Transcript:

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

TAYLOR BACON 0:08
I think one of the hardest things we ran into was when we were initially designing this research plan and kind of deciding what data we wanted to collect. Deciding what sensors we wanted to use, where we wanted to install them, is that there is so much heterogeneity and variation within the solar array, even just within a single block of panels across even just a couple feet apart because of these different zones. And it was challenging to balance okay, what can we feasibly measure and what how much data can we feasibly collect, while still capturing enough of this variability to actually be accurate and to have representative data?

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:53
That’s a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure the World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues, and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil plant atmosphere continuum. Today’s guest is Taylor Bacon, a PhD student in the Department of soil and crop Sciences at Colorado State University. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton University with a focus on energy and the environment, and a minor in sustainable energy. Now, as a part of her Ph. D program, she’s researching nature based climate solutions, land use emissions, and food energy systems. And today, she’s here to talk about her research into agriculture ticks, regenerative energy, and land use, and much more. So Taylor, thanks so much for being here.

TAYLOR BACON 1:42
Thank you so much for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:44
So today, we wanted to talk with you about your your projects and research interests. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into to where you are now with environmental sciences and into your your specialty, and you’re a PhD researcher?

TAYLOR BACON 2:02
Yeah, so as you mentioned in the intro, my background is actually in engineering, I did my undergrad in chemical and biological engineering, focusing on sustainable energy. And my undergrad thesis was looking at bio energy for jet fuel production as kind of a sustainable alternative. But my senior year, I took an environmental policy class, and really just had this moment of being like, Oh, this is what we need to actually make these technical solutions I’ve been studying and work on happen in the real world, and we can be doing the research. But if there isn’t the policy to actually drive that into implementation, that’s kind of a missing piece. So I got really interested in environmental policy. And after graduating, got a fellowship at an environmental nonprofit working on climate and clean air and energy policy, and spent a couple of years doing that. And it was really, really valuable experience, I learned a ton and kind of developed an understanding of how all of these drivers work together and kind of what actually has to happen for change towards a like sustainable climate future. But after I was there for like three years, and towards the end, I of my second or third year, I started really missing science and kind of more quantitative work, I was doing a lot of policy analysis and advocacy, but kind of was itching to get back towards the more quantitative side of things, started thinking about what I wanted to do next, and had a couple criteria, I wanted to do something where I could do fieldwork outside and physically be collecting data and kind of be more on the ground. At an actual place collecting actual data after doing a lot of kind of modeling and high level analysis. I wanted to do something that was really solutions oriented. So I wanted to be doing science, but I wanted to be working on science that was kind of directly applicable to these problems we’re facing and was really solutions oriented. And then I’d taken a bunch of environmental chemistry classes and undergrad and started kind of looking in that space and found my way to this soil science program that kind of matched all of those criteria. And this project specifically that I’m working on in Agra voltaic is really exciting because it kind of matches my background and sustainable energy and energy policy with this soil ecology biogeochemistry side of things that I’m more recently getting into.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:40
That’s awesome. That’s super cool. I want to I want to touch on all of that. So but yeah, so can we can we go back you you’ve mentioned that in your undergrad research and I definitely want to dig into what you’re doing. Now. That’s going to be the bulk of what we want to talk about today. But it. But you’ve talked about working with with biofuels and doing research in that aspect. And you said bio jet fuels. That’s something that that I am not sure if I’m familiar with, in general with biofuels, but not bio jet fuels. Can you tell us a little bit about about that, and how, how that works with I mean, with jet fuel, it’s very, it needs to be, you know, very high quality. And, you know, a lot of more, a lot of other things like that. But can you tell us a little bit about that?

TAYLOR BACON 5:31
Yeah, so this was a while ago, so I’m a little a little removed from the weeds. But the idea, or kind of the motivation for this project was that we can electrify a lot of things. And electrification is a really good option for decarbonizing a lot of different sectors of the economy and a lot of different modes of transportation. But large scale electric aircraft are probably pretty far down the line. But in the meantime, we have technological options for creating jet fuel from plant residue from different plant based sources, that when you’re growing that feedstock, you’re sequestering carbon. So the idea is that then your your bio jet fuel is carbon neutral, because the emissions that are released are balanced out by the carbon that sequestered when the plant is growing. So my thesis was using chemical engineering modeling software to design and model a pathway for converting, I looked specifically at forestry residue as kind of a sample feedstock that has a little bit maybe a little bit better sustainability on the front end, because you’re not displacing agriculture, or kind of it’s this material that’s already there. And there’s definitely limitations and collecting it and accessing it. But that’s what I use as my feedstock and then designed in model this process. And this modeling software for converting it to a jet fuel, in theory could be used as a drop in jet fuel in existing infrastructure. But didn’t economic analysis and was basically like, this is not feasible unless you have really ambitious carbon credits and a lot of policy support, which kind of tied back into the turning of my attention to environmental policy.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:21
Right. So with that, I mean, I would assume that if, if you have a an undergrad at Princeton, who is interested in the stuff that I’m sure there’s plenty of other organizations and corporations that are dealing with, you know, biofuel research and those kinds of things. How did that tie into to what the I guess the existing research and kind of research and development was, has been doing in that in that field?

TAYLOR BACON 7:46
Yeah, it was actually really great, because there was a company actually based in Oregon, called Red Rock biofuels, that were just starting to try and design and build and implement, I think the the plant was maybe just starting construction when I was working on my thesis for a very similar pathway. So I got to connect with them and chat about their work a little bit. And then there’s a bio jet or not a jet fuel, but just a biofuel plant in Iowa. That’s one of the only commercially operational ones in the US, I believe, or at least was at the time. So I got funding from Princeton to go to or that plant and kind of see what they were doing. So I definitely, yeah, I did my best to kind of see what was actually happening and kind of where this fit in with what other people were doing. And there were definitely other companies that were kind of starting out on the same path that I was looking at. And we’re, we’re definitely ahead of what I was doing, because they were actually building a plant rather than just modeling it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 8:49
Right. Right. So is that something then art? I mean, I guess, probably not in the commercial space, what are there then, I mean, you know, aircraft jet engines that are running off of biofuel, or like mixed or hybrid fields.

TAYLOR BACON 9:04
I think United has been doing a lot on sourcing their jet fuel and incorporating biojet fuel. So it’s definitely a pretty small fraction. But there are a lot of people working on kind of setting targets and moving towards having it be more prevalent. And I think there are some airlines that as kind of a way of supporting these pretty young technologies and young plants will agree to buy a certain amount of biofuel, and that can kind of serve as a financing guarantee to actually get these things off the ground.

BRAD NEWBOLD 9:39
That’s awesome. That’s cool. That’s fun to see. I mean, it’s one of those things where Well, I think a lot of a lot of what’s interesting with with what we’re going to be talking about today and with your research is that is that there are a lot of things that that we have that are going on right now. That do have that huge potential for for greater impact when it comes to the environment, and the climate, and you know lots of other things that are tied to those as well. So I think that’s I think that’s, that’s really interesting. So you, you went from doing kind of more of the hard science research, you said that you went into policy, and kind of environmental law, environmental policy, those kinds of things. What What made you want to switch from and you said, You switched back, but what made you want to really get in and dig into environmental policy? And you started working with the Environmental Defense Fund there, it’s based out of DC, so how, how did that that, yeah, that changing trajectory happen for you?

TAYLOR BACON 10:51
Yeah, I think there were two big pieces. The first was the environmental policy class, I took my last year at Princeton, and my, or the the professor teaching that class had been had worked at the EPA and been really involved in the Kyoto Protocol. And it was really, really powerful to hear her experience as a science, kind of as a scientist, being involved in this really important policy. And just kind of made me start thinking about, Okay, well, we have the technical solutions. And a lot of times, that’s not the limiting factor, like, we have the technical know how to do a lot more than we’re doing currently. So we’re like, why is there this gap? And that class, kind of like, okay, well, there’s all of these regular regulatory networks and frameworks and policy kind of support that needs to be there for these things to actually be making a difference. And I graduated during the Trump administration, and all of these kinds of climate, things felt like they were falling apart. And my, my feeling when I graduated was that like, I don’t want to be doing research kind of isolated from what’s actually going on, I want to be working on solutions and kind of actually implementing these things. And tied with my thesis that we were just talking about. I had designed and modeled this pathway and kind of said, Okay, these are the carbon emissions, this is the benefit. But it’s not feasible unless you have this really strong policy support. And, but yeah, between my thesis experience in this class I took, I was just really eager to do something that was kind of more on the ground. And a friend sent me the listing for this fellowship at the Environmental Defense Fund and kind of said, this seems like it would be up your alley. And I was, yeah, very excited to have the opportunity to kind of see what was going on in the policy where we’re old. And I started out in DC, and it was super incredible to be going to congressional hearings and testifying at the EPA, and really kind of be in the middle of the environmental policy world and see what it actually meant to have policy that supported these technical solutions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:15
So you actually got to be be there communicating? So so it seems, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, so you were working behind the scenes with doing research, as well as as kind of not necessarily creating policy, but but suggestions and guidelines for for policy makers, and then being able to communicate that to to, you know, I guess the decision makers, potentially as well, is that is that kind of your your, what your roles were there?

TAYLOR BACON 13:43
Yeah, I did a lot of research on policy and different policy options. And then a lot, I worked on a team that was predominantly lawyers who are involved in EPA regulatory action. So it was a lot of writing comments and kind of staying involved in these EPA processes, which are designed to have a lot of public feedback. But most people don’t have time to read these super extensive dockets and submit comments and testify. So EDF did a lot of that work is and kind of pushing forward these these regulations in a way that would help climate and energy and air quality.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:25
I think that’s, that’s something that well, it ties into to some themes that we’ve had with a lot of our guests when it comes to kind of the your different roles, your varying roles when it comes to you know, scientific research where you have the different ways that you’re trying to communicate your your findings or your understandings, or the or even just communicating the data or your interpretations of the data. Did you did you feel that that? It was let me back this up? What were the differences that you felt in being able to To communicate whether difficulties or, you know, ease of communication when it came to communicating within, you know, the scientific the research world versus communicating with policymakers versus even communicating with the with a general lay audience if you had the opportunity as well.

TAYLOR BACON 15:18
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of overlap in that you, the, your goals for the communication are tailored to your audience. But you are still making very intentional choices about how you’re communicating what information you’re clued, including how you’re framing it for that audience. So I think the skill of like honing a message for an audience was really applicable across the the range of people you’re talking to. I think learning to communicate for to the general public, for kind of a more broad audience was really helpful. I think science communication, when you’re in the weeds, and you’re kind of really getting into the meat of an issue is almost easier, because you can just kind of say everything that you know, but for the general audience, it was a really helpful exercise in thinking about, Okay, what’s the most important thing like how can I make this relatable? Or make it clear that this is important? Why is it important? And I had the opportunity to write blogs for EDF a lot, which was great for my writing skills and like communication skills, and I definitely have carried a lot of those into my PhD program.

BRAD NEWBOLD 16:32
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s definitely something that I think, I mean, everybody can, can work on communication skills, right? Whether it’s interpersonal, whether it’s, you know, to larger, broader audiences as well. But especially in dealing with with those in the scientific research community, or research and development, or whatever, and being able to really, I think, really hone in on, on what, what it is not only what you want to convey, but yeah, what your audience who your audience is, like, like you said, who your audience is, what kind of what kind of level, are they going to be able to really grasp the, you know, your findings, your conclusions, or the, I guess the the direction that you that you want that conversation to go as well. I think that’s again, that’s, that’s something that that is, it is, you know, key for, for anybody who’s in the sciences, to be able to communicate to a broader audience, not just within their bubble of academia or whatever it may be. So, so from from there, how long were you at the EDF?

TAYLOR BACON 17:47
I was there for just shy of three years.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:50
just shy of three years. So again, switching what made you want to switch and and move again, from, you know, the world of DC and policymaking and other things back into, into kind of the hard science and research and and back into academic research.

TAYLOR BACON 18:07
Yeah, when I finished my undergrad, I kind of was of the mind that I was never going back to school, I had had enough I was just ready to be in the real world. And then after a couple years at EDF, I loved my time at EDF and had such incredible, incredible colleagues and learned so much. And I think I always was like, oh, yeah, environmental policy is really important. And then kind of saw what it actually meant and what environmental policy looks like when you’re actually implementing it. But I just missed the more quantitative quantitative side of things. I was doing a lot of writing and, and kind of softer research, like reading a lot of policies looking at policy impacts, but was working with consultants who were the ones who were doing a lot of the the more quantitative work and analyzing outcomes of different policies a little more quantitatively. And EDF is a really unique organization in that it has a lot of PhD scientists on staff who are doing research but in a way that is kind of focused towards policy, relevant research and really solutions oriented. And I was part of a early career scientist mentorship program at EDF and was paired with a really incredible climate scientist and had the opportunity to hear about her experience as a PhD scientist, and she actually did her PhD at Princeton. So it was fun to chat about New Jersey. But yeah, I think the combination of kind of feeling feeling the itch to do something a little more quantitative and seeing these role models who had this mix of the science and the policy that I was really interested in, made me go reconsider my my initial stance that I was never going to go back to school and start looking into grad school programs where I could hopefully work towards a similar career path.

BRAD NEWBOLD 20:09
Right. Right. So, so thinking long term end goal. So is is that is that something that you would like to do when you’re done with your your PhD work is to kind of move back into the policy world.

TAYLOR BACON 20:22
That’s the goal, something, I mean, I still want to be doing research and have that be a really central part of my career. But I really admire the scientists who are both scientists and advocates and are doing really important science. But don’t stop there and kind of move that science forward towards like, this is how we can use this this. This is what it means. So yeah, something like that either at an environmental nonprofit or government agency or something like enrol the National Renewable Energy Lab where they are doing a lot of really policy relevant research, that that would be the dream someday.

BRAD NEWBOLD 21:00
Good. Good. Well, good luck with that. So what took you then what, what drew you to Colorado State University where you’re at now?

TAYLOR BACON 21:10
Um, so I had been living in Colorado for the last two years of my fellowship at EDF. EDF has a boulder office. And I’m from New Mexico originally. So it worked out well to be a little closer to home and in the mountains with lots of good trail running. So I was looking at a pretty narrow set of schools to begin with. And CSU has a really incredible kind of soil ecology biogeochemistry school or departments. And there’s a lot of faculty, including my advisor doing really incredible research in that space. And I reached out to a bunch of professors at a bunch of different schools and just had a lot of conversations about people’s research, and ended up finding Keith Pashtun at CSU and he had this agricole takes project that seemed like it was a really good fit for my background, and everything just kind of fell into place into place.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:10
That’s awesome. Really quick, do you miss the humidity of back East?

TAYLOR BACON 22:17
No, I I do not miss the East Coast, a lot of my friends are there. So I go back to visit. But growing up in New Mexico, like 20% Humidity was a humid day. So it was definitely an adjustment. And I, I do not miss it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 22:36
So with your aside from from your project, and we’ll we’ll get to that that next, were you able to kind of mold your your coursework that you’ve been working on and your your program itself around around this, this idea of, of, I guess, either renewable energy, regenerative energy, you know, those kinds of things there.

TAYLOR BACON 23:00
Yeah, that’s been one of my favorite things about the like a PhD program in general so far is that there are effectively no requirements. And every course that I choose to take is just kind of working towards what I’m interested in and what my goals are. And I actually have the opportunity to be part of this very, very cool fellowship program at CSU, that’s funded by the National Science Foundation and is called inner fuse, which is the interdisciplinary training, education and research and food energy water systems. So it’s this really interdisciplinary group of students from all over the University, studying food, energy, water systems, and kind of a climate future, which is kind of exactly where I want to be, especially with the food energy, intersection. And there’s specific coursework that goes with the fellowship that’s focused on the kind of systems thinking and systems analysis. And you’re taking these classes with people from totally different backgrounds, totally different research. So that’s been really, really valuable from a coursework perspective, and then starting to take a lot of the more soil ecology, biology, okay, biogeochemistry classes, since that’s not something I have as much background in. And yeah, it’s just been really great to be able to kind of pick the the types of classes from the big systems level classes to the what is happening on a tiny, tiny molecular level in the soil, and kind of bring those all together in this research project.

BRAD NEWBOLD 24:33
That’s really cool. I have a soft spot for interdisciplinary research, and fellowships and those kinds of things. I was a part of one back in my day, and it was really, really cool. Just be able to, because a lot of times, we kind of get in and this this goes for anybody. I mean, any of you in the audience who’s listening to this, like we often will get into our own bubble of and we think you As the work that we’re doing is really important. And it it, it may very well be. But But there’s so many other people that are thinking about things that might be tangentially related or even overlapping with what you are interested in, that are thinking of coming at it from a different perspective or even, you know, even might have different ideas or even just even just the the fact of, of being able to look at a problem with different sets of eyes. Is is really important to being able to, I guess, yeah, solve problems and come up with Yeah, solutions for a wide variety of, of different interests. So I think that’s really cool. And yeah, I’m definitely a, an advocate for interdisciplinary research and collaboration. From yeah, whatever it may be, because they’re there things too, and I’m sure that you’ve seen it, we can talk more about this about, about your project to about working with. Yeah, working with renewable energy, but then also you’re incorporating, you know, the interests of of, you know, ranchers and of other folks who are who have different, I guess, different motives in mind, potentially, but all coming together to try to, to make things better for for, you know, the population as a whole, or, but starting small and working big, you know, so yeah, so I’m really happy that that all that is going on for you. So let’s let’s jump into to this main project, is this year, is this your dissertation project? Or is this kind of a precursor to it?

TAYLOR BACON 26:48
This is it. This is the dissertation project.

BRAD NEWBOLD 26:51
This is the big one. All right. Cool. So yeah, just just talk to us a little bit about about cattle tracker and about Agri Voltex. And we want to get into Yeah, regenerative. You know, land use management, and all that kind of stuff. So wherever you want to start, feel free to jump in. And we can we can go from there.

TAYLOR BACON 27:15
Yeah, so I have the opportunity to work on a very cool project called cattle tracker. It’s funded by the Department of Energy, Solar Energy Technology Office, and you were talking about interdisciplinary teams. And that’s one of my favorite things about this project is. So broadly, our goal is to design a system to co locate regenerative cattle grazing with solar energy generation, there’s been a huge build out in solar energy, and there needs to be a lot more to stay on track with climate goals. But there’s often a lot of tension around land use, because solar requires so much more land than, like point source, like a coal fired power plant. So figuring out where these solar power plants are going, a lot of times they’re displacing agricultural land, and that can have drawbacks. So in the last decade or so there’s been a lot of research that is kind of questioning the idea that you can only do one or the other that you have to do agriculture or solar energy generation. And it’s often referred to as agri voltaic. So the colocation of agriculture and so solar photovoltaics. And the research has looked at all sorts of different combinations. So everything from growing high value vegetable crops, to pollinator habitat to grazing, which is what we’re focusing on. And because it’s such a complex system, you have the animal side of things, you have the solar energy generation side of things, you have all of these ecosystem and ecological impacts. The team that we’re working with on this project has folks from silicon Ranch, who are the principal investigators, and that’s a solar company that is actually practicing solar grazing Agra voltaic systems and owns tons of solar power plants across the country and and kind of know that engineering and operations and management and maintenance side of things really well. And then we have on the CSU side of things, we have people who are working on biogeochemical models of what’s happening and how the panels and the cattle and the soil and the vegetation is all interacting and what’s happening beneath these panels. And we have animal welfare experts who are looking at okay, like what does this mean for the cattle? How are they interacting? We have our field site is located at a ranch called White Oak pastures in southwestern Georgia. So we have a lot of the ranch staff who are actually really managing the sheep and cattle that we’re studying. So there’s all of these different people from all of these different backgrounds working towards this, this goal of designing this cattle compatible solar system, which is really exciting.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:14
That’s super cool. So, I mean, there’s, there’s lots of different ways we can go with this. I think that let’s take, I guess, let’s take a step back. And, and talk about because you were talking about how, you know, solar farms use a lot of land, I guess, what is kind of the baseline for, you know, solar farming right now, when it comes to when it comes to, you know, solar panels, and, and their, you know, their footprints on on the landscape? And I guess, and then, and then if you could talk about that as well as the environmental impact from because because a lot of times as we’re dealing with, you know, with counteracting and mitigating climate change, we want to delve into renewable energy, which then I mean, solar is, is one of those primary energy sources. But at the same time, there are other environmental impacts from, you know, renewable energy sources as well, if you could just kind of dig into that a little bit there.

TAYLOR BACON 31:15
Yeah, I think that’s really important. And that was one of the things that I was really excited about this project. Because I, EDF, I had been working on all this modeling and analysis and policy design, I was like, Okay, if we want to reach this percent reduction in carbon emissions by this year, this is the amount of solar we need. And it’s one thing to say, Okay, we need however many megawatts gigawatts of solar. And it’s another thing, my partner spent a summer working as a engineer on a solar power plant, and I went and visited him, and just seeing how big this solar power plant was, that was just like a fraction of the total that we needed. And it does, it totally alters the landscape, I think, the land where this one had been built had previously been cornfields, and that was just kind of a mud pit. And there’s different soul different solar companies do it differently. And there’s different impacts. And I think your question about what the impact of these solar power plants is, is something that people are like actively studying right now. And there’s studies that are just starting to come out on kind of how the panel’s change the dynamics, and a lot of that depends on what vegetation you’re planting, and how you’re managing the vegetation. So there’s, there’s a lot of variables that impact what solar panels are doing to the ecosystem and to the environment. And one of the big motivations for this project is, how can we do it better? Like how can we minimize any negative impacts, and maybe even have some positive impacts by pairing the regenerative grazing with the panels and hopefully improving soil health and vegetation productivity and indicators like that?

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:58
Yeah, I was gonna say, could you go into a little bit more detail with those with those impacts? Because I mean, you know, my assumption is that we’re, you know, we’re creating, you know, heat islands in, in these situations, or we’re affecting that, you know, the microclimate there in that location. And, and we might say, Oh, it’s, you know, it’s just, you know, you know, a couple of acres or half an acre or whatever it may be. But then, again, you know, you have the butterfly effect, and so on. And so you have these small little microclimate sediment effects the regional climate around it. And yeah, other you know, other things, things like that.

TAYLOR BACON 33:35
Yeah, so the panels are really interesting, because you take this pretty homogeneous landscape, everything’s getting the same sun, everything is getting the same water. And then when you install the panels, all of a sudden, it’s very heterogeneous, and you have shading over certain areas and kind of redistribution of water, as water flows off one side of the panel or the other. And some areas aren’t getting rain, some areas aren’t getting, or are getting more rain than they would if it was just open because of the runoff. And air temperature is affected. It’s kind of buffered from broader air temperature swings by the panels is what a lot of research is starting to show. There’s been a couple papers suggesting that you maybe get some heat island effect, and there’s a little bit of overall increase in air temperature, but I think that’s also very climate dependent. And looking at, okay, what’s the vegetation because having plants under the solar panels can actually cool them down a little bit and increase the efficiency of the panels. So it’s, I think, the overall impact is really ecosystem dependent because you have the interactions of all of these different factors and it’s going to look really different in a hot, dry, arid climate than it is in a more wet case. humid climate. So I think we’re just starting to, to get to the tip of the iceberg on kind of what this looks like, across different climates across different regions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:10
Right. And so as part of as part of this project, are you looking at different crop cover than or different vegetation and implant cover there? Beneath the, beneath the panels? And, and then at the same time, I think, I think there’s something that mentioned about looking at at different, you know, whether whether, you know, different types of crop cover, whether it’s grazed, whether it’s mowed, whether it’s, you know, left just to grow on its own, what are your assumptions or hypotheses within within that level of things.

TAYLOR BACON 35:46
So for the first two years of our study, before we get to the goal of actually building and testing a cattle based system, we’re doing all of our measurements and experiments in an existing solar power plant that is currently grazed by sheep. So we’re focusing on comparing vegetation management by sheep versus vegetation management by mowing, and then we have a control that’s just grazing without any panels. So the vegetation cover and the soil characteristics are pretty comparable across all of our treatment areas. And we’re really just looking at the management impacts. So how grazing versus mowing kind of changes what’s going on? And hopefully something about how kind of the panels change the the ecosystem and the microclimate?

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:38
Right. So is this something that I was thinking? So we’re talking about sheep, a lot smaller than cattle, have given different grazing behaviors as well? And is there is there potential down the line to compare different types of livestock when it comes to grazing patterns and and the effect on on the solar farm there?

TAYLOR BACON 37:01
Yeah, I think there definitely is. And I think this study sets us up well, to do that, because we’re establishing baselines with mowing, and with sheep grazing. And for the cattle system, cattle are a lot bigger, there’s a lot of concern about damage to panels. So we have the the branch of our project team that’s looking at the ecosystem impacts, soil, carbon, stuff like that. And then we have another branch of our team that’s actually focused on the design of a cattle compatible PV systems, we have the animal welfare experts and the engineers who are actually trying to design a system. But because nobody’s grazing solar panels with cattle yet, because those systems just don’t exist. There isn’t a way to do a comparison yet. But hopefully, by the end of this study, well, we’ll be able to start looking at different species grazing comparisons.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:56
Nice. So how would you how would you consider a or what would you do to say, this is a successful project? What would that what would that look like?

TAYLOR BACON 38:08
So I think, kind of from our, our project standpoint, one of our big goals is having this cattle tracker system actually be operational. So having a 250 kilowatt outdoor test lab functioning solar panels with cattle, grazing, the grazing the air, the vegetation beneath the panels. So that’s kind of one of the big goals. But I think, ultimately, anything we learn from all of this data we’re collecting will still be incredibly useful. And because it’s a relatively short study, we probably won’t see huge changes in things like soil, carbon, or other soil on particular changes very slowly. But I think we’re establishing a baseline which sets us up to come back and resample and see how things change over longer periods of time. And gives us kind of initial comparison data. And I think, in particular, we’re collecting a lot of vegetation samples and seeing how vegetation productivity changes under these different treatments over the course of a growing season. And I think all of that data will be really helpful for informing decisions about how you manage vegetation under solar panels, and what the impacts of grazing compared to mowing, which is a lot of times more standard. Are

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:33
you talked about collecting data, and what are the specific data points that that you’re getting? You’ve mentioned, you know, you want to you want to see how you know, water infiltration into the soil looks, you want to see how I mean potentially down the line about you know, carbon sequestration within the soil, or just the effect of the plants themselves and how they’re thriving or not. And, and then also the You know, the the microclimate around around those, how are you measuring? How are you getting each of those data points? How are you measuring it? What are you using to measure it? And what are you seeing or expecting to see?

TAYLOR BACON 40:13
Yeah, so this is another thing that I think is really exciting about this study is we have a lot of different types of data that we’re collecting and a lot of different methods we’re using. So we just finished our first field season, this spring, spent a couple of weeks out in Georgia at our field field site collecting data. And on the ecosystem side of things, the primary things we were working on is we took a bunch of soil cores, and collected the soil samples at different depths across the different zones. So if you imagine the panels, there’s the drip edges, there’s directly under the panel, there’s between the panels. So in addition to kind of overall effects under the solar array, we’re really looking at spatial variability and how the microclimate changes what’s going on in the soil and with the vegetation. So we took soil samples across all of those zones, we took vegetation samples, across all the zones. So we can look at how much vegetation is growing, what the functional groups are. So what kind of plants are there, and the our partners at the ranch are continuing to take vegetation samples before and after every vegetation management event. So before a plot gets mowed or grazed, the team there takes a vegetation sample, and then after the event, they’ll take another sample. So we can kind of track how these vegetation management practices are influencing biomass productivity. And then we also installed a bunch of microclimate sensors. So we have soil moisture and temperature probes at three different depths across all of our sites. And then we have a bunch of microclimate sensors, so little weather stations, measuring solar radiation, precipitation, air temperature, wind speed, which we expect to have a lot of spatial variability in all of those different variables. And I actually remembered what I was saying earlier, all of this data that we’re collecting is also going to feed into a biogeochemical model. So trying to capture, there’s a lot of ecosystem models that do that model, plant growth and soil dynamics and carbon fluxes. And the goal is to integrate solar panels with grazing into those ecosystem models. So even if we don’t have long term data, we can still use this data to parameterize, the models and hopefully say something really interesting and kind of play out different scenarios with these dynamics. So we have a bunch of different centers and samples that are now back in the lab to be analyzed. And then in addition, we’re working with a team from the UK for a company called Pantera. And they installed Eddy Covariance flux towers at each of our treatments. So we’ll be measuring Yeah, it’s very, very exciting to have that data to. So we can see carbon and water fluxes from our sight and hopefully pair that with all of the vegetation and soil and microclimate measurements and kind of see how the system as a whole is working.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:28
That’s super interesting. That’s exciting. Yeah, that’s fun to hear. What challenges or roadblocks Have you have you had so far in this project?

TAYLOR BACON 43:38
I think one of the hardest things we ran into was when we were initially designing this research plan and kind of deciding what data we wanted to collect. Deciding what sensors we wanted to use, where we wanted to install them is that there is so much heterogeneity and variation within the solar array, even just within a single block of panels across even just a couple feet apart because of these different zones. And it was challenging to balance okay, what can we feasibly measure and what how much data can we feasibly collect, while still capturing enough of this variability to actually be accurate and to have representative data? And when I first submitted, I was like, Okay, we need 81 TDR hours to measure soil moisture, and RPI was kind of like, why do we need that many, like, that’s a lot. So kind of finding that sweet spot and being like, Okay, this is this is going to give us enough data to do the things we’re trying to do, while still being feasible to actually implement. We only have so many people to go out and hammer soil cores into the ground and to install all of these sensors so and as a scientist, you always want like the most stata you can get and like the highest quality and accepting that like, sometimes you just have to bank on what’s feasible and kind of as long as it meets what you need, and kind of step back and be like, Okay, this is going to be enough, even though I would love to have TDR hours, at way more intervals or something like that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 45:20
Yep. I think that’s that’s been a that’s been a forever problem. And I’m sure maybe it’ll get, you know, overcome in the future. But But yeah, especially when you’re dealing with spatial variability. And that’s, that’s always one of the big questions that we get here. It’s like, okay, yeah, how many sensors do I need? In order to, as I said, depends on your, your project depends on your questions. But yes, we want sensors everywhere, we want to be able to gather data from from every single point. But yeah, but like you said, that’s, that’s not, that’s not feasible right now. And at the same time, too, I mean, with it does make your or can make your models more robust. But again, you know, it’s one of those things where, sometimes as you’re modeling, there’s diminishing returns with, with, you know, the amount of how much you parameter and parameterize, your, your models and how many variables you, you input. And so, yeah, like you said, it’s finding that that sweet spot of, of making things work, especially depending on on your budget, as well. So, as we’re wrapping things up, can, can you just kind of give us an overview of your thoughts on the I guess the the impact or implications of of your project here, but also potentially the future of this kind of research into agriculture takes and, and, you know, combination of, of renewable energy and and land use?

TAYLOR BACON 46:43
Yeah, I think this field is really exciting, because in my mind, there’s not really any question that we’re going to have a lot more solar, and that there’s going to be a lot of land that has solar installed on it. There’s a net zero America study that Princeton did a couple years ago that looked at the footprint of energy, we would need to meet a net zero target by 2050. And in their kind of highest land use scenario, I think it was something like 17 million additional acres of solar power plants. So it’s coming. The exact scale, I think, is kind of unknown. But I think there’s going to be a lot and we need a lot. But I think this field is exciting, because it’s really asking how we can do that, as well as possible, considering not just the solar energy and the like, energy generation carbon side of things, but kind of more systems wide analysis of what this looks like, and how solar installations can be built and designed and managed to really improve ecosystem function rather than detracting. So I think kind of every agricole takes angle, and each different agricultural component looks at this a little differently. But I think as a whole, the field is really exciting for kind of thinking about not just sustainable energy that’s sustainable from a energy carbon point of view. But that’s from sustained that’s sustainable from the land it’s on. And our cattle tracker kind of north star is a solution that’s good for solar energy generation, good for the land, and good for the animals. And I think zooming out, and having that kind of systems perspective is something that’s really great about this Iberville takes field. And I think because so much additional solar energy is kind of a given, there’s a lot of benefit from this field, and from all of the data that’s starting to come out. And I think each project contribute something a little different. And hopefully, we’ll have something useful to say about grazing. And so solar collocation that can help inform how people are doing this, and how solar companies are thinking about their projects and how the people whose land is being leased or thinking about managing their land and working with solar, solar companies rather than kind of losing that agricultural component. So I think there’s a lot of a lot of benefits to be had from these systems and from the kind of broader systems level thinking. Awesome.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:24
Any other final thoughts before we wrap things up?

TAYLOR BACON 49:28
I don’t think so. This has been great.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:30
Yeah. So our time is up for today. Thank you again, Taylor, for joining us. We do really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. It’s been a really fascinating conversation.

TAYLOR BACON 49:42
Thanks again for having me. This is great.

BRAD NEWBOLD 49:46
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time on We Measure the World