so does cannabis and hemp, which are relatively new crops over here. But even in orchards with apples and pears and peaches, I think it can be useful. And just soil management in general has been changing as we’re trying to, you know, sequester carbon and keep our soil health and soil quality really up. And so I think soil management for good water management and nutrient management is is always pretty important.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:06 Any fun or interesting stories from the field or elsewhere? Do you have any stories of the unexpected, there always seems to be, especially with field research and other things where you got one day and like nothing works, it turns out to be like a Friday the 13th type of situation where just everything goes wrong, or anything funny or exciting?

JACLYN FIOLA 33:25 So one time we were working in a vineyard, and we were trying to measure bulk density of the soil. So like how compact the soil was. And usually you do that with soil cores. And so there’s a little core that you pound into the soil and then you dig it out. But these vineyard soils are so rocky that we couldn’t get it to work. And so it was me and my undergraduate helper, we were, you know, jumping on this hammer, trying to get some soil out of the ground, and we just couldn’t so we ended up using like a butter knife to try to get the rocks out of the soil and measure like the volume of this hole that we had dug and then ended up spilling water all over ourselves. But it was fine because it was a hot day so it was nice. But doing anything in vineyards is remarkably challenging. And we often have the vineyard owners come out and end up helping us try to get the soil samples out of the ground, just because it’s so difficult. Doing doing soils research is always challenging, but soils and vineyards are very, very challenging.

BRAD NEWBOLD 34:45 What’s your research are you doing blocks that are privately owned are these research vineyards from the university.

JACLYN FIOLA 34:53 Most of my research has been in commercial vineyards I’ve just reached out to people in the industry and said, Hey, can I come do some research at your vineyard? And so far everyone has said, Yes, we did do some testing of the soil stabilizers and infiltration in the lab and just in a field near the university on university land, but all the vineyard work I’ve done has been in commercial vineyards.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:22 That’s good to hear. It seems that at least with vineyard management, and viticulture, that there is a good collaboration between researchers and growers themselves, like we mentioned earlier, sometimes depending on the crop or depending on the region or location, you might buttheads between current researchers and growers who have that tradition and things that have worked for them, you know, for dozens, if not decades, or hundreds of years, depending on on the place and the the crop. What do you see in the future for viticulture research and vineyard management?

JACLYN FIOLA 35:52 I think the future is very bright for vineyard research. And we’ve just sort of scratched the surface on soil management, because not many people are doing that kind of research. And so I think there’s a ton more research to do on soil management, but also cover crops and nutrient management. One thing that’s come up recently is sulfur management and vineyards. There’s a lot of sulfur that we apply in pesticides and fungicides, right, right. But we’re also not getting as much sulfur deposition from the air as we used to. And so that’s something that’s come up because we don’t have good guidelines for growers to use for applying sulfur fertilizer and whether or not it’s needed, right. Some of my other research for my PhD has been on potassium, and how much potassium the vines need and how to measure it in the soil and how to measure it in the vines. And so there’s a lot of really basic research as well as really applied research on, you know, how we can improve our wine quality and try to minimize the effects of those bad years. And so we can figure out how to, you know, reduce the rain, how to, you know, recover from a hurricane or prevent a hurricane. All of that would be really, really useful. And I think there’s a lot of room for more research in the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:24 Great. Anything else that you’d like to add or share with the audience when it comes to your research or viticulture at large?

JACLYN FIOLA 37:32 Well, I’m very grateful to all of my cooperating vineyards, and to my group here at Virginia Tech, with my advisor, Dr. Stewart, and very grateful to METER for providing a bunch of the equipment I’ve been using for the past couple years. I was the winner of one of the fellowships that provided me some of this equipment that I’ve used over and over and it’s been invaluable to my research. So thank you to METER thank you to the vineyards and everyone who’s helped with my research.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:02 Right. Well, thank you, Jaclyn. Our time is up it looks like, um yeah just thanks again Jaclyn, for taking time to share your research with us. It’s been super fascinating. And for our audience. If you have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That’s all for now. Stay safe, and we’ll catch you next time on We Measure the World

ChatGPT

Here are 10 quotes directly relevant to tree health, tree biology, and forest ecosystems from the transcript:

“Vineyards tend to be cutting edge technology users, and they keep up with the scientific literature.” - Jaclyn Fiola (25:16)

“Growing cover crops or grass between rows, something that is going to compete for water, hopefully at the proper times of the year, and prevent erosion of the soil.” - Jaclyn Fiola (26:53)

“Cover crops have been pretty well researched on this side of the country. And they actually do a pretty good job. If you plant them right under the vines, they compete with the vines for water and can kind of help limit the growth of the vines.” - Jaclyn Fiola (11:43)

“Most of the time in agriculture, we’re trying to increase infiltration. And in vineyards, there are times when we would want to do that. But the benefit of these substances, hopefully, is that we can control the timing when they’re applied.” - Jaclyn Fiola (14:01)

“Soils will have different capacities to hold the water and different rates at which the rain will go into them.” - Jaclyn Fiola (19:06)

“Water might not infiltrate as quickly into the soil, but once it does, it tends to stick around for a while.” - Jaclyn Fiola (19:10)

“We’ve looked at sandy soils, which rain will go into them very quickly, but it tends to drain out pretty quickly as well. Versus a lot of our sites in the mid Atlantic tend to be pretty clay-ey.” - Jaclyn Fiola (19:07)

“We’ve been throwing whatever we can at these vineyards to try to make a difference. The traditional ways of getting water out of vineyards include, you know, putting in tile drains and drains in the soil to try to make it drain better.” - Jaclyn Fiola (11:43)

“Many, well, I won’t say many years ago, but for a while, we thought that the best way to increase your fruit quality was just to limit the amount of fruit.” - Jaclyn Fiola (25:16)

“Plant stress is an interesting topic. Because in vineyards, we intentionally try to stress the grapes. But again only at certain times of year.” - Jaclyn Fiola (9:51)

You

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00 Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 0:08 Yeah, in the moments leading up to it, you know, walking out of the field site, there was so much wind blowing above that threshold of motion. You’re just watching sheets of the beach, deflate, right? Deflation is this process where we have the winnowing away of finer material. And that removal of mass causes the surface to as the name implies deflate, right lower down. But I’ve never seen it happen this rapidly in front of my very eyes. I mean, it is happening faster than I could possibly measure it with the modern tools that we have.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:35 That’s a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today’s guest is Pete Tereszkiewicz PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina. His current research focuses on coastal dunes and understanding how seasonal vegetation such as dune grasses, and sediment interactions affect dune growth and post Storm Recovery. So Pete, thanks so much for being here.

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 1:08 Yeah, thanks for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:10 Alright. So we’d like to start off with a little bit of background, so can you just let us know about your background, how you got into this field of doing research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 1:20 Yeah, I think a lot of people in the environmental sciences, you know, it’s sort of dumb luck that you have that one class that sort of clicks, you know, in undergrad and for me, it was coastal geomorphology. And I was fortunate to I took it at a time where I was also kind of getting into surfing. So the ability to do research, but also enjoy being in the same environment for recreation was very much there. And so, you know, I was hook line and sinker from semester one, and that led on to a undergraduate thesis that then pushed me into a master’s program, and then finally into the Ph. D program. Um, so it’s very organic growth. You know, I didn’t finish high school and was like I’m gonna go into doing research, you know, and get a PhD. And that that wasn’t the way it worked out. For me, it’s pretty much you know, by happenstance and being the right people at the right time. And the dune side of things is pretty much new, my undergrad and Master’s was more focused on engineered structures and how those modify shoreline change. And then I kind of wanted to make a small pivot and turn around the other direction. Look at the dunes for my PhD research, just to kind of balance out and I’m really glad I did.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:19 Awesome. Yeah, I know, we’ve had quite a few guests who have talked about, like you said, just that, you know, happenstance, like they started in one side and kind of move to the other. Yeah, like you said, there’s a class or something like that. I don’t know if we’ve had any who have said, surfing has been their catalyst for moving into, into their research field. So that’s definitely a first tier. So just to start us off, and just for the late people in the audience, can you give us just kind of a quick intro into why why dunes are so important for us and for beach ecology environment?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 2:51 Yeah, so if we think about the ecological services that the dune itself can provide, it’s very much, or it functions very similar to like a levee would, right. So they’re really good at being the first line of defense during storm events, and tend to take a lot of that initial surge and beating that storms can provide. And so if you look at that protective service that is available, you know, if you have a strong established Ford in front of your residence, you’re probably going to receive much or far lesser impacts from that storm than if you had say, no Dune, or a small dune or dunes are discontinuous, you know, and not pieced together very well. So the biggest benefit is definitely the protective surface it provides during storm events, and not even just storms, you know, it could just be a really high tide or just really big wave event, right, any of those the dunes gonna be able to stand in the way and help out with that erosion.

BRAD NEWBOLD 3:41 That was my next question here is can you tell us a little bit about wind and water and other forces that affect beach dune creation, deformation, erosion, all that kind of stuff?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 3:51 So when we’re thinking about dunes and how they’re formed on there’s two real main forces at work, right, we have the the sheer velocity of the wind. So how fast the wind is blowing, how long the wind is blowing for at that speed. Then on the other hand, we have the resisting force of the sediment, you know, the sand will move whenever that resisting force is exceeded by the wind, when it’s actually able to physically pick up the particles and move them. When that happens is very site specific, you know, you’re dealing with different mineralogy’s, which is differences in density, grain shape comes into play, of course, size. And so all those sites specifics or nuances really make beaches behave individually when we think about resiliency and how they’re going to behave and that dune building process. You know, I love when sand starts moving on a beach, you know, so I can talk about this for hours.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:42 Well, that’s, that’s fine. We got we got plenty of time and we’ll we’ll be covering a lot of this. So with that background, can you just introduce us into some of the projects you’re working on or your main project that you’re working on for a PhD research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 4:53 Yeah, so as you mentioned in the intro, you know, my work is dealing with understanding the role that vegetation density and seasonal changes in that, right as they move from winter into the spring and summer months, what that means for volumetric change within the dune. And when initially trying to tackle this question, you know, the first thing you do is you hit the books, you check out the literature, you see what’s been done, or what is being done in the field. And a lot of those existing methods, you know, being quadratic analysis, which we kind of borrowed from biology and ecology, you could do frontal area and optical porosity and which are photographing the vegetation and you know, trying to pull out, you know, how much area the wind is experiencing, or you could use most recently drone photogrammetry, right, and pulling out by flying drones, vegetation coverage from that perspective. But all of those existing methodologies are contingent on you going to the beach, which is fine. It’s a great method, it works. You know, it’s one way of answering the problem. But what I was really curious about is, what can we put out there in situ to monitor for these longer periods of time, you know, to be at one point over the vegetation in the dune and monitor that growth and that emergence during the spring and summer months? What does that look like? And then how does that maybe tie into the volumetric change signal that we’re seeing? And so yeah, that’s why I chose the METER NDVI-SRS sensors. And yeah, it’s been incredibly interesting to work with them out in that environment. There’s something else that question I didn’t answer.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:22 Well, I have. No, I mean, I’m, I’m interested because you’re talking about volumetric change. And my first thought was, Is this something where it’s actually measuring that volumetric change? Or are there proxies for estimating that change?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 6:37 Yeah, so the drone flights are definitely the main methodology that I’m using to calculate volumetric change. But you know, also, in the field of view of the sensors, I’ve installed erosion pins, which are just like tiny little sticks, you know, and you go out there, they’re very rudimentary, you measure them right in time one, and then the next visit, you measure them again, and you have some sort of indicator of how much change occurred got on. So that’s just in the field of view to have a sort of check resource. There were some issues with those just really noisy signals. And I think a lot of this just comes down to, you know, the flow and the eddies that are forming around the individual reads of the vegetation. And there’s something I didn’t I didn’t foresee being a problem, but it doesn’t make enough sense to where, you know, I can say, hang my hat on and say, Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on in the dune, and I think it’s just this microscale process he’s coming through,

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:27 How do you deal with messy data in your specific research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 7:32 I think the way I’ve been trained by my my advisor, and I think it goes for a lot of scientists out there is, you know, we, we don’t really smooth the data too much. It’s just not, you know, what you get back from the natural environment like that, that is what you have. And, you know, if you’re dealing with something where you have all this wave data, and you want to pull out tides, and you downsample that’s one thing, but, you know, looking at a noisy environmental signal, you know, I think what we tend to fall back on is just how many standard deviations is it off by or what is the variance? And then does the variance of that particular signal outweigh? You know, sort of the resolution of the change that we might see? And if that’s the case, then it’s gotta go. Right. But you know, still learning, right? Every data sets unique and different, and poses different challenges.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:16 As you’re out there. How long is your field season when you’re doing this research when you’re taking these measurements or going out to the dunes themselves?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 8:24 Yeah, so I installed all my equipment out there, January 10, this past year, and they were out there up until hurricane Ian, but for the dissertation work on just because of the compressed timeline, I only present up until about August, that particular chapter, but you know, the full blown publication will have work all the way up until hurricane Ian happened and those instrument were pulled.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:47 Right, right. And that’s definitely something interesting. I definitely want to touch on hurricane Ian, for those who are listening. We’re recording this in October of 2022. And hurricane Ian, which peaked at a category four hurricane was, yeah, pretty devastating. And it passed right by where Pete was doing his research. So we’ll get into that here in a little bit. I did want to come back, you’d mentioned using NDVI and PRI sensors. Can you just do a quick explainer about how those kinds of sensors work and what you do with them within your research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 9:20 Yeah, sure. So both the NDVI and PRI-SRS sensors are a combination of your hemispherical or upward facing sensor that gets the changes within the natural environment. If it’s cloudy one day and sunny the next right, you want to count for that, then you have a field stop sensor which is looking down on top your vegetation. So NDVI has been used widely in the remote sensing community, I would say I think since the 70s, for getting vegetation density, mid density changes, and can also be used for like Leaf Area Index and other indices like that. And then PRI has been recently shown to be a really good indicator of vegetation stress. And so when thinking about using these are my two main questions that you touched on the intro duction is how do seasonal changes in vegetation density, you know, affect volumetric change, that’s the NDVI sensor, then in turn being that these dunes are existing on this, really, I mean, just crazy interface between land and sea that’s exposed to, you know, frequent storm events, high tides, drought, other sorts of, you know, disturbances: you know, they get hit with a lot of stress. And I really was curious to see if a stressing phenomena occurred, what would that PRI signal look like? Right? Because the benefit of having the sensors out there is that I’m getting an hourly record of this change.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:36 Right? Is that something where you where you need that kind of granularity? So you’re talking about hour per hour type of recordings? Would it be better to have something even quicker than that? Or what are the issues with that kind of granularity?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 10:47 Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to the scale I chose for my field study, and a lot of, you know, recorded hourly, because it’s easier to take in more data and then downsample versus, you know, obviously go the other way. And so by going hourly, what I’m able to do is I’m able to take a number of readings around noon, and then average those out. And that’s my one value for the day, a number of our datasets, at least the ones tied to vegetation growth, come down to a daily recording a daily value. And so because of that, yeah, only a day is what came out of it and the data. But yeah, that granularity was just decided on based on other instruments at play and trying to compare, you know, apples to apples, but in terms of if smaller resolution is needed, I wouldn’t think so. But I’m also not a ecologist or biologist, you know, I’m like, I’m borrowing some really cool toys, they have to try to get my question that within coastal geomorphology, right, I can’t fully answer that question.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:43 Right. So how have the results looked so far with this project?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 11:49 Yeah, the coolest thing that’s come out of it as an inflection point, right, actually being able to see that you know, and I’m sure your listeners that are either in the agricultural field or you know, in biology fields that use these sensors already. Yeah, I get an inflection point every spring like we know this exists, but Right, but as I mentioned earlier, right, we, in the coastal and Aeolian world, we didn’t have this sort of resolution in situ, looking at a plant to see that inflection point. So if my field visits were, before the inflection point, and then after, I just averaged that out, right? Why that the timing of that flexion point matters. And when I say inflection point here, I guess I should describe as I’ve been looking at the data a lot, please. But it’s around like March 22. There’s this explosion of growth almost going from, you know, straight line to logarithmically changing daily. And so why that really matters is the timing of that inflection point, when the plants start biting out or blooming out as we move into this warmer months. How does that relate to when the winds are blowing at a speed that they can move sediment? Right, and the occurrence of those two variables? Are they in tandem? Or are they not? Because I think, and I can’t fully answer his question yet, but I think that’s what really gets at why systems or some systems are resilient and recover much faster than others. You know, having worked on Pensacola Beach, as well as one South Carolina’s coastline, there’s a huge difference in how these systems recover, you know, Pensacola might take 10 years to recover to a certain state that it won’t take South Carolina a year, year and a half to and why is that? And that’s kind of a little bit more background into why I sort of chose this question for my dissertation work.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:32 With all this going on, what are some of the other special challenges that you’re facing and doing this kind of research?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 13:39 Yeah, I guess I’ll start back at the beginning. I was fortunate to be a Grant A. Harris fellow and 2020 which was awesome you know, that announcement came in right before the first major lockdown came and the big challenge here I was you know, scrambling to get the shipping address changed to my house you nervous about that equipment actually getting to me right because the supply chain was in upheaval. And so that definitely pose a bit of an issue. And then once I had that equipment delivered, you know where to test it out, like everyone else was growing potato plants in my backyard. So that’s what I tried the sensors out on you know, and learn really fast that if your canopy is producing all sorts of shadows in your field of view, the sensors really don’t like that. But you know, obviously that didn’t really matter for the dissertation work because the beach there is no tree canopy over the top of the sensor. So right, it wasn’t too much of an issue. But uh, yes, that was definitely one of the challenges. The next one is definitely choosing the location of the sensors. And I think a lot of field scientists out there can relate to this where you build these experiments for months and two years potentially. And then it’s you know, it’s it’s game time, right? You got everything ready to go, you hit the beach, you’re deploying things you go and smooth right? But before you can actually start that process of installation, you need to look at the landscape again and verify that we’re going to put them makes the most sense To answer your questions, for me unfortunately, as I mentioned, this is a system that’s typically disturbed by nor’easters, you know, high tides and storms. And so naturally when I went out there, like maybe a few days before I got hit with a nor’easter, and it just really decimated the site, because it wasn’t just any nor’easter it was, it was one that was a real jerk, and he sat offshore, and just pumped waves during multiple title cycles, right. So you have localized, you know, sea level rise from the high tide, right, and then you have waves coming in on top of that. And then next tidal cycle, same thing, next one. So it really did number and scarpt my dunes, which is where you’re removing volume from the front or the toe of the dune. It can result in what looks like a cliff. And so he has a lot of scarping across the site and removed a lot of sediment deposited what’s known as RAC, which is like the vegetative remnants of former dune grasses or more species, you know, and it gets sort of balled up and placed on top of the surface. And so that change the initial game plan strategy, right, that had built up over multiple years for this deployment. And so when thinking about sensors that are trying to measure, you know, vegetation growth and health, you know, I didn’t know if I was putting my sensors on top of vegetation that was so stressed, it wasn’t going to come back in the spring, or, you know, if it was a viable candidate. And so I kind of just rolled the dice on it made the best educated guess I could, you know, got some right got others, not as ideal. But you know, the way I look at is this was a pilot study, in a lot of ways of, you know, the sensors that have been traditionally used in agriculture haven’t fully been vetted in a sandy environment, you know, with grasses that aren’t necessarily planted a certain way, right. And so there’s a lot of curveballs that are going to be thrown at it. And that’s what led to a lot of bench testing before even deployed these things. There’s a whole multiple months of just tripping the system down to its core variables of grain size or moisture content, and what different elevations of the sensor overbear sand looks like, and is that signal trustable, or can I actually use this data, just looking at the clean no growth of vegetation kind of in the mix of that so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:04 Yeah, with all of that going on, I do want to come back to your COVID lab, you’d mentioned dealing with with COVID restrictions, and, you know, traveling and social distancing, and all those kinds of things, and trying to do things in your backyard. But you also created some indoor test beds as well. Can you tell us a little bit about trying to imitate dune conditions indoors?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 17:25 Yeah. So for those bench tests, I ended up building a basically a sandbox, right? So like, really brought me back to childhood, obviously, I’m like playing his massive sandbox. But but that was mainly done in order to, like I said, stripped down the natural environment, like what about the beach is different from an agricultural field, you know? And number one, that thing that stood out was grain size, right? And then not just one type of grain size, but how does it sensor respond across multiple grain sizes from the very fine that builds up the dunes to very coarse and you know, chunky gravel? Right? How is how’s that signal coming back? Is it affected by this or not, and then with the Sandbox is also able to, you know, do different tests with moisture content. And so for that, I had my sandbox did the dry run, took a reading I think I used the I use the ZL2 for that, which is like little handheld Bluetooth data logger that you guys have, that way I can get quick, rapid readings. Because if you think about you adding moisture, you really can’t wait 20 minutes, because the sun is evaporating that off, right. So see, I added that will take a reading and then with a little pump like pesticide sprayer, add more moisture on top of it. And then the whole time taking gravimetric moisture scrape samples, which is essentially, just to have some, you know, bonafide metric of this is how much moisture was within that sandbox at that period of time. And that process took a number of iterations just because, you know, I thought I saturated the surface. And then when I got all the gravimetric moisture samples back, it ended up only being like, maybe like 5%, back at it, you know, so he really tried to get the pump sprayer go. And you know, it was really fun, fun period of time, you know, just really trying to throw the book at the sensors and just see at what point the reading has more noise than I feel, you know, trusted that can actually go in the field and perform. But yeah, everything came back from that less than 3% of the operational index range, which is I mean, pretty, pretty incredible. And the one that was like the highest was the most unrealistic in which you’re changing the sensor out and each data logger port, you know, and that wouldn’t happen, but maybe once while we just want to see in case for some reason there was a massive failure because of doing scarping and how to replace all the sensors, what error could that possibly introduce? And so really you’re looking at the on the order of less than 2% of you know, the whole index which is I mean I was surprised I just knew the different grain sizes we’re going to you know throw a wrench in the whole plan but now you know I mentioned indoor I did try to use them indoor but that did not work out too. Well was very noisy so I had to kind of move everything outside which, which was probably for the better, you know, got to hang out with the sensors and get some good vitamin D. And it’s a good excuse to be outside. Of course, it Jhula looks whenever we’re back on campus testing some stuff out, you know, and everyone’s walking, you know, on campus to and from class, and is this guy with the sandbox? You know, kind of reading a book? Well, it’s just looking at their sand, you know, these downward facing sensors, it just didn’t make any sense. No one asked questions, but you know, they’re probably thinking like, that is the weirdest thing.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:28 So I mean, that seems like just an immensely time intensive process, manually spraying things, checking things over and over, you said there multiple iterations, like how long does this process take overall?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 20:39 Man, just the experiments, I would say probably about three and a half to four months, especially the the moisture content, I would say took the longest just because, as I mentioned, that you don’t really know until you get the oven results back, right. So if you’re too low, or you know, maybe you missed this range in the middle, right. So in order to make a complete data set, it just took a lot of time, a lot of lab work, as well as field work in order to get that figured out. And that doesn’t include the time to build the sensor mounts, you know, different set of time involved, you know, but but like I tell people, it’s like, this is the science to get to the science. Yeah. Right. We’re only as good as the measurements we have. And if we don’t know what those measurements are, then, you know, the confidence isn’t quite where it could be, you know, if we just do all this background testing before,

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:39 yeah. Could you just Yeah, run us through? Like, what types of discoveries or trends you’d been seeing with with that data? Specifically? You talked about grain size and other things. But yeah, can you just give us a brief recap of of what you you found in doing those experiments?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 21:42 Yeah, the synopsis of it all is that it was a really flat line, which is good, right? It’s a very, the sensors are incredibly stable, depending on if you are changing grain size, or moisture content, or the instrument height over bare sand. So yeah, it was a really boring result. But that’s okay. I’m okay with that with, you know, whenever you’re dealing with validation studies like that, right? Obviously, at that point in time, in my academic career, I was ramping up for comprehensive exams, and like, I had this fuel project ready to go and everything was coming together. And so initially, you know, you don’t you don’t think about the benefits of it, you’re like, this is very frustrating and inconvenient. You know, why now? Right. But but it really gave me a lot of time to slow things down. Think through the science. And I think it’s what led to like really strong experiments. Otherwise, I would have been compressed for time when I’ve done half these experiments, and then I would have always wondered, right, so me, I think the benefit there was knowing more time for experiments, but also more time to just read in general, I think that’s a big, a big part of you know, that that extra time that we kind of got,

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:47 I wanted to come back to talking about hurricane Ian, I wanted to just kind of get a ground level view about how you deal with in your research in your field of study. I mean, hurricanes are one of the central impacting forces in coastal geomorphology. And how do you work around or work with hurricanes, tropical storms, or other major weather events like that?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 23:09 Sure. Yeah. I feel like in our field, it certainly is a factor. I wouldn’t say we can ever plan on them. But we better make sure we have a contingency plan. If they come on, I think it’s the best way to put it. Yeah, no. So for, for planning purposes. I know like whenever I first installed in December, I’m looking at the landscape I’m looking at where I’m at which I’m operating within a what’s known as a wash over plane. So this is where it’s a flat, sandy area where years ago, a storm came and blew through the dune system kind of spread this this sand apron, if you will, across the landscape. So there’s very little resistance there. And that’s why you know, high tides with flooded or strong nor’easter with flooded going into this project, I kind of knew I was like, if there is a storm, there’s a good chance it’s going to, you know, destroy the dune system that’s here, or the one that’s trying to recover and bounce back. And so, December through to June, I had a lot of time to think about, okay, what is my, you know, threshold for pulling instruments versus not? And what does that look like? You know, how many people do I need? How much heads up? Can I guess, be expecting, I gotta have a couple of days to make this decision? Or is it going to be a six hour decision I have to make then how does that change sort of like my plan of attack? And so yeah, I think a lot of it going in, it’s just that contingency plan of what needs to happen. But the frustrating thing with these storms is even when it looks like there’s a potential they might hit, that track shifts so much, and you’re only as good as the information you’re given. And you know, obviously, like NOAA and National Weather Service does a phenomenal job and they give us the best possible prediction they can provide. But there’s just so many variables at play, then the track can shift dramatically. And that’s what happened with the second landfall of VN. Yeah, one of my questions was like, Well, how do these students respond to vegetation stress, right. And so when I made the call to go out on the Thursday before the storm to pull down my met station because I had other instruments out there that were not mine, you know, and I’m trying to graduate. So if I destroyed my committee members net radiometer, it’s probably not going to over very well. So I wasn’t making an emergency visit for that. But you know that with the vegetation sensors, I really had to think about leaving or not, right, and, you know, I think a lot of field scientists do this mental calculus of is the data I’m going to get, or the potential potentially get worth more than the risk of losing the equipment. And so that really drives your decision to leave or pull it out. At the time of the storm was projected to hit South of Charleston, which knowing this coastline, it means that, you know, all we get is higher waves, some more wind, and you know, we still get the surge, but not nearly as bad as they would experience it in Charleston area. And so looking at being out there, the day before landfall was made, it was really impressive how much energy was already in that system. I mean, the winds are whipping already. And it was kind of neat, there’s like a cold front, I believe, of kind of pressing it offshore and squeezing some moisture out so that I feel like enhance some of the winds that we were experiencing up in that part. But uh, yeah, in the moments leading up to it, you know, walking out of the field site, there was so much wind blowing above that threshold of motion, you’re just watching sheets of the beach, deflate, right? Deflation is this process where we have the winnowing away of finer material. And that removal of mass causes the surface to the naming flies deflate, right, lower down. But I’ve never seen it happen this rapidly in front of my very eyes. I mean, it was happening faster than I could possibly measure it with the modern tools that we have, you know, it’s really incredible see, but in that process, looking at my instrument nodes, because I kind of haven’t set up where I have these three dunes are more or less coalescing varying degrees of vegetation coverage. And so I split up and I had two ZL6 Data Loggers, and one was kind of further back and one was closer, you know, towards the ocean, the one that’s closer towards the ocean, there was so much sediment, it actually buried all the vegetation that was within the field of view. So that had already occurred. And so for me looking at that as like, well look, thinking back to my research question, it’s like, why don’t even see the vegetation, you know, and so, in the data loggers about to get buried by sand, it’s like, I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave this one in place. But the other one is further back further away from the ocean storms gonna hit South Charleston, so there’s the chance to get starved. There’s a lot of mass ahead of that station. And so I feel pretty good about where it’s at. I reinforced it and I left it. 6pm That night, when I got home, the trek shifted, it was a number of miles. Yeah. And so the center of the I actually was half a mile away from my study site, which means that my dunes went through the northeastern corner of the eyewall, which is the strongest winds the most intense part of the storm, you know, because it’s centrifugal force. And so, yeah, yeah, that’s what it looked like when I got out there a couple days after it was basically all the sand was just stripped from the dunes and pushed back so that same Overwatch plane I mentioned earlier, a brand new formation of that occurred. The sensors are still out there, they’re buried, I have to find them but but it was one of the things as a gametime decision, you know, in my defense if it would have hit South and I’ve seen the move south to just as much and then you don’t get any data, right. So it was a risk and I took it didn’t didn’t go too well. But I didn’t lose everything. But the opportunity to see what that vegetation stress to tropical systems is was just too appealing to not try Right, right. So and that’s Oh, that’s ultimately what the PRI sensors were out there for anyway so they were doing their job you know, it’s just the storm at that magnitude. I mean incredible force of nature and that was the only the second for what is just a cat one I can’t imagine the cat four I think you know a lot of researchers in my field we do kind of chase after these storms whenever they’re kind of in our backyard just because there’s so much information we can learn from it. And so I’ve been on in several survey crews where we go up before and then after and you know calculate erosion and shoreline change but I think being at this site for like the eight months prior watching it grow watching establish you know, and the vegetation really come into its own and stop sand from moving and building up his dunes then coming back right after the storm and seeing it obliterated Yeah, that was powerful. I did not expect that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:26 Like you’re saying it’s kind of the flip side of the same coin of tornado storm chasers where you guys are just kind of standing in one spot but dealing with the same thing about how do we measure the impacts of these major weather events without yeah losing all our equipment or you know finding the right spot or to move them out of the right spot in order to figure out what we want to see what we really want to be able to record there. How long then does it take for a dune like that to recover from a major storm events such as you know, a major hurricane might be just a matter of months or is it years you know, can you give us a general ballpark timeline of those kinds of situations?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 30:03 Oh, I wish I could. Yeah, it’s it’s incredibly site specific. But just to kind of clue you into some of the variables that we’re looking for, you know, what could make a stronger system is number one, you have to have some form of we call roughness. So roughness is just anything that could slow down, the wind decrease its momentum in which it can no longer carry the sediment, right and that, and that process of decreasing its momentum means that it’s no longer able to carry the sand particles, it falls out in terms of deposition. And that kind of jump starts the process. So that’s number one, something has stopped the wind when it is carrying sand. But even stepping back, though, you need sand, right, you need a sediment source. And so depending on the magnitude of your storm, that sand gets relocated, and it can go in one or two directions, one of which would be like in the case of my study site, it was blown back through to the backside of the barrier, the barrier island, if it gets pushed too far into the marsh and is now underneath the water level, then that sand is more or less lost, because I don’t care how hard that wind blows, it’s not going to pull it out of the water and back on the surface. Right. And then other direction in which the sand can go is offshore. These storms are of such high magnitude, you know that it’s pulling the sand and and sort of grinding it off the beach and can shove it far offshore toward the normal waves that typically act within a climate aren’t able to bring it back to the coasts. And typically you’ll see beaches will have like what we call like a winter and a summer profile where the wintertime it’s, you know, it’s a steeper Beach, because there’s more wave energy. And it’s pretty normal for those waves to just take that sand, move it offshore, and then it builds up the bars, which the surfers like, right serves much better as well as a cleaner. But then as we move into the summer months, there tend to be these lower waves, but they’re sort of like bringing these bars and bringing the sediment back to the surface. And so we get this more gradual profile that builds out wider, more room for people that want to come to the beach for tourism or, you know, Sunday, that sort of thing. And so this process normally happens, but hurricanes can be on such a high magnitude that they take the sand off the beach, but they move it beyond where it can be recovered in the summer months, you know, from this normal processes. And so whenever that happens, you know, then you need to call in some sort of human intervention, I guess needs to take place, right? Whether it be the Army Corps of Engineers or some other dredging operation, beach nourishment, something along those lines, a soft management practice kind of brings that sediment back. And I’ll say that roughness, you know, in my case, it’s vegetation. But you know, it could be a sand fence, it could be bundle, a hay, anything that can slow it down. roughness, we got sediment, ultimately winds, you know, the angle at which the wind is going to arrive to the coast that governs change and transport, because it’s all about boundary layer adjustment and how the wind is essentially getting used to the surface it’s moving across, which takes time, you know, and so yeah, having ample space for that boundary layer modification to occur. I think that’s the main ones. And of course, you got precipitation, which you know, turns transport on and off doing really is this sort of like analog result of transport and depositional processes, the interaction of when sands moving and when it stops, and then that ultimately is what a dune is.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:09 So along with that, as a Dune is forming, or starting form. Can you explain the process of how grasses begin to take hold? And how long does that or how long can it take for you know, grasses to take hold within a dune and become embedded and flourish there?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 33:24 Yeah, man this is, what a cool question. The reason why I say is because I think what I initially pitched to METER a few years ago, was only looking at those three dunes that are now destroyed. That was like the main focus. But when I pulled it to my study site back in January, this past year and installed everything, seeing how much RAC right remember, it’s the vegetative remnants kind of balled up on shore, was on the field site, we kind of pivoted a little bit and said, Well, let’s look at this too, because RAC isn’t just dead debris, it’s typically because it’s been scoured and mined from a dune, it tends to have vegetative remnants that are reproductive so either be rhizomes or seeds. And also to it’s unique because it’s also a roughness element, right, it’s able to extract the momentum from the wind and facilitate deposition, which is what a dune needs. And so I kind of pivoted a little bit and then also, you know, threw some erosion pins inside the rack and then photograph them did vegetative counts per rack piles, and I divided the study area where it looked like it was more influenced by Aeolian activity versus Inundation from tides. And I had a control set as well. And yeah, it really came out of this. It really highlighted the role that RAC has in that recovery that an initial disturbance event levels, the whole dune system, there’s nothing out there, but these lesser events are able to float in RAC and maybe it’s just a high tide deposit a RAC pile. Now you have roughness on the surface, as your winds start to blow your infilling this rock pile and then causing it to really jumpstart colonization and emergence within the system. And dune grass species are really interesting and that they like burial or a lot of them do not all of them, but a lot of them do. And so there’s a stimulus that happens of sand now bares a rock pile where the vegetative matter is, or reproductive components are, right, and then now you have a burial response, which then causes that plant to want to grow, you know, through the Rockpile through the sediment, and then that growth now causes it to have a bigger presence to the wind field, which facilitates further deposition. Right. And so this process continues over time until eventually you get to do not have it right, this form is able to modify the landscape and modify the flow, and in a lot of cases to its favor towards slowing down that when and aiding in that growth.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:39 So are there other types of plants that can help in this beyond dune grasses?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 35:46 Yeah, yeah, some of the work I’ve done recently has been looking at the role of driftwood kind of in the system, right? It’s something that’s not necessarily alive, like dune grasses, but its benefit in terms of nutrients is this long term source of nutrients, right, as it breaks down slower because of its size, and its mass, you know, but it kind of helps that system of establishment. And so I know it’s not really a plant per say, everything else that’s going to be on the surface is going to be some form of Dune grass. Okay, so she’s, like, bitter panicum, or American beach grass or sea oats. They’re all kind of within a similar class.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:22 That was my question. So are there any issues with beach degradation, say outside beyond your region of research there?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 36:31 Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of that kind of comes down to the underlying geology of the region. And what I mean by that, as your beach slope is much steeper on the West Coast, right there is on the east coast or the Gulf Coast. And because of that, if we think about things like sea level rise, or like localized sea level rise, because the storms, the same amount of change vertically means two different things, because of that difference in geometry when we think about slope. And so I think that’s why we see a little bit more erosion, maybe more visible, perhaps, you know, on the on the East Coast and Gulf Coast. But yeah, not saying that original thinker on the West Coast, it definitely does. It’s just it looks a little different because of that legacy geologic framework. And also in a number of places, you know, you have kind of negative sea level rise values, because of the isostatic rebounding rises, glaciers pushed back 1000s of years prior, you know, that land is still bouncing back up. And so

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:25 I have heard of, of beach grasses being imported elsewhere introduced other places to protect beach dunes and other places. Is there any risk of beach grasses becoming invasive species in these new areas?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 37:40 Yeah, this is we’re seeing a lot of this on the West Coast right now, I haven’t done research into it myself. But I have several colleagues who do, I don’t remember if it was introduced by the Fish and Wildlife, or if by some management agency or not, or if it just naturally floated across, but European beach grass is really aggressive at growing tall and fast. And so they’re seeing over there is that yeah, it’s growing tall and fast, which means that it’s sort of cutting off the sediment supply to the native species behind those regions, and is becoming a real issue in terms of natural biodiversity. Right. And then in terms of other invasive species, there has been a lot of work done on it. What I don’t remember though, is if those were intentionally planted or not, I don’t know. But we will we also see though dunes is the sort of invasion of Centipede grass, right, as we have these homes and properties along the coasts, you know, obviously you want a centipede lawn yard. And so by planting that sometimes it also will crawl out onto the dune. And I don’t think it poses as much of an issue in terms of like out competing, just because dune grasses are incredibly resilient to salty air to long periods of drought. You know, it’s like full sun exposure. And so yeah, they kind of they can hold their own, I guess against that. And I did misspeak earlier, there are succulents or succulent type species that do pop up here on the East Coast, there’s gonna be sea rocket, but they’re kind of like one hit wonders, you know, they’ll pop up a little bit of roughness, you know, to the surface, and then they’re gone, you know, so they do exist, and they are, you know, very beneficial for initiating some of that initial deposition.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:10 As we kind of wrap things up here, I’d love for you to just explain to our audience about how can your research help the world at large? Or what can we as a society learn from the result of what you’re finding out?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 39:23 Yeah, I think I think a lot of where the benefit of my research as it stands right now is going to go is to offering this new methodology this new lens to see vegetation data through from the site in situ perspective, right, as I mentioned earlier, these inflection points. I really think there’s a lot of strength in understanding the timing of that Mergence with you know, local conditions of wind patterns, and you know, if it’s the rainy season or not, and how these different variables interact with one another in terms of being able to put a number of different study sites or different locations around the country, on the same playing field right the way in which we can discuss Do it down to these core variables and measure resiliency or get out, you know, what is it take this speech X number of years to recover, whereas this one can do it half the time, because ultimately that sort of information tells us which systems are efficient. And if we know where efficiency lies, and the natural world, then how do we take what mother’s already trying to do and help it out a little bit, if I know what the ideal case is, then I can make some really powerful coastal management decisions in order to help out and give it that critical piece that might otherwise be missing. Now, obviously, we can’t like, you know, make a ton of wind blow all the time, right there. There are limitations to it, but but I do hope that it will kind of shed some more light into those variable interactions that leads to resiliency,

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:46 along those same lines to is what can we as a public do to help preserve dunes and promote their recovery?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 40:56 Well, definitely don’t walk on them. Okay, all right. It goes without saying, I mean, we’ve had sign campaigns for years now. And that has really helped very much. But, but yeah, definitely, because whenever you walk on the dunes, you know, it’s obviously going to, it really hurts the rhizomes that are underneath, and they’re pretty fragile on from that sort of repeated trampling, you know, I think a lot of its advocacy going to the beach, and just taking a second to notice the dunes, I feel like a lot of us get sucked into going to the beach, for the beach. And so once we get there, you know, we’re looking out towards the waves, but, you know, like, if you turn around and look, that’s the barrier that’s preventing your house from potentially flooding during the next major storm, you know, doing little things, like if you have beach RAC that washes up on your shore, you know, and maybe you’re a homeowner, or maybe you’re just visiting, but you can move that RAC into towards the dune line towards the toe of the dune. And then to help it build it out, make it thicker and wider, help improve your grade on its own. So there’s little things like that you can do but yeah, I think the biggest thing is just just take a second notice them, it’s amazing how little recognition they get. And I always whenever I teach Physical Geography on on the campus, you know, I always, whenever I get to my coastal geomorphology section, I show a photo of the beach, you know, and I have my class, okay, label everything you can see on a piece of paper in this photo, only about 30% of them, notice the dune and it’s just I think that’s a real kind of indicator to where we’re at as a society, you know,

BRAD NEWBOLD 42:18 final question, we always like to try to get any fun, exciting or crazy stories, anything else that you’d like to share along those lines?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 42:28 I always say that if you’re a field researcher you kind of have this sort of soft spot for type two fun you know, type two funs where you know, nothing’s going to plan you know, you ran out of water or it’s harder than you’re expecting or you get caught in a sudden rainstorm you know, when I was going down to go collect that equipment in advance of the storm out there and the winds whipping and it’s also I’m taking all sorts of photos and videos just like really taken in the change occurring before my eyes bow when I finally got the first load of equipment completed and first load because it took me four days to set everything up and only had or the weather window kept getting shorter, but only had on the order about maybe like three hours to get it all down. So you know moving, pretty quick pace. But I underestimated how high the storm surge that was already coming in was going to offset the high tide prediction. And so by the time I carts loaded up with 1000s of dollars worth of equipment I looked down the coast and I realized that I’m not going to make it because Because literally the the beaches go you know, it’s covered up by water it’s not gone you know, it’s covered by water and Okay, well that’s fine. I’ll just you know, Hang Hang tight on top of the dune you know, because I know that my Overwatch plan is going to flood now when I couldn’t pass it was still an hour from high tide. So that’s when your gears start turning. You’re like oh, that’s probably not going to bode very well. No, I post up on a on top of a dune hopefully waiting out the storm surge and it’s like initial flooding event in advance of the storm. And then underneath my tarp and the winds whipping next to metal and all this equipment trying to stay dry. Yeah, check the radar just to see what’s going on. And yeah, it’s definitely the outer bands of Ian and I was like well, this is too close for comfort. Right? Yeah. But you know you’re questioning life decisions and all that all that stuff at that point in time. But uh, but yeah, I mean, I had to get that equipment. There’s no no way around it. So yeah, I’m waiting out there and checking the radar and waiting for the tide to go down and watching the whole system to fleet I would say it was definitely a intimate experience with how the air force plane was going to fare in that particular storm event but yeah, it’s definitely the closest I’ve ever been to a storm or I’ve never been out there before I literally got stranded and how to wait it out. But as already is only like six hours.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:36 That’s all make good.

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 44:37 Yeah, I was fortunate though is that I think that like I said, I’m pretty sure that they said there’s a cold front that was butting up against Ian and in that process, it was squeezing out a lot of that moisture and so because of that, I wasn’t sitting underneath of what looks like a lot of rain on the radar, you know, outer bands of this massive system. So I’m very fortunate for that but it was just a matter of waiting for the water to go down, as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:02 Well, any other final things you’d like to share with anybody any final statements or suggestions or plugs or anything like that?

PETE TERESZKIEWICZ 45:11 No, no, I was just gonna say, um, if anyone listening wants to, you know, get a hold of me about research or anything along those lines, um, you can find my email address on the department websites, just petert@email.sc.edu. And yeah, no, this has been great. Thanks again, for all that METER does. And I’ve been a fan of the podcast since it first dropped. So it’s been really cool to get the offer to be on here.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:34 Thank you so much, Pete for taking time to share your research with us. As always, super fascinating. And if you in the audience have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That’s all for now. Stay safe, and we’ll catch you next time on We Measure the World!

ChatGPT

Here are 10 quotes directly relevant to tree health, tree biology, and forest ecosystems from the transcript:

“Deflation is this process where we have the winnowing away of finer material. And that removal of mass causes the surface to, as the name implies, deflate, right lower down.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (0:35)

“Dunes are really good at being the first line of defense during storm events, and tend to take a lot of that initial surge and beating that storms can provide.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (2:51)

“When we think about dunes and how they’re formed, there’s two real main forces at work: we have the sheer velocity of the wind and the resisting force of the sediment.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (3:51)

“Vegetation density and seasonal changes affect volumetric change within the dune.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (4:53)

“Grasses have a burial response that causes the plant to want to grow through the rock pile through the sediment, and that growth now causes it to have a bigger presence to the wind field, which facilitates further deposition.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (33:24)

“RAC isn’t just dead debris, it’s typically vegetative remnants that are reproductive, so either rhizomes or seeds.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (33:24)

“You need roughness, something that could slow down the wind and decrease its momentum in which it can no longer carry the sediment.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (30:03)

“Wind, angle at which the wind is going to arrive to the coast, that governs change and transport.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (30:03)

“Grasses like burial, or a lot of them do, not all of them, but a lot of them do.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (33:24)

“If you’re a field researcher, you kind of have this soft spot for type two fun, where nothing’s going to plan.” - Pete Tereszkiewicz (42:28)

You

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00 Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 0:08 Why do plants even produce these chemical compounds? Is it just because they smell nice? A lot of people already know that some flower smells might be a useful to plants to attract pollinators and help aid plants in that way. In reality, there’s a lot of different reasons why plants use these and produce and emit these volatile compounds. And one really cool way is because these plant volatiles that are produced when an herbivore damages a plant, they’re known as herbivore induced plant volatiles. And this specific smell that plants create and emits actually can attract some natural enemies. This means the plant is basically putting out into the environment a smell that some insects or other natural enemies can actually use to locate the herbivore that’s feeding on the plant. It serves the plant like a bodyguard.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:09 That’s a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today’s guest is Natalie Aguirre, PhD candidate and plant physiology and chemical ecology researcher at Texas A&M University. Natalie graduated with a degree in Biology from Pepperdine University, where she completed an honours thesis conducting research on the interaction of drought stress and pathogen infection in Chaparral shrubs. She then spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Spain, studying the effect of water stress on Dutch elm disease. Most recently, Natalie worked for the Everglades Foundation, creating educational programs and materials about the Florida Everglades. And today, she’s here to talk about her research on how plants communicate and defend themselves. So Natalie, thanks so much for being here.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 2:03 Thank you for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 2:05 We’re excited to talk about plant communication and plant self defense and all of that. So first off, we definitely want to get into your research interests and projects. But first, can you give us a little bit of your background and how you came to be in the field of plant physiology and chemical ecology?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 2:22 Sure. So my excitement about science started pretty young, and I was able to do some research in unrelated fields in high school. After that, I knew that I enjoyed science and maybe not necessarily working in the lab all the time. When I decided to go to school at Pepperdine. I ended up finding a lab that I loved because we did a lot of research outdoors and we’re studying Chaparral shrubs. During the time that I was a student there, it really was a time where California was experiencing extreme drought. And we were making observations out in the field and noticed that some of the most important shrubs in my opinion out in the hillside, were experiencing a lot of die back, which was this drought induced die back due to pathogen so I spent a lot of time doing research and figured out that that’s pretty much what I wanted to do. My advisor Dr. Steven Davis at Pepperdine, encouraged me to apply for a Fulbright, there was a lab in Spain that is really amazing. And they were doing similar things to what we were doing in California, but studying Dutch elm disease all around Spain, and specifically in Madrid as well. So I got to use the same techniques and meet a lot of cool people doing that Fulbright in Madrid. And upon returning, I ended up applying to this lab at Texas A&M, who my advisor now is Dr. Angela Helms, she sent out an email requesting students to apply to her lab, I decided to switch gears a little bit and move towards chemical ecology and studying a little bit more about how plant volatiles and chemicals are involved in some of the physiological processes that I was already interested in. It’s been very exciting working under her and getting to know a little bit of a different side of scientific research.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:14 That’s great. Let’s go back to your research there at Pepperdine. Can you go into a little bit more detail about what constitutes Chaparral? What are the different species that you’re looking at? And then specifically, like you mentioned, dealing with pathogen infection, what was going on specifically with those infections that those shrubs are dealing with?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 4:31 So the Chaparral shrub vegetation type is pretty unique. It occurs in different places around the world and one of them being in Southern California. And if you think about being out on a hike, you would see a lot of different low tree shrubs. So I’m trying to describe the height to you. It’d be above your head and there’d be a lot of different species that are dominant in that area. And then there’s also some important plants slike a sage plants so those smell really unique and really fragrant. And then this Chaparral Shep community is also composed of different native grasses that grow closer to the ground there. The landscape and California changes pretty often, especially now with increases in fire frequency. The Sharpe ratio community has different plants that are adapted to these fire intervals. And so some plants they need this fire in order to germinate the seeds in the seed bank. The plant that I studied melasma Lorena uses this Reese broad Vantage to come back after fire. So this specific Chaparral shrub to me, I think I’m a little bit biased, but it’s one of the most important out there in the landscape. Because it has these huge root systems. So the taproot goes down like 30 meters into the ground, and really provides a lot of stability for the hillside. So once we started noticing these major die backs in different pockets of these Chaparral communities throughout California, and specifically in the Santa Monica Mountains, we decided to look a little bit closer. And ended up seeing that it was an opportunistic endophyte, which just means fungus that was able to take advantage of the plant stress during this drought time in California. And I did a little bit more research into finding out exactly why that was happening and how much stress is required and things like this,

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:30 Right, I guess, in my mind and not thinking as a plant physiologist or you know, mycologist or whatever. But it would seem that I mean, the the general common sense is that fungus needs nice moist areas to grow and propagate. But you’re saying that fungal communities were then affecting the shrubs during drought seasons during these hot and dry areas? Does that seem counterintuitive? Or is it just me?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 6:55 If we think about our own bodies, we can have, let’s say a scrape on our arm or something where we might get some kind of bacteria or microbe that could cause an infection. And if we were healthy and not previously sick, let’s say or not stressed out with something going on in our life, then that cut will heal pretty quickly. But if we were extremely sick and the cut was big enough, we might take a really long time to heal. And so when we put that analogy into how the plants on the hillside, this prolonged drought, which is not normal for these plants are occurring over four or five year period are really stressing the plants to an extent that this normally occurring microbe that can live in the plant tissues, and the plant can normally fight it off and resist this infection. It just started spreading.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:49 Is there a specific vector for the fungus?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 7:52 Yeah, so not this specific one. We didn’t really look into how it was being factored or, or moved around. But I did help some other students throughout my time there. Think about doing some spore trapping throughout the Santa Monica Mountains, where we tried and it’s not very fancy at all. We just dipped microscope slides into some Vaseline and stuck it out in the wild and saw and trying grew what was stuck on to those slides. And so we were trying to get what you’re saying it’s how exactly I say moving from tree to tree, for example. And for this specific microbe, we think that just having spores in the air and maybe a naturally occurring break in a branch, for example, the sport can land there and grow a little bit over time and then take advantage in these instances. And of course, like anything else when it’s doing well start to reproduce and spread that way.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:53 Yeah. So what exactly was the specific effect to the plant from this fungus?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 8:59 A healthy, very good shrub that’s in good shape. Would have a lot of like stems coming up from the ground because again, it’s one of those tree sprouter’s. So it just shoots up from base. And the stems can extend maybe 10-12 feet in the air and be very bushy, a lot of green, large leaves. And once this infection starts occurring in one of those branches, that it would start to drop its leaves. And so over time, throughout the years, when we really started to notice that there was something happening, you would have a lot more clearance and what the shrubs looked like the above because they’re dropping a lot of leaves. And then ultimately, when the progression of the disease was so bad, then you would have what looks like very dead trees up top.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:48 Is this a matter of these plants then not being able to go dormant? They basically just are dying off, like you said, because that lack of photosynthesis.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 9:56 This was a question that we were really not sure at the time and the students now at Pepperdine, are continually trying to answer some questions and take more data and observations of what the landscape looks like. Now, over time, they have these great taproot systems, which store a lot of the energy that the planet was making over time. And so the thought was that even if they dropped all their leaves, even if they, you know, had to essentially kill off all of their big, large branches, they could re sprout since that was the mechanism that they used from fire frequencies and how they would cope with that a lot of people when I would give presentations to the public, for example, they would ask like, Well, are the roots dying? Because I need to know if the slope is going to be stable, because my home is directly underneath? And it was really hard for us to answer that question. Because we, and this is a fault to a lot of plant scientists, it’s so much easier to study what’s happening above ground, and really difficult for us to have a good measurement on the effects of this infection below ground. And I tried to understand a little bit more about this root system, the impacts of it on the fungal infection, ultimately, we were able to grow saplings in pots. And what I found interesting from this brief experiment that I did is when I inoculated this fungus into branches up top, it was unable to travel down into the root system. Essentially, what I was measuring was if I can recover this pathogen from the roots, and I never cut, so I didn’t do long enough studies to know if there was large effects on the composition of the root or anything like that. But I at least couldn’t retrieve it from there, which I thought was really interesting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:44 So with all of this research, were there any specific measurements that you were doing with specific instrumentation? Or was this all just visual observation? What were you doing there?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 11:54 I participated with other undergrads studying the same project as part of a class. And so there were many students taking a lot of data on different things, but ended up sticking I guess, or what I ended up continuing on for my honors thesis was specifically I was interested in the movement of water to plants. This is known in the field as plant hydraulics. So we were doing a lot of plant hydraulic measurements, we also looked at as the model conductance and photosynthesis rates to know if there was an effect on those types of measurements from this infection. I didn’t quite appreciate this at the time. Now, as a graduate student, I really love being able to use a parameter because it’s such powerful data. And we’re able to retrieve this data so quickly and learn a lot about the system, even if it’s just an initial measurement.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:46 So you were looking at how the leaves were reacting to the fungus. So that helps to stomatal conductance was reacting to the fungal infection.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 12:55 Yeah, exactly. I also was really interested in how the change in moisture affected the plant as well. An easy way to understand this, especially over time is to know how the plant is responding to opening or closing somata. All right, yeah. So I think my love of the porometer started in California and it really has continued until now.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:20 Are there any ways then to mitigate against these fungal infections there on the chaparral?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 13:25 Yeah, we haven’t come up with a good solution. To be completely honest. There are ways to mitigate microbial infection in plants. As a community, I think scientists have focused on plants that are really economically important for trees. I should say, I don’t know too much about this. But there are some stories I’ve heard where you can give some kinds of injections to plants and help fight the microbial community that way. Unfortunately, right now in California, they’re just native plants. So the people who care about them are less in abundance, I guess,

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:00 Let’s switch gears and follow you over into Spain because it seems that these studies of pathogen infection in plants is kind of your impetus for moving over into Spain. Is that right?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 14:11 Yeah, that’s right. What I ended up determining is that water was playing a big role in how the plant is able to combat this infection. So Johne’s disease is a completely different scenario. I guess there’s a vector involved with the bark beetle and different plant completely and different environmental conditions that the elm trees grow in was very different to like dry California. But I was still interested in how water was affecting the growth of the pathogen, and also the physiology of the plants.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:43 So in California, we we’re trying to figure out okay, is there stress that’s not necessarily inducing these infections, or at least making them vulnerable to greater infections? Were you seeing that same similar drought flood? Like you said, it’s a different ecosystem, a different environment from for these elm trees and And so I would assume that there’s different impacts that water and drought and temperature and other things might have.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 15:06 I was really lucky with the lab that I ended up working with because they allowed me to join in on other projects. Originally, I had really wanted to study how the fungus can grow in different water conditions. Specifically in and out of the plants, they ended up realizing that if we tried to grow some of these trees in an environment that also had other microbes present as well, if this can change and help the elm tree and prepare its defenses for future stress because of the disease, even there, my work shifted a little bit. But I would say that what I ended up getting out of the Fulbright the most besides being able to meet new people and learn new techniques, was just being able to think a little bit differently. It was the first time that I was really on my own as a researcher and trying to figure out how my ideas could fit into a different perspective. And so yeah, I find that with Fulbright, in general, a lot of people love their experience, but it ends up being very different than the scientific picture that we have, in our mind going into it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:21 So a lot of times we talk about how is it best to, quote unquote, translate, you know, scientific language into the language of the public, there seems to be a disconnect with what scientists are finding out in their research and how that is communicated. I would assume that going into a different language as well, it does add complications, but at the same time, it can be very insightful and a good way to get into these other communities. For instance, here in the United States that maybe are primarily Spanish speakers?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 16:49 It’s true, I think, it just opened up my mind to the idea of communicating science to other cultures. One Direction I think my career will move into is being able to help scientists communicate to the public right now, my advisor has encouraged me to be a science mentor for a science journal that allows scientists to rewrite their articles for young mind. It’s a really cool process. I’ve reviewed several papers. Now, every time I get an article, in my email, I’m like, yes, I’ll review and this specific journal is really cool. In that they also have young minds work as the peer reviewers for the article, what I found is that as much as scientists try, and they know that they’re writing for a specific audience, it is really difficult to think about science in a way that other people can understand. And yeah, pretty much most articles come in. And I just think to myself, wow, scientists really need help in this department.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:59 Yeah. So what is the general process? Then you receive these articles, then are these articles they’re already written or supposed to be written for a younger audience? Is that correct?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 18:08 Yeah. What I found is that a lot of scientists don’t know that this is out there, this type of journal that allows you to republish your work, and they actually counts as a full on publication, the one that’s written for kids, so you can cite it. So in my opinion, valuable to a scientists as well to be able to do this, but they submit the article. And like any other article, there’s often co authors and graphs of data that are in these articles. I think throughout the process, the authors are able to really take a step back and receive feedback from young kids. I’ve worked with students in elementary and middle school, both here in Texas, and also at home in Miami. It’s just so funny what these students say. And the whole process is really enjoyable for me to be able to interact with these students. And they really take it on as a big responsibility that they’re in charge of, which is really nice. I think it’s a different way to think about science, especially as a young kid. Ultimately, we submit reviews in the forum and the platform, and the scientists have to make those edits and changes and re-upload them to a script. Yeah, it’s the same process but with a little bit of a twist.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:31 I did have a couple of questions back with the Dutch elm disease. So the beetles are feeding off of the trees. The fungus is on the beetles, the fungus is then spread to the trees, and then the beetles are picking up the fungus from the trees itself. So is it all kind of self contained within that community?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 19:47 Yeah, exactly. Factoring of diseases occurs very differently in different systems, which I find really crazy but for this specific disease, and a lot of other ones the bark beetle was just trying to enter the plants in order to feed on the good tissues, right. So a lot of the times the most nutritious will be underneath the bark. And like you mentioned, the pathogen can stick onto the beetle and move to the next plant that way or a clean individual bark beetle can get infected and take that to another one because it consumed tissue that had the disease. And now a little bit of what I’ve learned throughout my PhD, it’s also interesting because sometimes the pathogen itself can manipulate these types of factors, specifically insects to aid itself in spread, I guess, or spreading to other diseases. So while it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about the Dutch Elm system, but I don’t know too much about the motivation of the I guess. And the relationship with the insect in that regard. But yeah, it is pretty crazy to think that even as scientists as researchers, what we think is happening might not be the full story.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:07 I would assume that there are many, like you said different angles for mitigation as well. So you could tackle the you know, the beetle itself or the fungus or even just the stress, right?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 21:16 Yeah, Spain spends a lot of money in finding research about Dutch Elm disease. And the angle that we took in the lab that I was in was resistant varieties of Elm plants. So they had found different Elm individuals throughout the country. And they were these healthy looking Elms, amongst other not so healthy looking plants, and they bring back cuttings and try to propagate and determine which are like the most resistant individuals of Elm trees were used in farming of grapes. And they would actually serve as the posts that allow the grapes to grow up because Elm trees are just you know, like one second, especially as a young saplings and they don’t branch very much. And so when people would move from place to place there was on trees planted as they went along to help in this cultivation of grapes. So now they have these stands of Elm trees that grow in very differing conditions. You mentioned flooding earlier, and they oftentimes do grow by rivers and more moist areas. But going back to how this started, one of the ways this lab specifically tackled the problem of Dutch Elm disease was planting more resistant varieties of Elm in places where the population might be struggling.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:39 Alright, let’s switch over and talk about your current PhD research looking at plant volatiles plant physiology and moving from pathogens to herbivores, or other other consumers of these plants and how that affects plants defense and communication.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 22:57 Yeah, the world of chemical ecology, I just think is crazy. There’s so much going on out there that we don’t understand still, and so many volatiles that are present. So for those listening who might not think of plant volatiles, we often like to say that the smell of freshly cut grass or the smell that you encounter in the kitchen, when you’re chopping herbs, all of these plant volatiles that we think about are really useful to plants and communication of different events going on in the community. Yeah, I was really unaware of all of this occurring in our world until I started this PhD. And now, I just think it’s the most fascinating thing.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:44 So what are some of the specific questions that you’re getting at with these volatiles and how they affect plants and the plant physiology and other things?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 23:53 Yeah. So I guess in order to describe my main question, I need to give a little bit of introduction into why do plants even produce these chemical compounds? Is it just because they smell nice? A lot of people already know that some flower smells might be useful to plants to attract pollinators and help aid plants in that way. In reality, there’s a lot of different reasons why plants use these and produce and emit these volatile compounds. And one really cool way is because these plant volatiles that are produced when an herbivore damages the plants, they’re known as herbivore induced plant volatiles, and this specific smell that plants creates and emits actually can attract some natural enemies. This means the plant is basically putting out into the environment a smell that some insects or other natural enemies can actually use to locate the herbivore that’s feeding on the planet. It serves the plants like a bodyguard, I guess. Yeah. And so that’s one really cool way. And the fields is also discovered that plants can communicate with other plants in its vicinity. So we call them neighboring plants. And some people have looked at the relationship between the individuals. So if the plant is closely related to an individual that’s five meters away versus the one directly next to it, it will have better communication with the directly related individual even though it’s further away. So these are questions that are, I think, relatively new and not flushed out. So what might occur in one species doesn’t occur for all, you know, but yeah, very interesting things like that, we’re able to learn now about how plants are communicating with volatiles. And specifically, when I first learned about how these plants sort of communicating with smells, I guess, what I knew about plants was their physiology. So I know a lot about how water moves through them. And I knew that they responded to water stress by closing the pores called Samad on the surface. And I was like, Okay, so the volatiles enter through the pores. And my advice is like, well, we don’t know, we don’t know, if they entered through the plants, if they’re perceived on the outside, you know, we don’t exactly know how the plants are perceiving these compounds, and where that’s occurring. So I was like, Oh, this is exactly what we need to know. It’s like the first step. And I’m not the first person but I am happy to be here and try and see if I can answer these questions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:48 First of all, I guess, what were some of your hypotheses or your predictions, as you were going into this project,

NATALIE AGUIRRE 26:55 I initially hypothesized that the important volatiles that we’re studying in the lab would enter plants through the stomata. And mainly this is a really good place to start, I think because we know that the stomata are responsible for gas exchange. So that’s their job. They’re letting gases in and letting them and I thought, Okay, this, this is a great place. So if I had to have one statement that just stamps my whole dissertation, it’s that one, but it’s such a big question, I guess. The more I look into it, the more I realize, man, it takes a lot of work to be able to say that that’s definitively true. The stomata has the port of entry for volatile compounds is also really promising because other people have shown that volatiles do enter the plant leaves. So that’s one step. Like a lot of people might think that’s obvious when not a lot of people have shown that the plants are actually taking up these volatiles. And so there have been some studies that show that that plants use a volatile that has been marked in some way by the lab, and they able to track this molecule and it’s converted into other molecules that then can be used for defense, for example. So we do know that at least some of these larger compounds that are important in this type of plant communication, specifically referring to herbivory do enter the plant. We also think that the volatile compounds are exiting leaves via the stomata instead of just diffusion or maybe mechanical breaking one that insect consumes the plants, that’s another option. There have been studies that show that that volatiles are produced in some areas of the leaf that haven’t been broken specifically by the herbivore. And if these volatiles don’t exit out of the whole set of the stomata, then they would build up and become toxic to the plants. And so through that sort of reasoning, they’ve determined that the stomata must be the exit port for a lot of these volatile compounds.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:05 It’s super fascinating this whole idea of plant communication, these volatiles are going from plant to plant. And when the plant takes in these volatiles, what is the next step of its self defense process?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 29:16 Sure. These volatiles are being used by the plant as a cue, right that there’s an attacker near, I guess. So it’s really crazy because different species have different strategies. So different plants use this same cue to do something completely different. So in one instance, the cue could mean that the plant needs to induce defenses because surely an herbivore is about to come. And so it will start signaling within cells to create defensive compounds and then the plant will be less palatable to that insects, for example, and there’s really high degree of specificity so specific insects that are consuming a plant. So for example, I study corn, but we can think of any plant species, it produces different smells or different volatile blends, depending on that herbivore. So it actually senses different compounds in the saliva or in the regard to tint of different insects, it’s able to then manipulate the smells to be more reliable for its neighbors. So this strategy of induced defense is one way to combat this. But the one that is more closely related to my research is called defense priming. The induce defenses would be great if an herbivore actually appears and starts trying to consume the plant, it would have been a great strategy to use. But if there’s no herbivore, then the plant would have used a lot of energy and resources. In order to produce these defenses that were really not useful to it, there is another strategy that plants can actually prime their defenses so we can think of it like being in a ready state, and only when an herbivore comes near and starts to consume the plants and the plant recognizes the herbivore then is able to really induce these high levels of defense of compounds. related to my research, I use these known defense priming cues or these volatile compounds that we know in corn prime plants as a way to understand if when I expose corn plants to different volatile compounds, if they were able to hear this or smell this and ready their defenses. As researchers, we are able to take advantage of these known strategies that plants are using in this communication to try to answer different questions,

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:52 right. I was trying to wrap my head around how corn evolved these triggers. Is this something that is from precursor state? Or is this something that has quickly evolved over just a few 1000 years or even a few 100 years.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 32:05 So the native plant that corn was bred from or maize that we know today is called teosinte. And I’m not very well versed on how well teosinte is able to prime its defenses, I’d imagine that it’s been co evolved with definitely this idea of coevolution with different insects and how better or worse maybe the plants are able to communicate due to really long term interactions is really important. However, the more we learn about what these blends are composed of the more realized that a lot of the compounds that are in the blends are consistent through out different species of plants, volatiles. And so it adds another layer of complexity because we need to then figure out if it’s the ratios of these volatile compounds, but that’s doing the major communicating, right, or maybe the presence of one volatile in conjunction with another one, for example. And I specifically ended on corn because again, I’m really interested in the stomatal aperture, how open and closed they’re in this whole plant process. With breeding plants over time, we’ve selected for the ability for plants to maximize yields, right, so like open stomatal while they photosynthesize as much as possible. And then close over time. And corn is really good at doing this. And so it is a model system in chemical ecology and also in plant breeding as well.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:46 Right. What are the implications of your research? Or what do you think that you can add to the field as it goes forward in the future?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 33:54 Yeah, so we’ve talked a lot about plant defenses in the past few minutes. And this is really intriguing for farmers and people who are growing crops and thinking about how to help plants defend themselves against these pests that reduce yields and reduce our ability to produce food. And so there’s thoughts of using different volatile compounds to lower insects away from fields or maybe compounds that can help boost this natural immunity of plants or this prime state. I think that research looking at how these compounds are interacting with plants, so maybe getting into plants or how they might change the plants physiologies I think that the field of chemical ecology could really be combined with plant physiology in order to help better agriculture and help understand how we can use this to be more efficient in our crop production. I think what I’ve found is that and I say I think because I’m still not a million percent convinced that I can make such a bold claim. But I really do think that the properties of these volatile compounds will determine how they will enter into plant leaves. And so I think that when we use whole blends of compounds, there could be molecules with different properties that might be able to enter via diffusion, right, like small molecules. But in general, I think that my research has shown that larger compounds do require this stomatal pore as a port of entry. And then to further complicate things, we know that environmental context now is super important, not only because it changes this stomatal aperture, at night, plants close their stomata, but then their defenses might change based on what they perceive in these different contexts. So just so many possibilities, but one thing when you said that about nocturnal herbivores, I think that plants might also be able to open their stomata a little bit more to maybe hear better or smell better, or whatever verb you want to use. And so some of my Somatal conductance data has shown that, yeah, maybe during the day, they’re better at modulating this to be able to fine tune what they might have heard. And at night, maybe there’s completely different compounds that could allow this to happen and try and smell if an herbivore is present at night.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:40 That’s super cool. Did you have anything else that you wanted to add? We know you have a passion for bringing stem research to underserved communities? Can you go into a little detail about that?

NATALIE AGUIRRE 36:50 Yeah, so I didn’t grow up in a community that’s much like anywhere else in the US. Communities where there’s a lot of huge Hispanic population, or different diverse communities, oftentimes lack the availability to have different types of professionals present in large abundances in the community, I guess. And I just think that it’s this presence of being able to see somebody who maybe sounds like you, or looks like you or something like that. I just think that it’s the awareness that’s able to propel kids in different directions that they might not have gone forward with, if they didn’t know. And so after graduation, I want to move back to Miami and be able to talk science to different communities that not necessarily are younger, I really think that the elderly are really underserved community as well, especially in science, we don’t really write or communicate with elderly folks very much. And I think that they’re pretty vulnerable to being lonely or not have as much intellectual stimulation. So there’s a lot of different communities out there that I find really enjoy a lot of like the common science thing, you know, like everyone has smelled freshly cut grass, and most of us love it. Yeah. So just being able to provide a little bit more scientific context to different groups, I think is hopefully how I can spend my life in the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:21 I think that’s a great endeavor, being able to communicate scientific research and findings to everybody, you know, young, old, those in our field, those who are out of our field. All of that is super important in helping our society flourish, I think.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 38:35 Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:37 All right. Our time’s up for today. Thanks again, Natalie, for joining us. We really do appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.

NATALIE AGUIRRE 38:45 Thank you.

BRAD NEWBOLD 38:45 Also you in the audience. If you have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env. And you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That’s all for now. Stay safe, and we’ll catch you next time on We Measure the World!

ChatGPT

Here are 10 key quotes relevant to tree health, tree biology, and forest ecosystems:

“Some plants they need this fire in order to germinate the seeds in the seed bank.” - Natalie Aguirre (4:31)

“Once we started noticing these major die backs in different pockets of these Chaparral communities throughout California, we decided to look a little bit closer.” - Natalie Aguirre (6:30)

“This prolonged drought, which is not normal for these plants occurring over a four or five year period, is really stressing the plants to an extent that this normally occurring microbe that can live in the plant tissues, the plant can normally fight it off, it just started spreading.” - Natalie Aguirre (6:55)

“When we put that analogy into how the plants on the hillside, this prolonged drought…just started spreading.” - Natalie Aguirre (6:55)

“Healthy, very good shrubs that’s in good shape would have a lot of like stems coming up from the ground…Once this infection starts occurring in one of those branches, that it would start to drop its leaves.” - Natalie Aguirre (8:59)

“Once the infection started spreading, it would start to drop its leaves, and then ultimately, when the progression of the disease was so bad, then you would have what looks like very dead trees up top.” - Natalie Aguirre (9:48)

“Unfortunately, right now in California, they’re just native plants. So the people who care about them are less in abundance, I guess.” - Natalie Aguirre (13:25)

“Plants can communicate with other plants in its vicinity…if the plant is closely related to an individual that’s five meters away versus the one directly next to it, it will have better communication with the directly related individual.” - Natalie Aguirre (23:53)

“Plants use these volatiles to communicate and trigger defense responses.” - Natalie Aguirre (23:53)

“Plants can actually prime their defenses…being in a ready state, and only when an herbivore comes near and starts to consume the plants and the plant recognizes the herbivore then is able to really induce these high levels of defense compounds.” - Natalie Aguirre (29:16)

You

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00 Hello everybody and welcome to We Measure the World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists.

DEDRICK DAVIS 0:08 So with biochar, I think the original interest in it came from the terra preta soils that are out in America inches there. But here in the United States, I think when there was interested in biofuels and the pyrolysis process, and it’s used to produce those biofuels, when this process is used, you get three products, which is the fuel, the oil, and then also the ash from the biomass that has been burned. And with biofuels, the thought was if you’re going to be taken off this vegetation for the production of biofuels, what can we do to make sure that it’s a sustainable process, and the thought was that we have this ash it is a stable form of carbon that can be returned back to the soil. And there therefore we can potentially increase the carbon in the soil sequester carbon.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:00 That’s a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today’s guest is Dr. Dedrick Davis, associate professor in soil physics at Alabama A&M University. He obtained his PhD in soil science and environmental science from Iowa State University, and his teaching experiences in soil physics and soil hydrology. He’s published research papers in national and international scientific journals. And he’s taken part in the national and international congresses, including just recently when he was invited to join a national panel discussing climate smart cotton. And today, he’s here to talk about his many research projects at Alabama A&M. So Dedrick thanks so much for being here.

DEDRICK DAVIS 1:50 Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invitation to share with you what we have going on here at Alabama A&M University.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:57 Great. So we do want to start off definitely we want to get into all of your projects and research interests. But first, can you tell us a little bit about your your background, and how you became involved in soil science and in the the field that you find yourself now?

DEDRICK DAVIS 2:15 Um, so my background, I’m from Alabama, native of Alabama, and actually, I grew up probably about 30 miles away from here away from Alabama A&M University in a small rural community. And my family I come from a farming family. But probably about the time that I was starting to get into being an active or play and active role on the farm. My grandfather decided to retire from farming. So I stayed active through crop scouting with my uncle. So I’ve always had a heart for agriculture and was always curious about some of the things that my grandfather did. When it came to farming. One of the things I noticed that he always did. He did cotton. There were never any rotations. No, no, there was no tail was not used. So you can really tell it is by its impact on the cotton that was grown, I got to see when he took that same land out of production and put it in pasture for a number of years, and then returned it to cotton production, I got to see the increase talking yield, you could just tell the physical difference in the growth by the growth of the plant. So that got my curiosity to go on about agriculture even more. And when it came time to pursue or go to college, I had to choose a major. And the major that I chose was forestry here at Alabama A&M University. This is where I did my undergrad. But as part of the forestry program, one of the classes we had to take was intro to soil science. And in the intro to soil science class, I had an instructor that made soils seemed like they were the coolest thing ever. So once I took that intro to soil science class, I ended up switching my major to environmental science with a soil science concentration, ever since then I’ve been in soil science. And from Alabama A&M University I went to Iowa State for my masters did that under Dr. Sally Lawson, in soil physics and then PhD in soil physics with Dr. Robert Boyd. I think the cool thing about soil physics was there were things that were moving things at play just really seem interesting to me. And that is the route that I’ve taken so far.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:37 That’s interesting. There’s a lot of similarities. We’ve had other guests on who are current experts in soil science. A lot of them have taken a similar route where they’ve started out somewhere else took a class, whether in college or whatever. I like oh man, so super exciting. Who knew that soil could be so exciting, right?

DEDRICK DAVIS 4:54 Yes, I totally agree. Like I said, I came into the forestry program for one; there was a promise of paying for your college education, but also to you have a job. And I realized, forests, they need soil scientists also. Yeah, I was like, Alright, there’s a route. So again, switching to that soil science major was very important for me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 5:16 It always seems, especially for those not in the soil science field, that the vast majority of the human population takes soils for granted. We walk past it, we walk over it, you know, we get our food from the store or whatever, and the whole world of soil sciences, we’re oblivious to it.

DEDRICK DAVIS 5:35 Yes, we are. We’re totally oblivious to it. But I think once you’re made known aware of what soil does what it provides, it’s hard to not acknowledge that, and then not even to become interested in it, just talking to people when I tell them what I do. And then I might go into what soil provides or how affects our everyday lives. There’s an interest there even from like as a just talking to the public.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:02 So you talked about crop scouting with your uncle, can you go in a little bit detail about what crop scouting is?

DEDRICK DAVIS 6:09 So the crop scouting idea was for cotton here in Alabama, in the north Alabama area, and he usually contracted with farmers. And basically what we did with cotton scouting is we would go to certain fields that the farmers contracted with my uncle, and we would scout that cotton field for pest get an idea of what pests are there. And then, depending on what pests are there what we noted, the most, I guess, numerous type of pests, we would then go and we would recommend pesticide applications for that specific cotton field. And this is done to help reduce the impact of those past on that yield for cotton that that farmer hope to get from that field. I think it was something that was very important and a service that they need.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:59 What are some of those primary pests that cotton farmers are dealing with nowadays?

DEDRICK DAVIS 7:02 Probably the biggest one being that we have to keep a lookout for it was boll weevil. And there was some other pests that were I can’t even recall right now because it’s been so long, but some other ones that we were concerned about, but that were pretty prevalent back then.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:19 Interesting. All right. So you are now a professor of soil physics, can you go into a little bit more detail as to what exactly is encapsulated within soil physics within soil science?

DEDRICK DAVIS 7:34 I think when it comes to soil physics, at least the way I explained it to my students, soil physics is the study of the physical properties of soil, but also the physical processes that are occurring in soil. And those physical processes being the transfer of water or the movement of water, or liquids, fluids, movement of gases, and then also the movement of energy throughout the soil and those processes that are at play there. And a lot of the physical properties that are involved impacts these physical processes that occur in the soil.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:14 All right, so you were recently a panelist at the cotton sustainability conference. And the panel was entitled us climate smart cotton goals projects process. Can you tell us a little bit about what was going on with that initiative there?

DEDRICK DAVIS 8:29 That initiative is to increase the adoption of what we would call climate smart agricultural practices for cotton production. And a lot of those climate smart practices being mostly soil based. When we think of these climate smart ag practices, they can have reduced tillage or no till the use of cover crops, specifically for cotton production. Even though we’ve heard about reduced tillage, and no till and the adoption of cover crops. If I go out right now outside of my office, and I take a ride around here in North Alabama, I can see that there’s quite a few acres that were under cotton production, that don’t have a cover crop that possibly where no till is not implement. So I think we still have a long way to go when it comes to the adoption of these climate smart ag practices for cotton production, especially here in Alabama. So this project is here to help encourage the adoption of these practices. But one of the things that I think is missing in us also being noted is, a lot of times farmers are hesitant to adopt these practices because there’s no proof of if they adopt this practice, how it might improve the health of their soils. So this project will go into gathering information regarding soil health, how these practices increase the health of the soil, but also to possibly help To establish a target for soil health as it relates to cotton production here for soils in Alabama.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:08 I’ve heard the same thing from other guests about the farmers and growers are very conservative in their practices, it is definitely a risky proposition for them to change the way that they grow their crop. If there’s no direct proof, they need to see that these practices will then improve their yield further on, do you have any tips on how you’ve been able to try to communicate those best practices?

DEDRICK DAVIS 10:33 I think probably the best tips are just staying in communication with farmers but also to I think the other thing that is probably a big help is that farmer that is probably hesitant actually seeing it implemented, and being beneficial on another farm. So I think that Farmer to Farmer interaction networking, in regards to the adoption of these practices is very important. Because I can say, I’m on the academic side, and I can advocate for these practices all at once. But until they’re able to actually see them in place, and the actual improvements from those practices, I think, just blowing hot air. So I think that is probably the biggest thing. To give you an example, I still have to talk to my uncle about even adopting some of these practices. So I think just staying in constant communication with farmers, but also having having an example for them to see the benefit of these practices is very important.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:39 What is it about no till or cover crops that then have become best practices when it comes to sustainability or climate smart crops?

DEDRICK DAVIS 11:49 I think when it comes to no till it’s less tillage, of course. So we’re hopefully enhancing carbon sequestration within that soil, but also to if we’re enhancing the carbon, maybe we have also these other benefits that are associated with this, such as increased water storage within that soil, or water availability within that soil. And that’s important, especially for areas like here in the southeast, where during the summer, we can experience times of drought during the growing season. But also to with the implementation of notes yield and also cover crops, hopefully we’re seeing a reduction in carbon dioxide fluxes from that soil also. And I think probably the biggest thing that I see with the use of cover crops, and I’ll speak here for Alabama, we receive a lot of our rainfall from the time period of November, so possibly, probably around April and May. And we get a lot of heavy rainfall. And for those soils that have no cover on them, protecting them, no cover crops, the amount of erosion, the amount of spilling, taking place is unbelievable. So just from that point of view, I think Cover crops are beneficial, especially here where I’m at in North Alabama.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:07 So does soil health in Northern Alabama in that region, is that going to look different than elsewhere?

DEDRICK DAVIS 13:14 I think it will be different, I think it will be we can say reduced tillage and cover crops and things like that. But I think if we get very specific about it is going to be very different than say some other part of the country, I would hate to do a one size fits all approach for soil health, where you might have one thing for soil health in Iowa and you try to apply that same thing here in Alabama, it’s not going to work. Because our soils are very different. Our soils here in Alabama are highly weathered, I think inherently lower quality soils because of where we’re at because of the weathering that has taken place over time. So the needs for our soil is going to be different than say somewhere else. And I think you have to really consider that when it comes to soil health here in Alabama, and then also to considering cropping systems that are in place, what are we growing? And things like that? I know for instance, I say no till, but also to I know I’m not on the farm, but I know farmers have experienced times where if they implement no till sometimes they complain of compaction with long term no till. And that affects plant growth also. So what we do here is probably going to be different than somewhere.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:32 Now a lot of or so many research projects are also delve into this when it comes to land use practices. And can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of the variability that can occur when it comes to different land uses and the properties of the soil whether it’s hydraulic conductivity or water retention or other things like that?

DEDRICK DAVIS 14:52 I think when it comes to land uses, you’re going to see big differences as far as some of these soil hydraulic properties or processes that we’re usually concerned about. For instance, the one of the things that I’m studying here at Alabama A&M is looking at the impact the land uses on soil hydrology. Specifically, some of those land uses that we’re looking at include like, for instance, a loblolly pine plantation, also row crop agriculture, so soybean, and then also corn, a pasture is also included in that. And then if I can get my way, I would like to, hopefully within the next year or so six months to a year and set up a residential lawn site, because all of these land uses, they’re going to affect soil hydrology in different ways. For instance, a loblolly pine plantation is not going to be highly disturbed. And you’re probably going to have more macropores there that can facilitate water flow, high rates of water flow through that soil, say compared to highly managed row crop areas such as corn and soybeans, where you can have significant amounts of compaction that can occur that can reduce the flow of water through that soil. And then you have pasture, which again, it’s not as disturbed as the row crop area, but it’s going to affect hydrology in the soil differently than the row crops, then the loblolly pine. And then here, I mentioned in residential launch site that I would like to set up. And that is important because here in North Alabama, in Huntsville, we’re experiencing rapid growth. So a lot of the farmland that I see they’re growing houses now. They are turning into subdivisions, right. So that hydrology that we’ve seen those runoff, things like that infiltration that we’ve seen under these previous land use is obviously going to change with the conversion of this land from say, row crop agriculture to now housing subdivision. Right. So I believe, in order to be able to effectively manage water, we have to have an understanding of how these different land use influence to hydrology.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:08 Along with that, we’ve seen a lot of folks, a lot of our customers and other people that we interact with, there’s a lot of new research projects pointing towards agroforestry. And I was wondering if I could get your take on pros and cons of agroforestry? And the implications for it going forward?

DEDRICK DAVIS 17:24 I will be honest with you, I don’t think I have too many cons associated with it. I did my master’s research in riparian buffer. So a little bit of agroforestry there but also to one of the projects that I have here at Alabama A&M University is an agroforestry project in I think agroforestry, depending on what is being used for and I will our target here is for increasing the income potential for small size farms and minority landowners here in Alabama. agroforestry has looked as a way to do that, when we think of agroforestry from that perspective is something that can give farmers income in the long term with the growth of trees. But in this specific project, which is an alley cropping project in the area between the trees, the growth of specially vegetable crops can give farmers income in the short term. So you look at it, the income benefit is there. But also to I think the benefit is there from an environmental and sustainability point of view. Because the trees are going to be there for a long time. Our hope is is that the trees are contributing to mastering carbon, building up the amount of carbon in soil, but also to, that growth of the vegetables can help to produce food, I guess, for different populations that like those specialty vegetable crops, especially with the cost of produce and food these days and inflation. I think can be something that’s beneficial.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:06 So do you see that then as as more so more sustainable, but also more resilient. Practice when it comes to to growing, especially within the face of like you mentioned, you talked about you know in inflation and other global issues right now, but especially within, you know, in the face of climate change and, and how the climate is, you know, becoming much less predictable or stable year to year.

DEDRICK DAVIS 19:32 I do think it can be viewed as resilient. And I think it can help reduce the impact of climate change, if you can help to reduce the impact of climate change with agroforestry. But also to I think the important thing is people these days, I think, want they’re food more localized. So there’s another route for you to get food that is grown within your local area if that farm is successful utilizing agroforestry for the growth of vegetables like we’re doing in this project that we have going on here. So I think it’s benefits from both of those perspective.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:07 Are you seeing much luck with adoption?

DEDRICK DAVIS 20:09 I think that adoption, people are open to it. Our specific project is geared towards the minority farmer.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:15 Okay.

DEDRICK DAVIS 20:16 So they’re pretty open to adoption of it. And again, loblolly pine, those are the trees that were using also, pecan trees. Were using that in our study here. So they’re very open to it. But also to, I think they’re open to it because it gives them multiple income streams. So they can grow the crops, they have the trees, and in some instances with others that are doing research here in Alabama, they also look at grazing goats, okay, within an agroforestry or civil pastoral system, right. So there’s a lot of different routes and a lot of interest here for people to go and the interest is there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:54 Can you give us a brief introduction into into biochar, what it is how it’s used, and its importance and future uses?

DEDRICK DAVIS 21:00 So with biochar I think the original interest in it came from the terra preta soils that are in South America and the interest there. But here in the United States, I think when there was interested in biofuels and the pyrolysis process, and it’s used to produce those biofuels, when this process is used, you get three products, which is the fuel the oil, and then also the ash from the biomass that has been burned. And with biofuels, the thought was if you’re going to be taken off this vegetation for the production of biofuels, what can we do to make sure that it’s a sustainable process, and the thought was that we have this asset is a stable form of carbon that can be returned back to the soil, and therefore we could potentially increase the carbon in the soil sequester carbon. So that is where the interest in biochar originated from, or at least this is what I’m familiar with. I’m doing my time and my work with biochar was that you can return it as a soil amendment that can be used to enhance the physical, chemical and biological properties of soil, for the production of biofuels.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:13 How is biochar applied to the soil? And what are some of those specific characteristics that it can help improve?

DEDRICK DAVIS 22:20 The biochar has been applied, like I said, as a solvent with the hopes that it can enhance soil fertility, but also to enhance the physical properties of that soil, and then also affect the biological properties of the soil. All with the thought of enhancing all three of those some of the ways in which it has been applied and some of the things that we see that have taken place from studies that have been conducted is, for instance, if you apply the biochar to the soil is it looks way different than the soil itself. For instance, the biochar will reduce bulk density or soil compaction, but also potentially increase the water holding capacity of the soil due to its characteristics, but also to how it enhances the porosity of the soil through the reduction of bone density. So things like that is the ways that people looked at it as a soil.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:15 In your mind, were some of the next steps. What are some things that we can do to improve that use of biochar?

DEDRICK DAVIS 23:21 I think next steps and I’m speaking strictly from a research purposes, understand how it performs long term. A lot of the early studies with biochar have been in a lab, or as there have been field studies, those field studies have been very short term field studies. So collecting the long term data to see how it impacts the physical, biological, and chemical properties of soils is going to be very important, but also to I think, in understanding how it’s going to impact crop yield and things of that nature is going to be important. And the more data that we get better of an idea we’ll have other use of biochar as a soil amendment. So I think those are probably going to be the next important steps for biochar usage. But then too, I know there’s also people who are looking at it from an environmental perspective and looking at it’s impacts on processes such as reducing the flow of chemicals or things like that in soil. So I think it’s very important that we continue to evaluate biochar and its potential impact

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:26 for the other soil scientists and so physicists in our audience, what are some of the more specific measurements you’re taking or how is your lab and your field research set up?

DEDRICK DAVIS 24:36 Well a lot of our work has been with evaluating the impact of biochar physical properties of soil specifically soil water retention, and thermal property. Because my thought has always been if you have biochar, you’re going to apply it to the soil and then you’re probably going to mix it in or incorporate it into the soil the upper part of the soil or near soil surface environment. And when I say near surface soil and soil surface environment I’m talking about from the soil surface down to maybe 15 centimeters in depth. So when you add this biochar there, to me that influences a lot of these physical processes and properties that we see that occur in soil. To me, the ones that are the most important are going to be soil water retention, because that biochar could potentially enhance the amount of water that is retained in soil. So one of the things that we’ve tried to do is we tried to measure the impacts those biochar on slow water retention from saturation to oven dry condition, near the soil surface, near the soil surface, you have a lot of processes that are occurring, specifically heat and water movement that play a role in these processes such as the evaporation of water from soil, and we know that near the soil surface, our soil water contents can vary from near saturation to extremely dry. So having an understanding of the soil water retention curve from saturation to oven dry conditions are very dry conditions can be, in my opinion very important to when it comes to modeling, or having an idea of how biochar impacts these other hydrologic processes such as the evaporation that occurs in soil. The other aspect that we’re looking at is looking at the impact of biochar on soil thermal properties. There’s been a lot of work looking at the impact of biochar on soil fertility, soil biological properties and processes. Also physical properties. There’s been quite a bit of work done there. But when we look at his impact on soil thermal properties, there’s not a lot of work that has been done there. I think the last time I looked at the number of articles that have been published where people have evaluated the impact of biochar on soil thermal properties, I think it was probably around 40 articles that have been published. This is a low amount of research when you consider biochar research has really been going on heavily for probably like the last 15 years. Those are what our studies are concerned with.

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:18 So can you talk about poultry litter, what it is how it is used as a soil amendment as well.

DEDRICK DAVIS 27:24 In short, poultry litter is the bedding that is usually taken up from poultry production houses, and it’s looked at as a deep fertilizer source for crops because it’s high in nitrogen. Alabama is a one of the leading states in broiler chicken production. In the United States, I think we’re like, maybe number three, four, maybe five, somewhere in there, but we’re near the top. And so we have a lot of poultry litter here in Alabama that poultry litter is usually applied to pastures as a way to dispose of that poultry litter here within the last year it’s been beat, it’s been applied to row crops, because of the increase in fertilizer prices. So application of this poultry litter is occurring every year here in Alabama. The other thing with poultry litter is when you apply this filter later, a lot of times it can be broadcast. So surface apply, can then potentially incorporated mixed in with the soil. So there are some environmental concerns that arise from that one being runoff, but also see you have ammonia that is volatilization that is occurring, but also to the odor that occurs with it. So it’s not a very pleasant odor. So you have all these environmental concerns that occur. And one of the things that has that researchers have developed is a way to place this poultry litter below the soil surface with the implement that can basically open up a trench in the soil, place the poultry litter probably about three centimeters below the soil surface, and then put another layer on top of it being a soil physicists and one of the things that I’m interested about is water and heat movement near the soil surface. It became an interesting setup for me because you have sort of this non homogeneous system where you have soil poultry litter and soil underneath. Yeah, and this like I said, is very close to the soil surface. And some of those processes that are occurring that I mentioned with biochar heat and water movement, they can be impacted in my opinion through the placement of that poultry litter that is there because you have this non homogeneous system or heterogeneous system where you have soil poultry litter, soil, poultry litter is going to retain water way differently than the soil, but also to is going to affect the water flow differently compared to the soil. So that is where my interest in poultry litter stems from.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:51 Alright. Do you have any preliminary results from from any of your studies yet?

DEDRICK DAVIS 29:56 Yes, we do. One of the things that we’ve been looking at is we’ve been like In that the effects of poultry litter or comparing water vapor absorption with in poultry litter to that of soil using a water vapor absorption analyzer from METER, we looked at water vapor absorption isotherms for poultry litter and we looked at the drying and also the wetting and what we saw was was that there’s a considerable amount of hysteresis that occurs with the poultry litter compared to the hysteresis from the two soils that we evaluated one being a sandy soil and the other one being a silty clay loam soil these different degrees of hysteresis leads me to think that the poultry litter impacts water movement differently than the say the to soil if we only had soil there. So to me that sort of gives me the opinion that hey, we have to consider the effects of this poultry litter and the impact it might have on water movement in the soil, especially under dry conditions when compared to the soil itself especially if we have a system where we have soil poultry litter and soil.

BRAD NEWBOLD 31:07 So, really quickly for the non soil scientists can you describe hysteresis and what that entails.

DEDRICK DAVIS 31:14 So, soil undergoes wetting and drying daily, we can have drying that occurs, but then also too we can have wetting that occurs. In soils, we measure what is called the soil water retention curve and we look at the relationship between what we call matric potential, and water content. That matric potentials tells us how tightly that water is held in soil and usually the matric potential gets more negative. So as held with greater energy, as the soil gets drier, it would take more energy for us to extract that water from soil. As it gets dry, we can have a drying curve, but we can also have a wetting curve. Even though we might be at the same water content, our matric potential is not going to be the same depending on whether we’re wedding or drying because of properties of that soil, whether it’s the porosity or whether it’s the surface effects. So when I say surface effects, these will be related more so to the texture and things of that nature is going to determine what we see as far as that hysteresis that is that occurs. And that hysteresis which can be viewed as the difference in water content at the same matric when we’re have a wetting and a drying

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:35 With a poultry litter then just based off the characteristics how much needs to be applied for it to really make an effect on improving the soil you know, soil health or the various soil characteristics that you’re looking at.

DEDRICK DAVIS 32:47 Usually, within that culture litter is applied, it’s applied based on nitrogen content what studies have shown because Alabamian and previous to my arrival here, um, there were some researchers who actually did long term studies looking at poultry litter application along with cover cropping and reduced tillage that poultry litter when it’s applied, it can be very beneficial to the properties of the soil from like chemical and biological perspective, but also to a physical perspective. I know one specific study that was conducted by a former grad student here, they actually saw enhancement of soil hydraulic conductivity and some of the physical properties such as a reduction in compaction or bone density with the use of poultry litter for a long, long time. So that poultry litter has a big effect as far as what we see as far as soil health, because you’re basically adding them on a grant an organic material to the soil, that provides nutrients, but also to it does a very good job of improving the physical properties of that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 33:56 one of your other research topics is looking into the application of biopolymers within soil for soil stabilization and other applications kind of more on the geotechnical side of things. Can you give us a little introduction to bio polymers and how they’re used in in soil stabilization.

DEDRICK DAVIS 34:15 So on the geotechnical side, there’s been interest in the use of bio polymers and biopolymers being things such as that can gum things such as jellen, gum agar, those types of things. And researchers have looked to apply these bio polymers to soils to enhance the mechanical geotechnical properties of the soils. And when you think of xanthan gum, I tell people, if you haven’t heard of it, if you eat yogurt, go and look on the back of that yogurt container. And xanthan gum is usually used in the food industry as a thickener for certain foods you have given a thicker appearance or to enhance the thickness of that Food with these bio polymers, they also have an impact on soils. Because these bio polymers, once they’re wet, they sort of are like sticky. And so they can bring a non cohesive soil, we typically think of saying together enhance the stabilization of those non cohesive soils. The reason that they’re biopolymers is in the past, people have used amendments to do this. But those amendments have not been as eco friendly or environmentally friendly biopolymers, that they’re going to be biodegradable, and are thought to have very little effect on the environment. So that’s where the interest comes from, with these biopolymers. Again, if you look at some of the previous methods that were used, such as semen, things like that, you emit a lot of co2 in the production of x. So, from that perspective, there’s a lot of interest in these bio polymers for enhancing soil stabilization. The project that we have is understanding how these bio polymers enhance soil stabilization, or some of these chemical properties of the soil. In order to understand how it enhances those properties, you have to understand how it would enhance or affect some of the physical properties, such as water retention, water movement in soils, the thermal properties in soils, to me, it becomes very important to understand those also in order to get a better understanding of its impacts on the mechanical and geotechnical.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:31 You’ve talked about some of these biopolymers being biodegradable, as they degrade, does that then also degrade the stability of the soil that they’ve been interacting with?

DEDRICK DAVIS 36:40 Yes, it could grade to the stability of the soil. I think when it comes to this, from what I’ve seen, there hasn’t been a lot of research on how long the stabilization holds up to the biopolymer being applied. And I think that is where one of our other faculty members here is actually looking at the stability and how long is it going to be stable in that soil? That is a very important question. I know from some of the preliminary experiments that we’ve seen by this biopolymer to the soil, but over time, you can see some changes in the soil as we go through repeated measurements with the same soil samples. So there’s some some questions there about how it degrades after you’ve applied it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:21 In our last few minutes, we want to kind of switch gears and talk more on the social side of things when it comes to being a soil scientist. You’ve gone from Alabama a&m, which is a historically black college or university, you moved to Iowa State, and then back again, can you talk a little bit about your experience when it comes to diversity within the sciences, and what you’re doing currently, or what you have done to help improve diversity within ag and Soil Sciences,

DEDRICK DAVIS 37:50 the example of going from Alabama leading into Iowa. And I will admit to you that was a big shock. Because two very different environments, I think when it comes to understanding the value of this to diversity is very important, because I think students have to have an idea of how to operate in all different environments. And being an Alabama was in a course in a historically black college university in a predominantly black student population. So it was something that I became used to, but then going to Iowa State got me out of my comfort zone, because it’s a totally different environment, predominantly white institution, Alabama a&m 6000 students, I will state when I left I think was right around 30,000. So even navigating that whole thing is pretty important and can enhance the student with certain skills. And I think being able to operate within those different environments becomes important. But also to I think it speaks to the importance of knowing your different audience, and how to get along with those different audiences. What I did at Alabama a&m university, I couldn’t do at Iowa State, I was very comfortable at Alabama a&m, not comfortable at Iowa State. So that forced me to get out of my comfort zone and be proactive, and getting to know people. So I think that is very important when it comes to my own research group and the diversity in it. I tried to have a diverse research. And when I say that verse I mean nationality, racial diversity, and it’s something that I’m proud of, because in my research group right now, we have African American students, a few Indian students, a Haitian student, just joined. We also have a Chinese scientists. We have a Jamaican student, and even though a large number of us are, what we would consider black, just being from those different countries brings diversity there and difference of opinions that I’ve really grown to appreciate. I think also too, by having this diversity in my group has helped us to consider how we communicate with one another. Because the norms of one culture are not going to be the norms of another culture. Yeah, so you come to appreciate that. And I think my students have come to appreciate that. Also, over the last few years, as we’ve grown in number and as we’ve grown in diversity, and I look at it as actually preparing my students for what they might encounter once they leave Alabama a&m. So it’s very important to me, and then I think, also to that other diversity piece. Because students once they leave here, the world is not going to look like Alabama a&m. So I tried to take advantage of every opportunity I can to get them away from Alabama a&m and put them in a, in an environment that might be more of a reflection of what they might encounter once they leave Alabama a&m. So hopefully, they’re getting the best of Alabama a&m, but also the world.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:06 We’re out of time here. But is there anything else that you would like to add? What is what does the future hold for your research? What are you excited about here in the next few years?

DEDRICK DAVIS 41:16 I think I’m excited about from a research perspective. For one I like the different projects that we have going on, they’re very interesting to me from build the lab study. And they have different applications were working in soil health, which in my opinion, is very important because to me, everything starts with the soil. Soil Health provides us the ability to take a holistic approach to a route to improving soil, I think that is important, we have to consider not only the chemical or the biological, or just the physical by itself, we have to consider it all together. And being able to take that and apply it to something that is important for the state of Alabama, such as cotton production, to me is very important. So it shows that what we’re doing is important on a local state and national basis, but also to when it comes to the project, such as the one with the biopolymer, being able to have an understanding of how these bio polymers impact. Soil physical properties and processes is going to be important because it’s going to help understand how to utilize these bio polymers to enhance soil stabilization for let’s say, the Department of Defense or for the army. So being able to see the application there is what I’m excited about, as we take on these projects. And as we do more and more work, being able to see the growth in the students and being able to see the growth in my research group. And the interesting individuals that come into that research group, which I’m appreciative of, is something that I’m excited about, because it goes from a point of where we’re training students, but then eventually, as the students progress through their program, they started training me on what they’re finding, and that is what I get excited about when that I guess when that switch takes place. I’m not the lead, but they’re leading me. And for the PhD student I have that is what is happening right now. And every day I get excited about that. And it keeps me coming back here to see what she has to tell me to see what she’s learned and to see how her thinking progress has progressed. And those are the things I’m excited about going forward.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:41 All right. It looks like our time is up for today. Thank you again, Dedrick for joining us and sharing your research and being able to talk with us today. It’s it’s really been a very interesting, fascinating conversation.

DEDRICK DAVIS 43:53 All right. Well, thank you, Brad. Thank you for the invitation. And I’ve enjoyed this.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:57 Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time on We Measure the World.

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Here are 10 key quotes relevant to soil health, agriculture, and sustainable practices:

1. “I grew up probably about 30 miles away from here in a small rural community… My family comes from a farming family.” - Dedrick Davis (2:15)

2. “I noticed that he always did cotton. There were never any rotations. No till was not used. So you can really tell its impact on the cotton that was grown.” - Dedrick Davis (2:31)

3. “The thought was that we have this ash… it’s a stable form of carbon that can be returned back to the soil, and therefore we could potentially increase the