Enviro-weather annual report

Portrait of Beth BishopWelcome to our 2007-08 annual report, our showcase of the changes and additions Enviro-weather has instituted over the past fiscal year. This is also an opportunity for me to introduce myself as the new Enviro-weather coordinator and to express our appreciation to Mark Trent, the former coordinator. Mark told us that it has always been his dream to work in California and last spring, he was offered a job with University of California Cooperative Extension. We have heard he is off to a great start, although he will undoubtedly miss the snow and ice! We wish him well.

I was hired to serve as Enviro-weather coordinator half-time beginning September 1 and will switch to full-time on January 1, 2009. I’ve been with MSU for a while, and have worked in vegetable entomology for many years. I will be finishing up my entomology projects this fall while I transition to Enviro-weather.

The highlights in this report explain why I am excited to work with Enviro-weather – it’s a growing program. Six new stations were added this past fiscal year and many more are planned for 2008-09. My calendar has been filling up meeting with work groups and MSU’s Area of Expertise (AoE) teams. These teams are the driving force behind the work groups that developing new products and helping us partner for new stations. You can read about their accomplishments elsewhere in this report. I will soon be attending many commodity expos and educational meetings. These groups have played an essential role in launching Enviro-weather. I look forward to talking with many of our users at these meetings.

This report details how we’ve improved our technology and products for users. I look forward to hearing from you first hand: what is working for you, what needs further tweaking and, most of all, your ideas for new products and directions. The Enviro-weather team is excited about future plans and growth. We invite you to be part of it. Contact me at bishopb@msu.edu or (517) 432-6520.

– Beth Bishop, Enviro-weather coordinator.

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We thank our contributors for our growth

Base funding for Enviro-weather comes from Michigan’s Project GREEEN, the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station and MSU Extension. Additional contributions have allowed us to expand our services. These include partnership with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, in-kind support from our business partners, and teaming up with colleagues and friends to secure Project GREEEN competitive grants, external grants, and private contributions. Enviro-weather is always striving to form additional, productive partnerships and find new ways to support and expand the system. You can see our full list of contributors at: http://www.enviroweather.msu.edu/thanks.asp

Pie chart of funding sources for Enviro-weather

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Users invited to support Enviro-weather

Enviro-weather’s users can now contribute to its services at the web site. This funding page is linked throughout the web site: http://www.enviroweather.msu.edu/support.asp

Along with making a financial contribution, the page invites users to:

  • Share an idea for a new service or data they would like to receive from Enviro-weather (email link to coordinator Beth Bishop).
  • Host, purchase or support a local weather station (email link to field operations manager Steve Marquie).
  • The web page instructs users how to make a credit card gift on-line or offers a postal address for mailing a check.
Photo of demonstration weather station at 2008 Ag Expo

Enviro-weather demonstration at MSU's 2008 Ag Expo. Contact coordinator Beth Bishop to have Enviro-weather participate in your event.

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More stations means more people served

Map of Michigan showing locations of stations by year established Michigan is made up of many micro-climates. For Enviro-weather users, being located near a station with similar landscape and climate attributes gives them more accurate information. The Enviro-weather staff actively seeks partnerships to fund new weather stations. Establishing a station requires identifying a landowner willing to provide the site and funding partners who will cover the station purchase plus a three-year maintenance contract. The Enviro-weather staff was very successful this year, adding six stations to the network, bringing the total to 58 by the end of June 2008.

The new stations, identified by the town closest to their location, and their funding partners are:

A variety of interests and needs can lead to establishing a station. Farmers in Branch County approached their MSUE county director, Roberta Osborne, about hosting a local station where producers of seed corn, tomato and dairy are just a few of the users who would benefit. Osborne identified several people willing to contribute toward a weather station, but needed to raise more funds. Her solution was to setup a demonstration at a local high school farming-related event. Enviro-weather staff loaned her equipment and information to demonstrate how the technology provides accurate and useful weather analysis for farming. Her strategy worked; farmers offered financial support and a station was setup in Coldwater, Michigan.

Abby at a new Enviroweather stationIn another part of the state, MSUE district fruit educator Bob Tritten wanted to address the shortage of stations in southeast Michigan. He introduced Enviro-weather staff to Abby Jacobson, of Westview Orchards near Romeo. Abby and her sister, Katrina Schumacher, were already using Enviro-weather to make farming decisions and they quickly agreed to host and donate funds for a new station. In addition, Westview Orchards hosts many groups of school children and they now include a stop at the weather station to talk about how science and technology contribute to agriculture. Enviroweather New York Times article As a result of this collaboration, Enviro-weather attracted attention from the Associated Press (AP) who wrote a story picked up by many media outlets including The New York Times, CNNMoney.com, Forbes, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press and the International Herald Tribune. The AP story notes the following from an interview with Abby. “Jacobson said she was a fan of Enviro-weather well before she got her own monitoring station, checking data from nearby counties and extrapolating her own conditions…. Now, relying on data from her station, she has been able to skip one spraying for the fungus that causes apple scab and three sprays for fire blight, a bacterial condition that attacks apple and pear trees." The AP also noted that fewer sprays saves Jacobson money and time and makes best use of pesticides.

MSU scientists are also interested in the data generated by Enviro-weather. Researchers participating in the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center are funding five additional stations to be setup during the latter half of 2008. The stations will give important measurements to help determine the success and sustainability of potential biofuel sources and will also serve Enviro-weather’s other clientele.

Another successful proposal of special importance established a long-term collaborative and symbiotic relationship with a State of Michigan government partner. During spring 2008, Enviro-weather entered into contractual agreement with the Forest, Mineral, and Fire Management Division (FMFMD) of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) to maintain a number of its automated weather stations. FMFMD uses a network of 27 stations to monitor the potential for forest fires across the state. MDNR owns 16 of the 27 stations, while the others are operated by Enviro-weather. Given the similarity between the two group’s weather equipment, MDNR would like to contract with Enviro-weather to begin routine maintenance and upkeep of 4 of its 16 stations during 2008 and the remaining 12 stations in 2009.

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Technology upgrades trim costs and improve service

Some of the best solutions cut costs and offer better service. One of Enviro-weather’s significant expenses is transferring data from the weather stations back to MSU’s campus for processing into models, forecasts and reports. Last year, Enviro-weather staff investigated various technologies to replace using conventional land-line telephone connections. In partnership with Verizon Wireless, Campbell Scientific, and Multi-tech Systems, an interface was created using wireless broadband communication for data delivery. As of June 30, 2008, only three of the 58 stations still communicate with the network via land-line telephones. All other stations either connect directly with short-haul modem or via broadband wireless. Monthly wireless connection fees are approximately $15 versus $50 or more for telephone connections. Since connecting is less costly, reports are now updated every half hour during the growing season rather than twice daily. Additionally, there are fewer outages, no concerns about cutting phone cables, less damage from lightning strikes and fewer site restrictions when placing stations in the field.

A lab team changing a station's batteryStaff members also are evaluating the potential of new NASA solar panel technology for charging station batteries. Presently, older solar panels trickle charge each station’s 12 volt DC power system. The demands created by the new cellular wireless system on top of the low level of solar energy available in Michigan are driving an interest in upgrading the panels. Evaluation of the new technology suggests Enviro-weather would experience an increase in battery charging performance and efficiency along with potential cost savings. In June 2008, ten of the new solar panels were installed for a second evaluation.

Availability of information and data from Enviro-weather is dependent on the system’s computer network. This past year, the database system that collects and stores data was upgraded with new hardware and software. A new computer server was purchased with an award from the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station to replace the existing one purchased in 2002. The new server has significantly greater analytical and processing capabilities. A new storage subsystem was also purchased and installed. It provides protection against hardware failure and also significantly improves speed of data access by performing multiple or concurrent disk reads. This is particularly important for Enviro-weather’s database, which handles a large number of data requests each day.

There were also several software upgrades that automate functions, increase security and enhance performance. For example, local “writes” into the database are now 1.5 times faster than the previous system and local “reads” improved by nearly a factor of 10.

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Work groups initiate more models and products for users

While hardware and technology excites engineers and researchers, farmers and other users of Enviro-weather care most about the resulting models, forecasts, and reference information made available to them. As of June 2008, options at the Enviro-weather web site were:

  • Six commodity/plant pages with links to products
  • Seven plant disease models
  • Six weed development models through a partner, GDDTracker
  • Five insect development models
  • One crop development model
  • Nine customized summaries and condition reports
  • Irrigation Scheduler
  • Integrated links to information resources throughout Enviro-weather
  • Weather forecasts and summaries.

Enviro-weather’s work groups consist of MSU specialists and educators along with representative web site users. Their charge is to review ideas for applications or products and to pursue those identified for development. Science-based models are the basis of many of Enviro-weather’s decision-support tools. Factors such as insect or crop phenological stages and crop disease risk are linked to hourly, daily and seasonal weather patterns. Models quantifying these links are developed by researchers at MSU. Or if a model has already been developed at another university, MSU validates it to confirm it is accurate under Michigan conditions.

During FY 2008, work groups added several new applications to Enviro-weather including evapotranspiration estimations, guidance for timing alfalfa first cutting, and an apple maturity model.

Work groups selected the following pest models or products as priorities for development during FY2008 and secured funding when needed:

close-up photo of gypsy moth larva
  • Forestry/Christmas trees: gypsy moth spray window dates.
  • Turf: pythium blight.
  • Field crops: black cutworm, corn rootworm, alfalfa weevil, western bean cutworm, irrigation scheduling.
  • Vegetables: variegated cutworm, cabbage maggot, asparagus beetle, seedcorn maggot, onion maggot, squash vine borer, future forecast conditions for potato late blight, volunteer potato model.
  • Fruit: grape powdery mildew, grape berry moth, cranberry fruitworm, Tussock moth, user-adaptable model for apple and pear fire blight.
  • Landscape/nursery: Euonymus scale, pine needle scale, magnolia scale, Fletcher scale, cottony maple scale, black vine weevil, gypsy moth, European pine sawfly, Cooley spruce gall adelgid, eastern spruce gall adelgid.

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Statistics show use is growing

Since Enviro-weather’s inception in 2006, visitors’ data requests have grown from less than 500 per week to 7,000 to 10,000 per week during spring 2008. In May 2008, we met a demand more than four times greater than in May 2007.

Graph of report requests by day, grouped by month, for fiscal years 2006-2008

Beyond conventional users, the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan began accessing Enviro-weather data in March 2008 for short-term weather monitoring and forecasting. System data are also used directly by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the MesoWest Network for forest and rangeland fire monitoring and control activities.

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Who cares? What our users are saying about Enviro-weather

photograph of apples in basket In a February 2008 Farm World, reportedly the largest farm newspaper in the Midwest, interviewed Mark Youngquist about his use of Enviro-weather. Youngquist, who farms near Sparta, Michigan, noted that he uses Enviro-weather to head off apple scab and several other common apple pests. He was quoted saying “You don’t want to waste any of your sprays. We can predict quite precisely when an insect will lay its eggs. It’s a battle zone out there. If we didn’t have Enviro-weather, we just wouldn’t have as many options.” Comparing current farming practices with tools like Enviro-weather to those in his father’s era, Youngquist said, “You can’t use insecticide anymore to just kill everything.”

Bill Shane, an MSU Extension district educator shared with us how Enviro-weather makes his work more efficient and effective. “I use Enviro-weather extensively to summarize growing degree information for the region. My guess is that Enviro-weather saves me two to three hours per week during the growing season.”

Shane also noted that Extension field staff amplifies the impact of Enviro-weather. Educators distribute Enviro-weather information to a large farm audience via meetings, radio shows, MSU’s Crop Advisory Team Alert newsletters and phone calls. “I would guess I reach several hundred people per week.”

This summer, we also heard from Bruce Sutherland representing Michigan Agricultural Commodities. “On behalf of Michigan Agricultural Commodities (MAC), I would like to tell you what a great site and aide to our agricultural business this is. MAC has eight elevator locations in the state of Michigan.” Sutherland also suggested the possibility of hosting weather stations at some of the elevator sites.

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