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From Satellites to Soil: Bringing NASA Remote Sensing to West Texas Farms · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:06
  Speaker B: This is Tillery Timmons Sims again, coming to you from the headquarters of Jackalope Creative, where we record our podcast, Conservation Stories, that is sponsored by the Sand Hill Area Research Association. And as you know, Sarah, as we like to call it, is interested in all things ecosystems. And part of our ecosystems is the things that are supported flying around in space. And so you know that we have some work that we've done with NASA. And today I brought a couple of remote sensing folks that I met in Colorado at the NASA Acres meeting they're doing. There's some of the research that researchers that participate in that program. And I would like to introduce you to Tony and Nick. Nick, would you like to give us a little info about yourself and your background?
• 0:59
  Speaker C: Thanks, Tillery. And thanks, Sarah, for having Tony and I here today. We're excited to talk to you about remote sensing. My name's Nick Young. I'm a research associate at the Natural Resource Ecology Lab, which is at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I've been working here in that capacity for about 10 years now.
• 1:19
  Speaker B: Beautiful part of the world.
• 1:20
  Speaker C: Sure is, especially this time of year.
• 1:23
  Speaker B: Oh, I bet, I bet it is. It is. Tony, how about you give us a little bit about. About you?
• 1:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having us, Tillery. My name is Tony Vorster. I'm a research scientist at the CSU Natural Resource Ecology Lab, the same place that Nick works. We collaborate a lot together and we've spent the last, as nick said, probably 10 plus years working together on all sorts of different remote sensing projects. And, you know, in many ways, we've kind of taught ourselves how to use remote sensing over time. And with that, I think have developed an understanding of its capabilities, but also had a lot of hard lessons along the way of what it, what it can't do. And so I think that's, hopefully that's something that we can get into today is what, what are its promises and also, you know, what are some of its limitations? Yeah, so the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory is a research department, so we spend all of our time pretty much doing research. And that has, that puts us, Nick and I especially spend a lot of time developing research for end users. So we're pretty, as ecologists, we're pretty far on the applied end of the spectrum of making things actually be, hopefully have utility for people on the ground. And one program that we've done that through is the NASA Develop Program. It's given us dozens and dozens of iterations of this process of taking remote sensing, getting it to a Place where it's useful for somebody on the ground and kind of communicating all the caveats that go along with it.
• 3:03
  Speaker B: That's interesting. You know, I think that's an important thing to remember about a lot of projects. You know, people seem, Seem to think, sometimes I think we think that unless it's 100%, like, oh, this is. We got, we got the answer we wanted. Then to me, if you start out knowing like you want, only want one answer, you're limiting, you know, progress because a no is as good as a yes in research. You want to be able to know what those limitations are. And people ask me a lot because I'm. I'm constantly, like, talking to people about NASA acres and of course, the developers program and those things, and people are like, well, what can it. Like, what can it do? What is remote sensing and what can it do? And I think that's like maybe a basic question to a refresher for people that maybe are listening in on this one and haven't heard. Excuse me, some past. Like we've had Alyssa Whitcraft on before, but why don't you give us a little bit of. Give us a little bit of background in layman's terms, like what it is and some things that maybe people, just everyday people might not recognize that remote sensing is impacting their lives.
• 4:15
  Speaker C: You know, remote sensing from a very basic standpoint is basically measuring things remotely, right? And that can mean all sorts of things. And so that's taking a picture of something or perhaps sending the signal to measure what material might be there. And the way that Tony and I have been thinking about it is often how remote sensing can provide information of a landscape. And so remote sensing has the ability to look at a single point in time or look across time by taking multiple photos of the same place over time as it changes through various disturbances or management practices. There's some key characteristics that we like to highlight with remote sensing. You know, when you take a picture of something, you're going to have what we call a spatial resolution. So when you look at that photo and you look at the most granular pixel of that photo, how much area does that represent on the ground? And that's called, like, the spatial resolution. And sometimes it can be pretty high resolution, like, you know, less than a foot to much larger resolutions, to like, multiple feet, to even, like the size of a football field. It could be one pixel. And that just depends on the type of sensor and what that sensor is trying to capture. Another important characteristic is the temporal resolution. And with that there's two things. First is how far back in time do we have photos for that particular sensor? So has this satellite been taking photos for one year? Or is it something like the Landsat legacy, taking photos for over, like, about four decades now, which is a really long time to be looking at the Earth. And so that's the history of that sensor. And then another important component of the temporal resolution is how often do we get a new photo. So is this a satellite that takes a photo once a year or a program that takes a photo like once a year, like the NAEP program, National Agricultural Inventory Program, I believe it's called. And that takes a photo about once a year, once every other year, right in the middle of the growing season, to provide a snapshot versus something like a Landsat program, which would take a picture, like, every half a month or so. So you get a lot more frequency and you can kind of look at the change in seasons over time. And then lastly, there's the radiometric resolution. And this is kind of a technical term for how many different things can we see with that remote sensing sensor. So we see a lot of. With the way we see the world. We see red, green, and blue wavelengths, but through these sensors, we can see far more than that. We can see up to seven or sometimes hundreds of different spectrums of the electromagic spectrum to help inform us of what might be going on in that given picture.
• 7:03
  Speaker B: I remember at Commodity Classic, they were making those little. Oh, where you could see, kids could see radio. What are they called? Radio wave. Like where they can look at plants and see those lights. Yeah, yeah. And. And teaching kids how to go home and make those themselves, you know, from just some regular, regular stuff you might have around the house. And. And showing them like, this is what satellites are seeing. Of course, I was, like, probably more impressed than the kids were.
• 7:31
  Speaker A: Another part of your question there, I think, was also, like, how is remote sensing used in ways that we might not even realize? And you think about your weather, the weather forecast, that's relying a lot of remote sensing data, topographic information. So, you know, all of the. Any topographic map or areas, mapping flood zones for insurance evaluations, all these things are based on remote sensing. You know, even though that simple aerial photo of your. Of your land from the 1950s, that, you know, provides you really, really valuable snapshot of the past, you know, that that's all remote sensing. Most of these products are free and available to the public. That's oftentimes something somebody asks like, well, how much does that Cost. And well, for the majority of these products, they're, they're free. There are more and more private satellites that you do have to pay for access for, but you can do a lot with, with the freely available stuff.
• 8:37
  Speaker B: And I think that's what I love about NASA Acres is it's, you know, you here, it's taking something our tax dollars have paid for and said, how do we make it accessible to the average farmer? What, how, how can it benefit you? What can we create that would benefit you? And how can we make what we have right now beneficial to you? And, and that's what I know you mentioned earlier. You know that like what you're doing is this applied research, which means I can take what you're doing and I can actually use it. It's not stuck away in a lab somewhere that isn't benefiting people. People are able to really take and benefit from it. And I think that is another important thing to, for people to understand about the Earth Science Division of NASA is how valuable it is to us in what we can learn about our, when I say environment, about where we live, the planet that we live on, you know, and it is, you know, it, NASA's, it's great. We're obviously going to go back to the moon again. But that, I think the thing that was so maybe unexpected was the amount of data that we could gather about the place that we live.
• 9:52
  Speaker A: Another angle of the applied research and of NASA Acres work that you're talking about is that it depends on that relationship with the people on the ground. It's not a university enterprise that just develops these products and then, you know, post them online. It's a, it's a conversation off the bat with people on the ground to understand what, what, what is needed. Why are the current things working for you? You know, how can we do it better? And without that, without that knowledge on the ground, it's right. And that engagement, it's really doomed from the start.
• 10:36
  Speaker B: Right? And I think that's so important for farmers to realize, hey, here's an opportunity for you to really impact how your tax dollars are being utilized in the, in the development of tools that you've have already paid for. You know, like those things are already there and you have an opportunity to have this research on your farm. What do you need done? You know, and how can we work together collaboratively to, to develop things that are, can be applied on your farm? It's great, it's a great program. NASA Acres will be here, the researchers and then also the Director of the Earth science division, Karen St. Germain will be in the Lubbock area that 1st, 5th October, starting 5th October. And we'll be doing three days of tours. And they are, you know, have emphasized to me over and over again as we plan this out that they're, they are here to, to learn and listen for problems that they know that they could help with. You know, that the technology is already there. And that's what I, you know, have said before. Like this, you're asking me to give you, like, hey, what problems do you have? And I'm like, I don't know, you're wanting me to make a cake and I need the ingredients to me perfect description of like, we don't really understand even what to ask for because we don't even know what we don't know. And that's what this, the whole idea of developing relationships with, across that whole group of people, researchers, farmers, you know, and NASA employees, it's like getting those relationships really, really developed helps to build trust so that farmers know that this is someone I could, that really does care, that really can bring solutions.
• 12:36
  Speaker C: And going back to, you know, your comment on, you know, taxpayers have been paying for some of these products and they don't even, we oftentimes don't even know what's available. I think even from a researcher's standpoint, you know, Tony and I also, you know, even in the field didn't quite have a great understanding for all the different products that are out there. And one of our initiatives recently in partnership with the Meridian Institute was to like, do a quick little survey of the, of the landscape of what is out there. That would be something that could be useful for rangeland management. And so Tony and I did a bunch of research and reviewing of what's out there and developed this table of existing products that could be useful to rangeland managers. And we broke up all the different products that are out there based on different categories from, like, vegetation production, where you might find helpful remote sensing tools to help inform what production you might expect this year given the current climatic forecasts and where you exist on the landscape. And so we developed this table to categorize in different thematic areas so folks could find key areas and then provided some recommendations on different applications, from planning your grazing strategy to, you know, understanding your risk with floods or fire, or even just being able to view your landscape over time to understand how it might have changed with different management or disturbances over the years. A good example of something that does that quite well that actually we found accessible to a lot of folks is Google Earth Pro. So a lot of folks out there might be familiar with Google Earth Pro. It's this wonderful little software program that's free. You can download it on your desktop and you can view the entire Earth kind of like in a Google Maps kind of framework and go to your landscape and see pretty high resolution imagery of your, of your property that you're interested in and to a detail to allow you to make decisions or learn more about that landscape that you might not be able to get when you're on the ground in your day to day life. And you can look back in time with that software. You can measure area really. Okay. And you can kind of look at the terrain in a 3D perspective. It provides a lot of capabilities for more basic uses to somewhat more advanced uses. But it's, it's a good example of something. Yeah. Some of the different products out there that were available and, and we felt the need to kind of put those together and describe those in a place that might be accessible to, to folks that might see it as benefiting their operations.
• 15:11
  Speaker B: Oh, that's. Yeah, it's great to know. I'm already like thinking in my mind's thinking about, I wonder if so and so knows about this. So is that, is that information publicly available? Do you guys have, have that somewhere that people can go and see a list of those things?
• 15:26
  Speaker C: We, Tony and I produced a report based on that initiative and in that report we outlined a lot of great stuff on remote sensing, its capabilities and limitations and also have that table in there so folks can reference that.
• 15:38
  Speaker B: That's great. Is that something that we can link in the show notes?
• 15:41
  Speaker C: Sure can.
• 15:42
  Speaker A: Yep, absolutely.
• 15:43
  Speaker B: That would be awesome. That would be great. Hello friends. I'm here to tell you about an upcoming event and I've asked Katie Lewis with the Texas A and M AgriLife Research Station to give us a little information about her event on September 24th. Yes, we're having an event to discuss resilient cropping systems that will be displaying all the research that we're conducting across the high plains specifically focused on resilient agriculture culture. That's awesome. So where should people go if they want to participate? So if they want to participate, you can visit Agri Life today. They have it on their calendar. You can get to the registration site if you want to just show up. We'll be at quarterway gin at 8am on September 24th. Okay, that's great. And we'll have the information either in the show notes or if you're seeing this on socials, we'll have it there in the comments as well. So thanks, Kay. Katie, September 24 yes, sounds great to see y'. All. What are you finding? As far as you, you guys, I know, have done a lot of range land management. What are you finding that's the most helpful?
• 16:51
  Speaker A: You know, one of the first things the rancher wants to know is how much, how much grass they have, how much feed they have. So that's. That. That's one of the most valuable things. And there has been a lot of progress in providing that information. But I think this is a good example of some of the opportunities, but some of the caveats and challenges. So, for example, a rancher might want to know how much biomass they have on hand, right? And a scientist might say, oh, yeah, we have that. You know, go to this website and, you know, it's mapped for the past 30 years, but they're, they're, they're kind of talking past each other. So for one, a lot of these types of products are providing the production. So what is the potential production for that site? Not necessarily how much biomass is there right now, you know, so it might not account for a previous round of grazing through that pasture and it's probably. It's not available real time. So a rancher might want to know right now, what do I have? And it's like, well, we can tell you what you had last year, we can't yet tell you what you have right now. So those are just. Some of. It's just a, you know, a little microcosm of some of those, right? Yeah, the technology can do that, but it's maybe not quite as useful as a rancher would want it to be. And there are advances being made there of mapping in more real time and looking at the biomass is actually there, not the, the potential production for a spot.
• 18:38
  Speaker B: And I was going to ask. So I know that, like, about six weeks ago maybe or so, NASA launched another satellite and that one will be coming around more often. Is it every two weeks?
• 18:51
  Speaker A: To be honest, I'm not sure what.
• 18:53
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 18:54
  Speaker A: I'm not familiar with, with this satellite that you're talking about. A lot of their satellites do, like some of their workhorses, like Landsat, for example, Passover, every two weeks. So that, that's certainly possible. Another is looking at, you know, I think that Nick brought up a good one of just looking at landscape change over time. All sorts of light bulbs start going off once you start to look at what your land looked like in the 50s again and saying, oh, holy cow. That random pattern out there that I've been seeing for years that I didn't know where it came from. Now I see right. They. It was, it was tilled, you know, back in the 50s. And I, you know, I can see the. Yes, the impacts today. So some of those just simple, simple things like have a lot of value.
• 19:43
  Speaker B: Something that's impacted Texas recently is, you know, that NASA's done work in particular the Acres group has done work on the fires like trying to understand like the impact on that and over, you know, a more holistic look. Not just, you know, the, just not just the pictures of what happened or the changes in the landscape, but then also too in the flooding. That's another area. So there's, there's some, you know, just immediate. So just by, by the way, this is the NASA ISRO satellite, Nick.
• 20:21
  Speaker A: Another name. It goes by NYSAR as well.
• 20:23
  Speaker B: So that's, that's it. Nice R. Yeah. So. Right, so this is the new, the new satellite. And this is a little bit of what we were discussing though. It has the capabilities to test the soil moisture, which I'm understanding that's at the root level. Like that's how far down it's going to go. Disease, pest, water stress, flood mapping, damage assessment of crops. And it will return to the same spot every 12 days and will have a resolution of 97 to 1,000 square feet. So that's the church size. That's pretty amazing. And it'll have 40 to 450 data points per acre. That's. That is a lot of information.
• 21:11
  Speaker A: It is.
• 21:11
  Speaker B: That's a lot of information. And that's one of the things I wonder too. Can you tell when you're looking at if that's gonna like improve, like not only just like I can now see every 12 days how much biomass I have out there, but also maybe be able to tell some kind of quality reading because I know it can tell quality, right. Of like corn and crops like that. So do you think that'll be helpful to have that extra.
• 21:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, extra data is, is really helpful because you also have to think about these different sensors start to be additive to. They complement each other. So you don't, you're not just, you don't just have to use one sensor. You know, with, especially with all this machine learning advancements and things, you can use information from many different sensors. And so like that nice R satellite might be really good at telling you about moisture characteristics, whereas another sensor might be really great at telling you the, the green up timing and the phenology of your, of your, of your land and you can start to bring those things together to do more.
• 22:17
  Speaker B: So amazing.
• 22:18
  Speaker A: It is very powerful. We are used to working in the Rocky Mountain regions in the western US with ranchers and on rangelands, working in with farmers and in like, you know, some of the more agricultural around Lubbock. That's not our, our wheelhouse. So a lot of things you can probably tell, your listeners can probably tell that all the examples we're drawing on are more.
• 22:46
  Speaker B: Sure. Well, something, something though that's happening here is that a lot of people are going back to grass here because as we are running out of groundwater, we're seeing that conversion back to, you know, if they're not doing it this year, they're planning and they know they're going to be doing it within the next five years. You know, and so there's the, you know, we're, we're steadily moving towards what you guys are studying right now and, and having those things available. Like, you know, if we were able to start thinking about right now the places where there already is grassland and the people have already converted back to be able to use that to figure out, you know, good, you know, production methods or things that people can do that will help increase their yields on these, you know, dry land grass areas, you know, and I'm going to assume that some people will, you know, take what little water they have remaining and put it in, you know, maybe under the pivot and run some, get that grass up and going. You know, I'm not sure exactly what that's going to look like. So, so I'm, that's, I'm just completely ignorant of all that stuff. But it is pertinent to us in a way that you may not be, you may not recognize or may not know, you know.
• 23:58
  Speaker A: So you mentioned like, you know, what's, what's pertinent to a farmer or rancher and that's something that we've been after too is really understanding what's a value added product because there's so many products out there. They all have their applications and their utility. But truly when you go out and start talking to ranchers is that remote sensing is underutilized. And that's, that's not, I'm not saying that as a comment about the ranchers. I'm more talking, it's more a comment on. I think we as a research community haven't really made the right products that are worth Their weight. Right. Like they're the measure of adoption is going or the measure of success is going to be that these products have enough value to warrant somebody incorporating it into their decision making. You know, it's not going to make the decisions for them but you know, it's another tool to, that they can draw on to make their decisions. And one of those areas that looks promising is one that you brought up is can you map the quality of that vegetation, the you know, the protein content or you know, whatever attribute you're at, you're after. And I think that if we could do that well, there's case studies of that being done but if we could do that well and consistently and deliver it right, that that's something that's now has, you know, value to buy standards that a rancher is gonna, you know, might start folding in that information into their, into their decision making. We've been trialing some of this, you know, some part of the, the structure of some of our research projects is we just kind of start open ended with a rancher and just have conversations, build that relationship and go back and forth on like, you know, what if we tried this and you know, we can make a product, make a tool, they can give it test run and see if it's going well and then you know, come back to us and can, you know, we can iterate and.
• 26:04
  Speaker B: Right.
• 26:05
  Speaker A: We've been going through that process with a ranch in northwest Colorado, the Camblyn Ranch and they have virtual fencing and are also interested in, in integrating remote sensing into their, into their management.
• 26:20
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 26:23
  Speaker A: One thing we did this year is all right, can we take the real time condition of their vegetation and the flexibility that virtual fencing provides and start to design their rotations in there.
• 26:35
  Speaker B: Oh wow.
• 26:36
  Speaker A: Pastures around that vegetation condition. You know, let's ensure that each pasture we give the livestock is going to have that the forage needed, have the, have the diversity. You know, the animals select what they need and you know, maintain their gains. And so that I think that's a, that's not, yes, that's not necessarily a widespread use just yet, but it's a well being developed. And you know, I think yes, near future it could be more of a widespread use.
• 27:03
  Speaker B: And, and part of the reason why, you know, it's underutilized is because there's not a good way for them to access this. I mean like they don't, they're not remote scientists and don't know how to get on NASA's website and, and read what's what all Is there. And so what you guys, what I hear you saying is that you're creating a tool that, that is easily accessible for them to be able to, you know, it like you do not have to have a degree in remote sensing in order to understand and, and gather the information that you're, that you're wanting. Yes. And, and it's NASA data, is that correct?
• 27:49
  Speaker A: It's mainly NASA data, but not, not exclusively there. There's other satellites like Space Agency that are valuable or. Yeah, the NAEP program that Nick mentioned or there's other sources. NASA's one of the main providers, but.
• 28:04
  Speaker B: Not all of them.
• 28:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, you brought up the accessibility issue and that is a big challenge. Luckily, I think the field has come a long way in recent years of developing these websites and platforms that are actually pretty easy for somebody just to open a web page, zoom into their area, draw something on the screen and get information. The Rangeland Analysis platform is a good example of that. It's a pretty intuitive website. You don't need to be a remote sensing scientist to access it at all.
• 28:37
  Speaker B: And so it's called the Rangeland Rangeland Analysis Platform. Rangeland Analysis Platform or wrap.
• 28:44
  Speaker A: WRAP for short.
• 28:45
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 28:46
  Speaker A: And you know, there's a, there's a few examples of products like that now.
• 28:50
  Speaker B: That are, you know, the.
• 28:54
  Speaker A: Researchers, agencies are trying to get over that hurdle and they've been making really great progress.
• 29:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 29:02
  Speaker A: So I think that's a challenge that's being addressed, but it's always one that we need to keep improving.
• 29:12
  Speaker B: Hey friends, I'm excited to tell you about NASA. NASA Acres, which is part of the Earth Science division of NASA, is coming to our area. They're coming here because they want to learn about how we farm and they want to see if there's ways that they can help us. So NASA Acres is a project that we've been partnering with for several months now and they will be here for ag tours October 6th, 7th and 8th. And we will be in Terry County. We will be heading then up to Crest and over to Morton. We're going to be in a lot of different places. We're going to put that agenda up on our website on the homepage so you can see where we are. And if you want to come by and just see what NASA, what do they have to do with agriculture? We would love for you to meet these folks. They want to meet you. They want to talk about maybe how you can participate and have remote sensing information available for your farm. This is a farmer led effort. So if you're an ag ag business or if you're a farmer, come out and just kick the tires on what it might be like to partner with NASA on an aggressive project. One of the things I hear consistently is that, you know, everything is siloed. My, my John Deere data is siloed over here and then this data is siloed over here and this. And they're not crossing over. Or maybe I can import stuff into John Deere, you know, but everything I'm looking at, I'm paying for. I'm paying to access my own information has, you know what I mean? It's part of the, I think the struggle for a lot of people and, and in some cases it can be very expensive. And so I wonder if, like, that's part of the, you know, maybe people, you know, tried something 10 years ago and it wasn't worth the cost, you know, and so they have never gone back and tried anything new. But it sounds like there's new tools that are, you know, being developed that use that capability to make it accessible to farmers, two ranchers, and hopefully in a more affordable platform. But still, you know, getting all of this together in one area, all of their data would be really helpful to them.
• 31:29
  Speaker C: You know, that touches on a good point that we've been hearing from different producers that have, you know, dabbled in remote sensing is, you know, remote sensing. Usually the products are fairly specific to a specific measurement, say Lance Tony mentioned, you know, production, biomass production, whereas another one might be, you know, weather or another product might be imagery. And there's been some recognition of this. But that is definitely a limitation. Is like, it's hard to find where a lot of these different products can come together in one easy to access and understand an interactive tool to help inform those decisions. I think there's some good examples of people trying to do that, but these are still kind of being tested, are often more regionally based because, you know, one region of the United States might have specific, more specific needs than another region and might need to pull different remote sensing products to help inform that. And so I do think there's a recognized need to kind of bring these things together to help inform decisions a little bit more streamlined. But, you know, we're not, we're not quite there yet. And I think that is one of the missions of, of NASA Acres is to figure out, you know, what is the best way to get this information to the producers. And so there's some folks working on that now.
• 32:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about develop, give Us a little bit about what, what the goals, what the, what is the purpose of developing? And then we'll talk about some past projects that you've done and then let's talk about what we're going to do here on the high plains.
• 33:09
  Speaker A: So develop is a program out of NASA that really has two main goals. One is to develop the skill sets of people who want to be, who want to be able to use remote sensing. So early career folks who want to learn about remote sensing analysis, GIS analysis, it also teaches them about doing science in general, working in a team, connecting, talking with end users and you know, meeting, you know, doing applied science. So there's that, that's one of the goals, is building the skills of the workforce, the participants. Yeah, the workforce development. The other goal is to provide remote sensing capabilities for end users. So how, how can remote sensing be used to inform decisions or land management decisions or inform policymakers? And so each project is, is 10 weeks and it's, there's a team of four participants. Think of it like a, like a paid internship program that, that team of four tackles a, an end user need for that 10 weeks. It's just enough time to do, you know, a good way to think of it as like a feasibility study. You know, is this, is this possible? And you know, gets really good momentum on a project. These projects touch on agriculture. They touch on things like wildfire, things like just about anything ecological forecasting, all sorts of things.
• 34:49
  Speaker B: Tell us about what we're going to try to accomplish in 10 weeks.
• 34:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, coming up here with the utility shortly and other partners like USGS and the Bamroot Seed. Bamroot Seed and Understanding Ag and the USDA Agricultural Research Service, we are going to be improving cover cropping mapping for your region in West Texas. So the focus will be taking some cover cropping methods that have been developed in other parts of the US Applying them to your area and tweaking them. You know, how can, how can we, you know, how accurate is it in West Texas? What, what do we need to change about that, those methods to, to do it better? Yeah, that'll be the focus.
• 35:39
  Speaker B: So, you know, it's easy to like to know. I mean, I can think off, you know, in my mind like, okay, here's locations. I know where people have done cover crops. But you, you need to engage these farmers in some other information as well. Not just to look at a picture from, you know, a satellite. There's some information that it would be necessary to be provided from the ground up. Can you give Us a little bit of, of what that, what that would be, what kind of information you'd be asking from a farmer? Because we were discussing, you know, we recruit a farmer into participating and we'll send them maybe a short Google form but also, and we'll cover this in just a second, but the information of, of their data because that's a whole nother discussion. So what, what kind of questions are you looking for? The answers for from, from folks that have spent time in cover crops.
• 36:42
  Speaker A: So to, to pull off this project we need to know if what we're mapping from the satellites is true, accurately mapping what's been, what's been cover cropped and that's where knowledge of, of partners like yourself and farmers is critical. So we need points that, that we know are cover crop points that we know are not cover cropped so that we can communicate one, you know, communicate how accurate the model is. Because none of these products are perfect, they're going to have uncertainty with them.
• 37:16
  Speaker B: Right.
• 37:17
  Speaker A: And also to improve, you know, to go back and improve the methods and be sure that we're mapping it more accurately, field locations and if they were cover cropped, what species were used to cover crop and how, you know, how the COVID crop is terminated and when things like that.
• 37:38
  Speaker B: Hi friends here on the high plains we have got a chance to work with NASA's develop project. The focus is cover crops using satellite tools to identify things like when they were planted and how they're managed and how can we build real research to see what value they bring or maybe they don't bring. So if you're a farmer, you're planting cover crops, we'd love your help. A short form will be sent to you with some basic information like your planning date, termination date, maybe the years that you had cover crops. Your information is going to stay protected but it'll make a really big difference in showing what cover crops are really worth having in our region. If you want more information, want to be part of this, you can visit sara-conservation.com we'll have some information there and you can also reach out to me at contact sarah-conservation.com and I would be happy to put your name on the list. Thank you very much. So a lot of folks here might not think that they're cover cropping, but you know, they're technically FSA would consider like the stubble that's left from a grain sorghum field would be considered cover crop or what's left after your wheat if you're planning into that. Anything you're planting into, I don't think corn, I mean, cotton stocks count, but I think they count, they count those other things. So, you know, for people that might be listening or might be interested but thinking I don't cover crop. Well, those things, actually FSA considers them to be a cover crop. And so I, I foresee like some of this information being helpful for farmers that are wanting to participate in certain programs, you know, with fsa and if that data is already available, you know, it'd be really nice if, you know, farmers can, you know, if I need to verify anything, it's right there. That information is right there. So we know, because it's really hard to tell. You know, for me, when I'm looking on things, I'm like, I, I, I mean, I know this person cover crops, but I don't know what I'm looking at. You know what I mean? You guys know more what you're looking at and are getting a closer view of those things. So this is really about starting the process that would lead to something that would be beneficial to. And the data that we're, the data that we're talking about that farmers have is the, the date of the COVID crop. That's the point of data. What date did you terminate it and are there, I mean, is that pretty much, you know, or how many years, what years did you have cover crops on a certain field? So it's, those are the type of data points that we're talking about. But one of the things I appreciate about Acres is the emphasis that they put on the fact that information that a farmer is providing us belongs to them. That is their data and it belongs to them. And they have the right to say how what belongs to them is utilized.
• 40:52
  Speaker A: Absolutely. And a clear understanding of what, what the data is being used for. In this case, development of COVID cropping methods. Right. Or cover crop mapping methods. We're not, this is a, these developed projects are, like I mentioned, 10 weeks, it's, we're gonna test this. Hopefully we get really far. But it's possible that, you know, in 10 weeks we discover just the issues and you know, you know, we're not necessarily getting to a point where it's going to be a repeated cover cropping, you know, mapping of COVID crops every year. That would take, you know, more time and resources and things. So anyway, yeah, it's along with the data, you know, it's using that data responsibly, respecting that it is the farmer's data and just being really clear about how it's being Used.
• 41:41
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I think I, I mean, just, I want people to know that when they're, you know, thinking about, if they're thinking about, you know, joining us in this research, it's not going to take much out of them at all. Doesn't take much effort, but it can contribute to something that we can find a yes or a no on. And if you find a yes on it, you know, you're developing things that could be pretty much, you know, in, in just a few, few years ahead, they're going to be helpful, you know, and if you're finding no's, you got to figure out why you're finding those no's and, and how you get past those obstacles in order to go ahead and acquire this information that would be helpful to farmers, you know, and, and so are you looking at like comparing things? Are there points of data that you're hoping to collect or are you simply looking at how do we create the map, how do we identify?
• 42:37
  Speaker A: We're starting with that basic step. Yeah. How well can we identify, how well can we map. Map this? And you know, we're looking at going back to about 2018 to, you know, up to present. If, if we can do that, I think that would, that would be really successful if.
• 42:54
  Speaker B: Yes, I think so.
• 42:55
  Speaker A: And you know, that can be the jumping off point for other things like looking at evapotranspiration in these fields or trends over time or, you know, other questions that the farmers might have. But yeah, first we just want to start with unlock future research.
• 43:14
  Speaker C: One of the great things about NASA develop is it's 10 weeks, which actually goes by pretty quick. And I know farmers might be, you know, rightly so reluctant to share data, but what's nice is at the end of those 10 weeks, the team presents what they've learned and it's public and there's an invite. And so anyone who's interested, it's a great opportunity to see, okay, I shared some data, what came of that. And so they get to go and see how it's used and what they came of that. And it's kind of a nice way to connect to that research because sometimes data shared and if it goes into academia, it can be years before something comes out. And this is nice because it's, it's a pretty short timeline to kind of see how those data are used.
• 43:55
  Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. And, yeah, and, and, but you're not going to be like so and so's field was terminated on so and so date, right.
• 44:02
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 44:02
  Speaker B: You know, it's all this, is this information all gets put together and then. Yeah. So it's, it's not going to be like they're going to be calling somebody's name out or pointing out to a certain field or something. So that's important for people.
• 44:14
  Speaker A: That's important too. Yeah.
• 44:15
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 44:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. These 10, you know, these 10, like Nick mentioned, these 10 weeks goes fast. But you know, some examples of other projects that, you know, just 10 weeks are we've mapped like cheatgrass, you know, invasive annual grass that causes problems here in the.
• 44:34
  Speaker B: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker A: Across the, across the western US where it's been mapped and then it's, that's been used for, to target treatments, you know, so just like these 10 week cycles, you know, real really helpful products can come out or other NASA developed projects that have been conducted or have looked at again in the short time frame. Pastures with different grazing management and how that's impacted trends in bare ground over the last 40 years. So really, you know, these, these interns, they're learning along the way.
• 45:10
  Speaker B: Right.
• 45:10
  Speaker A: They have great experience but they get a lot done.
• 45:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's, it really is a great job development tool. And I mean like companies, these, these folks can leave in 10 weeks and really have skills that, that companies will find valuable. That's, that is, that's just a really great thing and you're actually doing something that is, actually can become something that's applicable within 10 weeks. That's, that's amazing.
• 45:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, these, there's some of these projects are virtual too, so people can participate in them from anywhere. So we get, you know, while we're here sitting in Fort Collins, Colorado, we can have people from the communities where the work is being done, you know, build their, their, their skills and have that on the ground perspective. And you know, we've been doing this program for 13 plus years and wow. You know, so there's many, you know, there's hundreds and hundreds of participants and they're in all sorts of.
• 46:14
  Speaker B: Oh, that's amazing.
• 46:15
  Speaker A: Exciting places now, you know.
• 46:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 46:18
  Speaker A: Nonprofit world to private industry.
• 46:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I'm excited that we get to participate and Rob Cook with Bam Seed is one of our partners and is going to be participating in some of these meetings as well. And we really appreciate Bammert Seed and their involvement, giving their time to be part of making this happen for us. It's a really exciting and I appreciate you guys giving us your time. I thank you so much for what you're doing. The work you're doing. I'm so excited that we got to meet in Colorado, and I'm sorry we won't see you guys in October.
• 46:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm bummed about that to come.
• 46:58
  Speaker B: But hopefully we will see you at the next Acres meeting, which won't be too long from now.
• 47:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thanks for having us, Hillary. It's been fun. And I think what you do have kind of bridging. Bridging all these different parties and making things happen is. Is really great.
• 47:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I. I do like to find interesting people, so. And, friends, thank you for joining us for this episode of Conservation Stories. And I look forward to seeing you again next time.