Flux scientists have unique and diverse career paths. George speaks from his experience as an inventor and matchmaker-of-sorts between people inside of academia, and industries who can benefit from their knowledge. Kosana shares her motivation for becoming an Extension Specialist, some of the technical and scientific challenges that come with her public-facing role, and advice for younger scientists.
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In this episode of Meet the Fluxers, we learn about catalyzing the adoption of eddy-covariance flux measurements for practical decision-making through the work of George and Kosana. George co-founded CarbonDew, a community of practice connecting flux expertise with industry needs, and Kosana leads monitoring campaigns as an extension specialist at UC Davis. They discuss the potential for reduced-cost monitoring and the advantages of continuous ecosystem-level monitoring over occasional sampling, allowing for more robust and scalable real-time management in farming, forestry, fire prevention and carbon sequestration. Their experience emphasize the importance of making ground-truthing data and their interpretations accessible to stakeholders and how collaborating with stakeholders and industry can inspire research questions tailored to real-world needs and lead to practical solutions and protocols for sustainable resources management and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Transcript
Jess: What inspired you to start CarbonDew, and how have scientists responded to that?
George: CarbonDew was founded by myself and Stefan Metzger, my colleague and friend formerly from NEON. Now he is the owner of AtmoFacts. This is an environmental company which does mapping of fluxes. We were a little bit tired that we have excellent tools in the scientific community and they don’t migrate outside of academia. We have tools which can monitor irrigation very, very precisely, or they monitor how much carbon is getting pulled into the soil, canopy growth, photosynthesis, all of this. We have, like, an electronic microscope looking at this. Outside of academia, it is not used, or it was used very, very little.
So, we decided to establish this and say, “Okay, how can we catalyze adoption of these tools from purely academic research, into the real world for decision-making applications; how you farm, how you manage forests, how you detect leaks, all of this. We are trying to connect the people who have expertise in the tools with people who could benefit most from them. And by benefit, I mean the societal benefit in general, but also the economic benefits. In order for these things to happen, the technology has to be transferred from academia. That transfer requires somebody like CarbonDew.
Jess: What are some of those specific suggestions?
George: We're not at the protocol stage yet, but we started talking. First, of course, you need to measure correctly, and that's the certifiable part which will be published, maybe in 3-4 weeks. But then we're going to pick it up at CarbonDew, and we're going to develop now full protocols. When you have this clean data, how do you interpret them and what's your next decision?
We need to separate continuous observation from occasional checks. So, what currently is done on soils for example, on soil fertility, there are occasional checks. Every five years, somebody comes and looks at the soil carbon content, which is directly related to soil fertility, canopy growth, and they see how much carbon there is. It's an important measurement, but it's very expensive. It's very hard to do down to the recommend depths of one meter. Currently, what's being done, they do it down to 30 cm, and they do ten or five samples per field. This is enough to see the final result. It's not enough to manage carbon year to year, and sometimes month to month.
Flux stations and chamber flux measurements are direct measurements that observe continuously, like weather, with heat flux, carbon dioxide flux, water flux, and evapotranspiration. The moment we come from academia into the real world, we don't have to look at carbon, for example, as only a greenhouse gas. We can start looking at the carbon as a resource. Carbon is responsible for soil fertility. The more carbon you have in the soil, the better your soil is, and for canopy growth. We start looking at this this way, it is much better to monitor this resource continuously and to make your decisions depending on what is happening in the actual field.
Jess: Kosana, you have a unique position as an extension specialist. How does your work bring those external interests in?
Kosana: George and I have a similar motivation. As extension specialists, we get statewide responsibility. I'm strategically so well-positioned to be at an institution that is well-respected among farmers, state agencies, and non-profits. Also, being close to the state capital (Sacramento), I would have different experiences connecting to stakeholders. One of the most important is the good reputation that UC Cooperative Extension System has. I would use all kinds of resources to connect to Californians. My predecessor would let me know some of the questions that he has received during his long career year and hasn’t had time to respond to yet. Based on his experience, I would hear that things have changed since he was able to do measurements and put some value on what was needed back then, and how the management of agricultural fields have changed. That will reflect in evapotranspiration and carbon fluxes. We need to put in that new number.
State agencies respect the Cooperative Extension. I often get contracts to do work measuring with eddy covariance very carefully the changes in management. It's very important to provide numbers on evapotranspiration to inform sustainable groundwater management and carbon neutrality goals. With eddy covariance and the sensor that measures both water and carbon (e.g. LI-COR’s open path CO2 and H2O gas analyzer, https://www.licor.com/support/LI-7500/home.html), we target those two goals. We have covered many landscapes where we have nontypical management, like cover cropping, and the season has expanded into the whole year (i.e., perennialization).
We have a pretty good relationship with our sponsors, with our stakeholders. We were invited to the have a luncheon where the farmers invited all their neighbors. We would be expanding our network. I really enjoy the Women in Almonds events. There are women from the Almond Board and women who are almond farmers that connect together. I really was lucky to have many different sources of making connections, and they keep expanding.
Jess: Do you ever get contacted if they're having issues on the farm?
Kosana: I do it get frequent phone calls. I get emails if there is a weather station where rain is not being recorded. Sometimes, neighbors see those weird structures we put in orchards and ask, “What is this about? Why are you managing your orchards differently? Why is it so messy in the ground with that cover crop? Don’t you know how to grow almonds?” They would hear about the measurements we do, and some benefits that we can quantify. We would hear, “Cover crops have so many benefits for pollinators’ habitats, soil health, rain capture and storage!” But they will come at the cost of increased water use. Then, I would hear farmers say, “I know I use less water where we have cover crops, I just need you to come and put a number on it.” The word spreads because neighbors talk and update each other on what is the new innovation that they did in their farming. Then, we come and quantify, how would that benefit [the state if it were implemented] statewide?
Jess: How does the work tie in between the extension work with the nearby farms, and fire management?
Kosana: Eddy covariance towers and the profilers we install with them can be used in any landscape. When the state approached Housen Chu and me to do this research in redwoods, we brainstormed for some time with state scientists the numerous benefits we can take advantage of. I reached out to extensionists in the county where the research is supposed to be done for their own experiences from being there, surrounded with the communities that are impacted by this forest. We based our research questions on many different stakeholder inputs and brainstorming with different scientists that have different perspectives.
All our measurements will go out to the same data users and will be publicly available in AmeriFlux for as much use as possible. Because I'm part of UC Davis, I intend to hand this data to my students to do their research, and improve their scientific insights by having real datasets of very non-typical conditions. Redwoods are not typical in California. They're very typical here (in Northern California), but they have been observed yet because they are in complex terrain. We will have evapotranspiration measurements, CO2 measurements, and then complex terrain science in redwoods.
Jess: By “complex terrain”, do you mean that the tower would have to be exceptionally tall to get over those canopies?
Kosana: One challenge was the canopy height, but they're also on undulating terrain, where we have a slope that can drain the fluxes. We have to account for those. It is impossible to find flat land where redwoods grow that has enough fetch for our measurements.
Jess: CarbonDew suggested that flux data from private flux towers be added to some sort of blockchain so that there's accessible history of flux data. Is anyone willing to take that advice?
George: CarbonDew has over 220 organizations, and some of them are blockchain organizations. When we look at weather monitoring, we have statewide mesonets, nation-wide national weather service, then we have WMO (World Meteorological Organization) weather stations. They all produce weather data. This weather data will then be used to tune weather models. This is typically satellite-based, remote sensing-based weather models. So, you extrapolate or interpolate between the stations. That system works. We don't have the same thing with flux measurements. We have over 2100 locations, some historic, some active, all over the world. Right now, [the data,] it’s just sitting there. A few people use it for modeling, but inside academia.
Some of those stations, they’re actually private. They’re watching the magical thing called “water use efficiency” (WUE). It's how much carbon you take, how much growth you produce, per [unit of] water. The few people in agriculture who know it, they use it. They use it very carefully. They don't want anybody else to get hold of this particular data because it's their know-how. That's fair. However, we still have 2100 data sets which aren't used anywhere. Some of the newer stations, newer companies, they are willing to share for a small price, or a subscription. Some of the companies want to sell this data. They will install the measurements, run the measurements, clean it, and they would like to sell you the data. LI-COR Professional Services is one example of it.
And there are companies that would like to extrapolate. They will say, like, “We're very good at remote sensing, and we're very good at modeling. If you give us this data, we will extrapolate it. I want to emphasize that carbon movement, what an ecologist will call “greenhouse gas”, the person who studies soil or canopy growth will call “soil fertility” or “canopy growth rate”. It can be very beneficial. For example, if you look at China and how much [funding] they have put into that kind of research, they have had remarkable results over the last 30-40 years in how they improved their yields, their water consumption, and efficiency of irrigation. We are talking about improvements 10, 20, 40 times. They keep it private, but the results are very impressive.
The United States has been doing this for years as well, so they need to continue doing this, but it's all going too slow. We already have these tools. They're not awfully expensive. They are not awfully complex anymore. It’s all automated. We can be using them. Just imagine that in our weather forecasts, we didn't have a single weather station in the world. That's what we have right now.
Jess: Why is it that industry trusts you, and is willing to follow these recommendations from CarbonDew?
George: First of all, half to two-thirds of CarbonDew is industry. Industry succeeds because industry competes. By nature of this competition, one of the important things for industry is to remain private. Somebody in the industry might have a question, and they will write to Stefan or myself and say, like, “Look, we are an oil and gas industry, and we are looking for leak detection.” There are different drones you can use, or mapping from space, and so on, but they don't have enough resolution. Drones are very bothersome and space doesn’t have enough resolution for these smaller leaks. Of course, we have at CarbonDew people who have already done that. Then, we connect the oil and gas company to somebody knowledgeable and they talk one on one. That's the only way. Because, if they [publicly] said, “We want leak detection”, then all of their competitors also want leak detection. Suddenly, it becomes crowded and everybody loses interest. So, it's very important for them to have tailored solutions for themselves.
Maoya: What have flux scientists and academia benefited most from communicating with flux experts in the private sector?
George: They can literally benefit by having some of the projects, or part of their projects, funded by industry. A long time ago, FLUXNET Canada was largely defunded. This defunding happened so quick that they didn’t even have money to pull towers out of the forests. We thought, “Oh goodness, Canada got hit so hard. It's going to be very hard for them to maintain stations.” Well, now they have more stations than they had before. They started partnering with forestry, with agricultural industry. And they started bringing them useful things. Then, industry started funding a lot of their research. Now, how industry benefits?
Super simple example. The majority of irrigation right now is done based on potential evapotranspiration. That number is not how much water is lost, it’s how much water could be lost, for given sunlight, temperature, and wind. In many cases, people overirrigate by 20-40%. That’s groundwater, electricity or fuel, and carbon footprint. At the same time, they cannot arbitrarily say, “I will irrigate 40% less,” because they're going to lose the crop. We cannot ask them to risk their livelihood. Now, if you put a flux station to measure evapotranspiration next to that irrigation field, you would know exactly how much water you lost yesterday, the last five days, last 10 days. You'll start saving 20-40% of the water, electricity or fuel, and amortization of equipment.
Kosana: Private companies that have the technology for remote sensing and land surface modeling need fluxers coming from academia to help them interpret the data. It is a huge amount of data they are capable to capture. A fluxer would make sense of that data and the uncertainties.
George: With one station I could cover, let's say, a hundred hectares, but I want to cover a thousand hectares. I don’t want to have too many stations, because I still have to hire somebody to run them or pay for the services. Is there a cheaper way that I can have fewer stations, but scale them over my thousand hectares? That's where remote sensing and modeling comes in, and there are companies already setting up to do that. That's all happening right now. Five years ago, none of them existed. In another five years, some of them will become very large and established. Others will fall apart. That’s normal competition. There are a lot of smart people in remote sensing and modeling getting into this.
Maoya: What is the mindset? Or, what allows this? Obviously, people that you're working with understand a little bit of the uncertainty, probably not all of it, but understand how the more data we get, the more we understand. What happened in the past can sometimes affect our projections in unpredictable ways.
Kosana: A lot of farmers, for example, that I work with have Master’s or Ph.D. degrees from UC Davis. They sit on commodity boards - they are groups of farmers that farm the same crop. They would identify the needs for that year’s research. Then they would fund those priorities they have. It's really impressive to see how much scientifically those are informed by the grower doing their own experimental fields and science. Within those groups, they work with a lot of scientists and gain a lot of knowledge. I do get insightful questions, comments, and challenging ideas that keeps us building new projects with our skillsets. It's incredible how much they want to know about the uncertainties of our method and learn more, join us in the field when we install and help us with things. I am very fortunate for how fruitful that collaboration is and how much we learn from each other both ways.
Jess: Kosana, before you came to UC Davis you were working on rice in Arkansas. How did you get involved in carbon neutrality research
Kosana: Before working on rice paddies and seeing how to reduce [their] methane emissions, I was also working in Spain on my Ph.D. using flux towers for irrigation of peaches and table grapes. So, I started already back in my grad school understanding how rewarding it is to work directly with society and offer them results that can impact their management. But also, I was understanding how complex it is to quantify evapotranspiration (ET) in perennials, whether those are orchards or forests. But particularly, orchards and vineyards with their different management; crop load, soils, planting density, row orientation.
There were so many things that bring uncertainty, and us wanting some uniform values we can hand to one grower and whole group of growers in the same region, that's a challenge. And also, a rewarding feeling of helping somebody, especially those who host our experiments was something that motivated me to later to work in Arkansas, expanding from ET to greenhouse gas emissions. Getting the job at UC Davis as an Extensionist was the ultimate goal. I couldn’t have even dreamed of that, that I would be working with different communities in California and at the same time mentoring students, and being that bridge and public-facing role in this state where there are so many challenges and so many people open to hear our solutions.
Jess: How did you two start collaborating?
Kosana: I'm coming from a country where there isn't a single eddy covariance tower. Whereas, our lab runs around 20-30 towers, depending on the season. I was very motivated to research methods that are giving similar results as eddy covariance measurement that were still measurement based, but with a reduced amount of equipment, so that they can be affordable areas of the world where there aren’t eddy covariance measurements. At one AGU presentation, George got interested in how well the improvements and different versions of that method, called surface renewal, were found in our rice research in Arkansas. Whenever you collect eddy covariance data, you can also test surface renewal, calibrated it, see where the gaps are between the two [methods]. George really showed lot of interest in that reduced-equipment method. He was envisioning already that society will need to have more measurement resolution.
George: Yeah, I was very impressed there is a way to get very simple results with much less expense. Well, it turns out there is a way to reduce the cost of eddy covariance literally in the way that you design the instrument. But, if there wasn’t, you can use much simpler measurements and get similar results. But right now, at this stage, there are eddy covariance systems so cheap that it doesn't make sense, at least from the company standpoint, to start investing in this research.
Jess: Is the surface renewal…Are you talking about groundwater?
Kosana: No, it refers to atmospheric and atmospheric turbulence.
George: Basically, you don’t need a sonic anemometer. It used to be $10,000+. Now, it's $1,500+. Surface renewal is still a great thing. It’s just the sonic anemometer prices dropped so much that there is not much advantage.
Kosana: Yes, I do want to give a shout out to our student, Olmo Guerrero Medina, who is working on further improving that method in our lab with Kyaw Tha Paw U and all of the measurements we do. So, it's still getting it improvements.
Jess: George, try not to sound so disappointed that the price decreased.
George: No no no no! If we talk about surface renewal as a fundamental method, it has a huge advantage. It can measure intermediate plots. THE HOLY GRAIL. Eddy covariance measures [an approximate area of] 100 times its height. Then you have [the flux] chamber. It's [representative of about] a square foot. There is nothing in between. There are so many users for these intermediate plots. Surface renewal can get there, because it's not [height] limited. It doesn't have this one-to-one hundred height limitation.
Jess: Kosana, has working with stakeholders ever changed the direction of your scientific research?
Kosana: A very important lesson from one Feminist Research Institute class we had here to at UC Davis was that we work with people's land where their livelihood is, and we absolutely have to adjust our research questions to what is relevant to them. Although I was understanding that, or getting to understanding that by myself, I was so grateful I was there to hear that reminder. I hope everyone hears that reminder as often as needed. For us, it's just one research question out of many or our careers.
At the time of designing my experiments, I get large input from growers that already shapes my initial research. Over time, as we see results, I'm always open to reshape our research questions to communicate to our sponsors what are the benefits of other ways of seeing things. Let me give you one example. We measured that cover crops in orchards don’t increase the evapotranspiration necessarily. We see it as a system and we have two layers of canopy and one is in shade of another. It is transpiring from below instead of heating it when the sun would hit the soil directly. One way of framing it was, let's see what the water use efficiency is, how much crop we get per drop. We can quantify that, and the more sustainable and the regenerative the orchard was, there was less almonds. But then farmers reminded me, “Hey, we harvest the sheep meat and have pasture here.” That's triple the crop on one land. Whereas, we just quantify one outcome, almonds. So, I thought, “Oh my god, that is so interesting.” Somebody told me from the almond industry, “With an increase of price of water and the decrease in the price in almonds, maybe we want to target the lower value, where for less water we still produce pretty high.” Those are some of the things that maybe we don't always have the mental energy to sit and focus [on]. People whose livelihoods depend on it will come and remind us. Also, some of our growers have their orchards in their backyard, and have picnics with their children and go read books there, in the backyard. So, they have a little park area, recreation area, as well. Those are not quantifiable or as straightforward as maybe a research paper requires us to put.
George: As scientists, will typically focus on our research, on our topics, on our curiosities. But when we started talking to a very larger farmer in Nebraska and Colorado with a lot of plots, a lot of different crops, we were testing one of our eddy covariance stations with focus on evapotranspiration. And he says, “I like all of these interesting things. [But] I'm a grandfather with seven grandchildren. I have 60 pivots. I want you to free my time for my grandchildren and tell me, ‘Pivot number two, one inch; pivot number 36, 2 inches; pivot number 60, half inch.’” That type of software, which couples science to the decision-making, is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, there will be no use of that fundamental research.
Kosana: Kyaw Tha Paw U and I are joining our forces to run one lab where we do applied and theoretical research, and combine our two different roles in academia and co-advise all of our students. Even the modelers in our group will have to go with me to do measurements, which I think will build better scientists if they do have some exposure to measurements and can critically evaluate if their model is missing something.
Frost protection is also a biometeorology question and we often do it in California. The freezing of the water on the surface of the trees and the plants will increase the temperature in the crops and also will prevent temperature under the ice cover going lower.
Jess: How have your findings on carbon neutrality impacted foresters and industry stakeholders?
Kosana: I remember working with Ben Runkle, we celebrated with our rice growers. They were the first carbon-credit rice growers that were awarded because of their methane reduction by using alternate wetting and drying. We keep measuring in different landscapes how fluxes of water and carbon are simultaneously impacted. I hope putting numbers on all these different practices will help. Our data is always public and I'm available, whoever contacts me, to speak about our research in the hopes that science gets more into policy and accessible to people.
George: If we talk about carbon trading now, most of it is done based on emission factors or some kind of models. When you start looking at emission factors, they are generally correct on average. If you have a flux station or soil flux measurements, you can develop a specific emission factor for that area, for that crop, that land use, that season. Partially I think why carbon markets were not successful, is because they were not tailormade for the person who sells carbon, and they were using methods which were inappropriate.
Kosana: I would also encourage people that are nervous to respond to invitations to present their results to stakeholders to try. Nobody is ready for those talks at the beginning. Over time, you become a better communicator. No matter how nervous you get to respond to invitations, please go share your results with people that can really use it. Reach out to, maybe, science communicators to learn a little bit about how to do it in you are too nervous. Don't hesitate to do it.
George: When you think in terms of resource management, it's much easier to translate your findings on the fundamental side to something practical.
Kosana: Also, fluxers, although we say that we work in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, should go a little bit deeper into the soul and think on the centuries-scale. Whereas, we think on the tenth of a second scale, and what happening fastly in the atmosphere. Link that more to the soil. If we quantify the soil carbon sequestration potential that might not hold for a long time. We need to take soil samples to see how much of that signal is in our above ground measurements.
Jess: What are your hopes for this CAL-FIRE project?
Kosana: We are hoping to have these measurements long term, starting from initial questions on how much fog might be declining and impacting fluxes to be different, both in water and carbon; how much we can inform new science of complex terrain; forest floor management for large fire prevention; cultural burning; and also quantify how much of that CO2 flux ends up above the forest. Some of it is consumed, going through the canopy, in photosynthesis. All those numbers will help us in that location. But also, we hope to upscale it and help remote sensing and have more idea of what's happening in redwoods, where there was no previous knowledge. We hope to run these experiments once we have this huge investment into infrastructure to keep adding sensors, maybe for VOCs or different research questions, in the future as we learn year by year what we see in our results.
Jess: Are you going to be setting up in sites that have already burned
Kosana: Currently, it's in California State Demonstration Forest, which are supposed to be for research. We are more hopeful for the future that maybe in the vicinity of the towers will have some floor management that we can see if it's within the footprint. These humongous towers of 200 feet height will be there and we will work with the CAL-FIRE people that are there on the ground to protect the measurements we have, also because the footprint of such tall towers is mixed from large distances.
Jess: Any unexplored research questions that either of you plan to address?
George: We're going to do a quarterly talk series, where people will discuss how they already using flux measurements for societal benefits. We want to do the CarbonDew workshop, then have the opportunity to meet people from the workshop right before AGU so the questions and thoughts are all fresh. We will see if we can start writing the carbon protocols.
Kosana: For our biometeorology research and extension, I hope to keep providing useful information for all the stakeholders interested in what is happening. In the far, far future, to quantify evapotranspiration and carbon fluxes or help others do it with their upscaling techniques by providing ground-truthing. And, have students benefit from that dataset in our lab and do awesome research that can also theoretically improve quantifying of uncertainties and documenting limitations that the best method provides, or the complexity our different landscapes are bringing that we can’t overcome necessarily at the current point, and try overcoming them in the future.