Ellison Chair in International Floriculture
Ellison Chair in International FloricultureTeaching, Research, Extension and Service

Grower water survey — responses needed!

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A team of researchers from several states across the country (see http://cleanwater3.org)is conducting a survey to better understand factors that influence nursery and greenhouse growers’ decision making processes when it comes to water conservation and treatment technologies. The goal is to aid producers of nursery and floriculture to implement sustainable, alternative sources of water to enhance long-term economic viability while decreasing dependence on potable water.  This survey is part of a larger USDA SCRI project to improve current water management technologies. All responses will remain anonymous. You can complete the survey by clicking here ==> WateR3growersurvey.

 

Managing Water Quality in the Green Industry

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Raudales 2Dr. Rosa Raudales, Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut. Growers are increasingly capturing irrigation water in ponds or tanks to avoid runoff into the environment. However, re-applying this water to crops increases the risk of distributing plant pathogens. Dr. Raudales recently completed her multidisciplinary PhD studies at the University of Florida, which focused on ways to help growers select the best water treatment technology, such as filtration, chlorination, or copper ionization. Rosa’s project exposed her to many fields, including surveying methods, economic analysis, plant pathology, and horticulture. Her outreach work on watereducationalliance.org won a national award for the best horticulture extension website, and Rosa also won a Florida State Horticultural Society award for the top graduate research presentation. While at the University of Florida, Rosa worked with Dr. Paul Fisher, another noted authority in the water area.

Title:    Managing Water Quality in the Green Industry
Date:    Monday, January 13, 2014
Time:    10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CST

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements:
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 8, 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Mac®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.6 or newer

Mobile attendees
Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet

Water survey responses still needed

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If you recall my recent post about completing the national water survey (click here), then you should be aware of the fact that, as an added incentive to complete this survey, a grand prize drawing has been added as part of this project.  Please see details below:

All growers who complete the National nursery and greenhouse water management survey fully will be entered in a drawing for one (1) Decagon Devices wireless sensor network system* (including installation and support) as a grand prize.  To be eligible for this random drawing, you will need to COMPLETE the irrigation survey found at https://www.research.net/s/ornamental by November 30th, 2012.

Only fully completed surveys with all requested information and contact details will be eligible for the grand-prize drawing.

If you have already completed a survey, or are not sure if your entry was eligible to enter the drawing, please contact jcmajsz@umd.edu

The retail value of this starter sensor network is over $5,000, which can be used to monitor weather and soil / substrate moisture in your operation.  Additional nodes and sensors can be added as and where needed.  More information about these networks can be found at the website below.

http://www.decagon.com/products/environmental-monitoring-systems/irrigation-monitoring-system  or
http://tinyurl.com/9yhz6ou

* The sensor network consists of 3 EM50R radio datalogger  nodes, 10 soil moisture sensors, a weather station sensor package, base radio station, and a 1-user license for DataTrac software (computer not included).

Last chance to complete water-related survey for nursery and greenhouse growers

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The University of Maryland is involved (along with several land-grant university partners) in a USDA-funded project to determine how new sensor-based irrigation networks can benefit the ornamental plant production industry.  We would like your help to better understand current practices in the industry, and have developed a survey that asks questions about water, nutrient, and runoff practices in the industry, and about how the industry can take advantage of recent and anticipated advances in sensor-based irrigation networks.

The goal of this research is to use your answers, along with those provided by other growers across the country, to create baseline information, and to determine the potential of these systems to improve specific greenhouse, container nursery, and field nursery practices.  This information will help us to document current irrigation and nutrient use practices, and help measure the impacts of changing practices in the future.  It will also help us as researchers and as an industry to define our research goals at the local, regional, and national levels, to help growers address current and future needs.

We know your time is valuable and worked hard to minimize the amount of your time it will take to complete the survey.  However, the survey still requests a lot of information.  We estimate that the survey should take approximately 20-40 minutes to complete depending on how your operation is set up. Your participation is the key to the success of this project.

All information you provide will be kept STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL, and only summary information about the industry and aggregated estimates of economic and environmental impacts will be presented. Your individual responses will not be shared with any state or federal regulatory agency, and will be protected as required by Federal law, as part of the University of Maryland human subjects agreement that you will be asked to agree to before you begin the survey.

Access the survey by clicking the link below (or typing the address into your internet browser): https://www.research.net/s/ornamental

Any questions or comments can be directed to John Majsztrik: jcmajsz@umd.edu (preferred) or by phone (301) 405-2778

Pawlow to address water management issues

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COLLEGE STATION — Jonathan R. “Jon” Pawlow will be the Distinguished Lecturer for the eighth Ellison Chair in International Floriculture Distinguished Lecture Series at Texas A&M University on Oct. 27. His topic will be “Emerging Water Resources Issues — What are the Trends? What are the Policy options?”

Pawlow is counsel for the water resources and environment subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He is responsible for matters within the subcommittee’s jurisdiction relating to water pollution control and water infrastructure, wetlands, hazardous waste cleanup, and water resources management, conservation, and development.

The event will begin at 2 p.m. on October 27 with a reception in the Horticulture and Forest Science Building atrium, and his address will begin at 3 p.m. in Room 102.

The Distinguished Floriculture Lecture Series is sponsored by the Texas A&M Horticultural Sciences department’s Ellison Chair in International Floriculture, currently held by Dr. Charlie Hall.

“Given the importance of water across all sectors of agriculture, we are extremely excited to have Jon as our next lecturer, given his vast knowledge and experience with water-related issues in the country,” Hall noted.

Pawlow is an attorney and scientist/engineer with expertise in the environmental and intellectual property fields. He has more than 15 years of private law practice experience, and substantial public sector legislative, regulatory, law, policy, and technical experience with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as assistant chief counsel with the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration prior to joining the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

He earned his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in water resources engineering and environmental science from Rutgers University. Pawlow is a member of the District of Columbia and Virginia Bars, and is registered as a patent attorney to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Water webinar series upcoming

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A new series of online water quality and recycling webinars begins August 18 to help growers successfully manage water quality issues and recycle irrigation water.

This education program to promote water conservation is co-sponsored by the Water Education Alliance for Horticulture (a collaborative program hosted by the University of Florida with industry partners), OFA – an Association of Horticulture Professionals, the Society of American Florists, and the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association. The series of 30-minute live presentations will feature both new research and practical guidelines.

Registration is free at www.watereducationalliance.org (click on “workshops”) for this series of online presentations. Space is limited, so sign up early.

  • Water Treatment Technologies and Recycling — Paul Fisher, University of Florida — August 18 at 2pm, EST
  • Biology of Waterborne Pathogens — Rob Wick, University of Massachusetts — Sept. 17 at 2pm, EST
  • Ecological Approaches to Water Treatment — Loren Oki, University of California & Sarah White, Clemson University — Nov. 17 at 2pm, EST
  • Nutritional Aspects of Water Quality — Bill Argo, Blackmore Co. — Jan. 20 at 2pm, EST

Water issues webinars

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Free online presentations to help growers in  dealing with water issues
A new series of online water quality and recycling webinars begins August 18 to help growers successfully manage water quality issues and recycle irrigation water.
This education program to promote water conservation is co-sponsored by the Water Education Alliance for Horticulture (a collaborative program hosted by the University of Florida with industry partners), OFA – an Association of Horticulture Professionals, the Society of American Florists, and the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association. The series of 30-minute live presentations will feature both new research and practical guidelines. Registration is free at www.watereducationalliance.org (click on “workshops”) for this series of online presentations. Space is limited, so sign up early. 

Special National Geographic Water Issue

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This single-topic issue of National Geographic magazine highlights the challenges facing our most essential natural resource. “Water: Our Thirsty World” is available for free download starting on World Water Day, March 22, and extending through April 2, 2010. This interactive edition of National Geographic magazine presents complete content from the print edition, plus extra photo galleries, rollover graphics that animate features like maps and time lines, video profiles of photographers who contributed to the issue, and other interactive features. National Geographic’s water issue is available in print on newsstands everywhere beginning March 30.

Click here to get your free issue.

Dry for a reason

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Those who have heard me speak before may recognize the following statistic from some of my recent talks: 43% of the 920 greenhouse growers in the state of Georgia are no longer in business. Pike’s Nursery, who had long defined retail lawn & garden activity in the Atlanta metro market also suffered the same fate. This, of course, came in the wake of [what I thought] was one of the most severe droughts (2005-2007) the Southeast has faced in a while. Knowing all of this made the recent blurb in the newsletter for the newly branded Southeast Color Connection even more interesting:

We might have all thought they were the worst conditions possible, but according to researchers at Columbia University, the drought that gripped the Southeast from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming.

The published report (click here) examined population trends, data from weather instruments, computer models, and measurements of tree rings, concluding that the drought was “pretty normal and pretty typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century,” said Richard Seager, a climate expert at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Census figures show that in Georgia alone the population rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990, and Douglas LeComte, a drought specialist at the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service said the new report “makes sense.” Although Weather Service records suggest the 2005-07 drought was the worst in the region since the 1950s, LeComte said. “We have had worse droughts before. I am not going to criticize any governments for what they did or did not do,” he added. “But if you have more people and the same amount of water storage, you are going to increase the impact of droughts.”

Not good news for those of us hoping this drought was a freak occurrence or something that could be prevented, but it is a good reminder that times are changing…industry professionals alike should be prepared for the next drought with internal water conservation measures, drought-tolerant product offerings, and customer education literature.

“Water is the next oil”most pundits are saying today. Without a doubt, preserving and conserving our most important natural resource is imperative for green industry firms today. That’s why we developed the recent webinar series on water quality, conservation, and management. We had a lot of folks join us for that series, but if you happened to miss them, you can listen online at the Ellison Chair website (click here).

Water webinar series continues

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E71XRCijH9E]

The Ellison Chair in International Floriculture announces the THIRD of a 3-part webinar series that focuses on water quality, conservation, and management on October 20 at 11:00 a.m. CDT.

Dr. Don Wilkerson of Texas AgriLife Extension Service will be our next featured speaker and he will address the topic: Water Management That Makes Cents!

CLICK HERE — or go to http://ellisonchair.tamu.edu/webinar.htm to register for the SECOND webinar of the series.

In case you missed them, CLICK HERE — or go to http://ellisonchair.tamu.edu/webinar.htm to view the RECORDING of the first two webinars of the series, which are now available online. Dr. Paul Fisher of the University of Florida was the first speaker and he covered: What’s in Your Water? Water Quality and Treatment for Pathogens and Algae. Dr. Peter Ling of Ohio State University was our second featured speaker and he addressed the topic: Knowing Exactly When to Apply Irrigation Water.