LI-COR holds One-Day Workshop with CSU-TAPS

LI-COR Principal Scientist Dr. Graham Leggett gave a one-day seminar on the SoilFluxPro™ at CSU ARDEC Taylor Conference Center. Participants worked with a sample dataset and headed outside to take sample measurements. (photo by Christine Hamilton)

The Irrigation Innovation Consortium (IIC) and CSU Testing Ag Performance Solutions (TAPS) hosted a one-day training led by LI-COR Environmental on soil flux measurement October 10, 2024, at Colorado State University.  The event brought together diverse participants from Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, and Oklahoma: university students, faculty, and staff, as well as ag industry and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Forest Service (USFS).   

This seminar supported field techs, modelers, ag research and management program coordinators, and others. It helped them gain the background and expert connections needed to design effective research field sampling campaigns, to conduct analyses, and to better understand the influence of management and environment on greenhouse gas emissions in different agricultural systems and settings. 

Several attendees had just been set up with new LI-COR instruments as part of a USDA-ARS effort to conduct nationwide sampling to better understand agricultural emissions in different regions and production systems.

LI-COR Principal Scientist Dr. Graham Leggett zeroed in on the theory behind and evolution of the design of instrumentation used to measure trace gases at the soil-atmosphere interface. Local variation in soils, land use, and weather patterns in terms of barometric pressure shifts, wind speeds, and more all factor in as practical considerations in designing effective field sampling campaigns to improve knowledge and help answer research questions.  

The group began inside at the CSU ARDEC Taylor Conference Center classroom and then moved outside to work hands-on. (photo by Christine Hamilton)

The group had an opportunity to look at how to work with a sample dataset using LI-COR's online SoilFluxPro™ software and to get away from computers for a bit and head outside to take some sample measurements.  

This workshop was part of a multistate effort connected to TAPS project teams in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas that are all using LI-COR soil flux measurement instruments to study how conservation-oriented approaches to managing inputs,  principally water and nitrogen, influences greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Of particular concern is nitrous oxide, which is long-lived in the atmosphere and has 300 times the warming power of carbon dioxide.  

This workshop, and the multistate initiative to study and analyze GHGs connected to farm manager decisions through TAPS, are being supported through a USDA-NRCS technical agreement with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act.