PULLMAN, Wash. – John Norman, a soil physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will present the sixth annual Gaylon Campbell Lecture in Environmental Soil and Water Science at Washington State University at 2:10 p.m., Monday, March 2, in the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, Room 203.
Norman will describe his approach to estimating evapotranspiration, which is the water use by plants and soil, over a range of scales using geosynchronous satellite and synoptic weather data, as well as his efforts to validate these estimates with direct measurements on the ground and with aircraft. He will present results from drought mapping over the continental United States using several years of data.
Norman conducts biophysical research involving studies of the interaction between plants and their environment including instrument design, measurements of soil, plant and atmospheric characteristics and integrative modeling of the soil-plant-atmosphere system.
His recent research has focused on the sustainability of agricultural production and the importance of soil in the spatial and temporal distribution of crop production and environmental pollution. Current outreach activities emphasize the use of insights gained from years of fundamental research to provide guidance to decision makers, such as efforts to assist farmers and state regulatory agencies with management decisions that maintain crop yields and minimize environmental degradation through precision farming techniques.
The Campbell Lecture in Environmental Soil and Water Science was created to help further understanding of environmental soil science. It is named for Gaylon Campbell, who spent nearly 30 years as a professor of environmental biophysics and soil physics in WSU’s crop and soil sciences department. He retired from WSU in 1998 to become vice president of engineering of Decagon Devices, a local manufacturer of biophysical research instrumentation. The lecture was created through gifts from Campbell Scientific, Inc. and Decagon Devices, Inc.
The lecture is presented jointly by the WSU Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and the Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach.
The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow immediately after the lecture.
Contact Markus Flury at (509) 335-1719 or flury@wsu.edu for more information, or read more online at http://css.wsu.edu/campbell/index.htm.
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