Jamie and Dr. Soupir discuss the benefits of spring manure applications, the impacts of studying at a land-grant university and how corn cobs might be the wave of the future for bioreactors.
Dr. Michelle Soupir joined the faculty at Iowa State University in 2008. She was appointed as an Interim Associate Dean in the Graduate College in 2022 and is a Professor in the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department (ABE) with a research and teaching appointment. Dr. Soupir received her B.S. degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering from Kansas State University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech.
Jamie Duininck (00:02):
This is The Water Table.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
A chance to hear the agricultural side of these issues.
Jamie Duininck (00:09):
A place for people to go find information and education.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Water management is just going to become even more critical into the future.
Jamie Duininck (00:19):
How misunderstood what we do is.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I would encourage people to open their minds and listen to this dialogue.
Jamie Duininck (00:31):
Well, welcome back to The Water Table Podcast. Today I have a great guest with me, Dr. Michelle Soupir, who joins us from the Iowa State University, ISU. She has been there since 2008. She’s been appointed as an interim associate dean in the Graduate College in 2022 and is a professor in the Agricultural and Biosystem Engineering Department with a research and teaching appointment. Dr. Soupir received her BS degree in biological and agricultural engineering from Kansas State University and her MS and PhD in biological system engineering from Virginia Tech. We are really happy to have you and welcome to The Water Table.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (01:15):
Thanks so much.
Jamie Duininck (01:16):
Yeah. I’ve also followed you on Twitter. For those that want to, it’s… You have a great Twitter account information about water quality and just different seminars coming up, different things happening in the world of agricultural water quality. So I just want to share that so I don’t forget. You can find Dr. Soupir on Twitter. @ISUWaterChicks is where you’ll find her. So I don’t know, I don’t search for Chicks on Twitter very often, but I have found you there on ISU Water Chicks.
(01:50):
But welcome to The Water Table. We want to just visit about what you do and how you’re making an impact in water quality and agriculture. But before we do that, it was just fun for me to see where you’ve been in your career and your studies have taken you. We’re entering that time of the year, which is really fun to be on college campuses, especially in the Midwest when things get warmer and college basketball is culminating with March Madness. So you’ve been Iowa State, Virginia Tech, Manhattan, Kansas at Kansas State. What did you like the most and why?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (02:34):
Wow! That’s a great question. So all three institutions are land-grant universities and all three are very service-oriented. We want to take the research that we do and make sure that we share it out with the public. We want to provide an education and resources to citizens at Iowa State, the state of Iowa. So it’s just always been very satisfying to me to be at land-grant institutions where we have this service focus and we want to make sure that what we do is impactful and resonates with the citizens of the state and with the community and across the US as well.
(03:21):
But that’s been a common thread across the places that I’ve been. Opportunities to get engaged and get that hands-on learning experience has been really impactful to me throughout my career. So as an undergraduate at Kansas State University, that’s where I was first introduced to research. And it was truly by just talking with a professor and getting involved with his research program, and then I was able to stay one summer and do research with him.
(03:57):
That’s really where the research trajectory of my career began, was with that personal, hands-on learning experience that I had as an undergrad. So I just very strongly believe in that and want to provide those opportunities to our students, and now here at Iowa State and also at Virginia Tech. That was a very consistent, service-focused learning experience at all three institutions.
Jamie Duininck (04:26):
Sure. Then there’s a lot of similarities and then some major differences too, and just geography and what it’s like. I had the opportunity to tour Virginia Tech last year with my son who was a senior in high school and was considering it. He ended up at Texas A&M. But Blacksburg, pretty cool little town. So if you had one Saturday in mid-October to be at a football game, which campus would you be on of those three?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (04:58):
Oh, boy! Yeah. I mean, Virginia Tech, it is just a beautiful, beautiful campus. The Blue Ridge Mountains and the fall colors are just amazing.
Jamie Duininck (05:09):
Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (05:11):
Yeah, can’t beat that experience.
Jamie Duininck (05:13):
Are you an Iowa native or no? Are you back home or?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (05:16):
I’m from Kansas.
Jamie Duininck (05:16):
You’re from Kansas. Okay.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (05:17):
I grew up in El Dorado, Kansas, so just outside of Wichita.
Jamie Duininck (05:21):
Sure, sure. So let’s get into a little bit more. Sorry about just getting into some of that, but it’s just fun for me and I think hopefully for our listeners too. But what you do is you’re really focused on water quality and through different applications and when it comes to manure. First of all, how did you really get interested in this? If you’re from Kansas, water isn’t necessarily on the forefront of the agricultural thoughts other than pivot irrigation, things like that. But too much water certainly isn’t. So how’d you end up where you’re at in studying and focusing on this?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (06:03):
I grew up in the country. We didn’t own a farm, both of my grandparents had farmed, so was frequently exposed to agriculture. But where I grew up was a rural subdivision and spent a lot of time outside, in the prairie grass actually, and a nearby river exploring. So I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to do something related to environmental science. At the time, and still now, the big story in Kansas was water quantity, having enough water to meet drinking water needs, to meet agricultural needs, industrial needs, competing needs on a limited resource.
(06:56):
So I was very interested in that. But even just that personal contact time where we were walking through the rivers and streams in Kansas and seeing some areas where there was a lot of sediment, murky waters. I was just really interested in that and seeing… Also having experiences in Colorado, kind of remote areas where the water was very clear and you could see through, it was very cold, a very different type of system of course. But that really sparked my interest in trying to understand and make those connections between what we did on the land and how it impacted the lakes and rivers that I really enjoyed recreating in.
(07:42):
So that was my first introduction. Then of course there was definitely a push for engineering and thinking about what could align with pretty good math and science skills. So that’s when I was directed towards… At the time, there wasn’t really an environmental engineering program at Kansas State, but I found that agricultural and biological engineering really combined my environmental interest along with engineering. It was a great fit from the beginning.
Jamie Duininck (08:20):
Then now fast forwarding all the way through education and just developing your passions and what you want to do. Now you’re at Iowa State, which has… you’re in the right place from the standpoint of combining things like water quality with manure application. There’s a lot of livestock in the state of Iowa and a lot of just concern and challenges when it comes to how do we continue to be a leader in the United States around producing animal agriculture and then provide water quality too.
(08:57):
So let’s jump into that, just talk a little bit about what are some of the current things you’re working on studies-wise and research. Then we’ll get into more of that around results too. But what are you currently working on?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (09:11):
Yeah. A couple of different areas that we’re working on. We do watershed scale, water quality monitoring, and so we’ve had a long-term contract through Iowa Department of Natural Resources in the Black Hawk Lake watershed. That’s been a great opportunity to really have that long-term monitoring equipment. So we collect the flow data, we collect the water quality data. It’s a watershed where there’s been a lot of change. So a lot of conservation practices have been implemented during that period.
(09:48):
To be able to see that transition and then also evaluate those water quality trends with time at a pretty small scale has been a really great opportunity. With that, you’ve mentioned the manure. We’re working with manure in a couple of different ways. One has definitely been on the side of integrating the manure into cropping systems too, determine best practices, and provide that information out to farmers. We work with Dan Anderson a lot on that. He has an extension appointment focused on manure management. What time should the manure be applied? How can it be integrated?
(10:32):
Then more recently, a lot of interest in integrating the cover crops and strip tillage into these systems. So trying to figure out how to make all these different pieces work as well as what are the water quality impacts of these systems. That work has been funded by the Iowa Egg Council and then the Iowa Soybean Association. It’s been a great way to partner with some local commodity groups. I also mentioned the Iowa Egg Council, actually has funded this water quality research for more than 20 years.
(11:05):
So it’s been a really long-term investment in ways to manage poultry and layer manure in a way that we can optimize production, optimize yield, but also protect water quality. Another aspect has been related to the veterinary feed directive and the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. So by having access to these watersheds where we can monitor long-term trends, we can also try to see what kind of resistance is presence in watersheds.
(11:43):
Antibiotics are used broadly. They’re used by humans, of course, they’re used companion animals, and they’re used by agriculture in different applications, in animal agriculture as well as some other applications as well. Because of that, there’s a lot of different antibiotics that can be used and those can also have different responses in the microorganisms. So we’re able to track and try to connect it with, is it actually moving into water systems?
(12:14):
So we’ve had a fair amount of funding from the USDA over the years to try and understand how antimicrobial resistance can move through the environment and then also what are some mitigation strategies? So again, even at manure management practices, can we manage the manure treatment so that we’re never applying that to the land? Once land application occurs, can we optimize the timing, the application methods to reduce [inaudible 00:12:43] light?
(12:44):
We just finished up a big project on prairie strips. So those prairie strips have really long deep root systems, which has a lot of water quality benefits. By increasing infiltration, a more diverse community within those systems also reduce the movement of the resistant genes offsite. So that’s a pretty big focus area. Then when we think of the movement of nutrients, so very broadly impacts of agriculture and water quality, we’re all thinking about nitrate and phosphorus too. So the downstream impacts in the Gulf of Mexico. The woodchip bioreactor is one conservation practice that we’ve been really working on for about a decade.
Jamie Duininck (13:30):
There’s a lot there. I want to go back a little bit around timing of application. That just seems interesting to me around what you’re finding and just that something so simple as when you’re applying the manure on the field, that timing can make a difference. Are you finding that in your results, that different times of the year make a difference in how the soil and the crop reacts to that?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (13:58):
Definitely. When it comes to the poultry manure, we see that a spring manure application has a benefit in multiple ways, and especially on the water quality side. We see lower nitrate concentrations when we can apply the manure in the spring. Of course, that’s not always ideal because spring can be wet, muddy, dry, and a little more downtime. So it goes against the weather in that case. But we definitely see benefits to water quality if that poultry manure can be applied in the spring and then incorporated into the field.
Jamie Duininck (14:40):
Sure, sure. That’s interesting. What kind of difference is that? I guess I’m just curious around if you apply it in the spring rather than in the fall. What difference in nitrate reduction are you seeing?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (14:59):
We compare it to a just a control chemical fertilizer, UAN application. We could see a statistically significant difference if we applied in the spring. Then we had a smaller subset of data with fall application. We typically would see a higher application in higher nitrate concentrations in the water if we applied in the fall. So there was a pretty significant difference.
(15:32):
It’s better from other purposes as well because that nitrate, if that manure, if you apply it in the spring and incorporate it, then it’s going to be more readily available to the plant. That spring, we won’t lose it to volatilization or mineralization, breaking down and then leeching to the groundwater or to the drainage water in the spring when we have a lot of rain. So putting that manure down closer to the time when the plants need it is always going to be ideal.
(16:04):
Then definitely closing that window between application and crop uptake had a lot of other environmental benefits as well. We also saw an improvement in soil health over that 20-year study. Adding the poultry manure, definitely we were able to see a buildup of organic matter in the soil and we saw a yield increase as well. So there were a lot of benefits for the system, that spring manure application.
Jamie Duininck (16:33):
Have you ever done any studies with the manure application on cover crops?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (16:38):
We have a new field site. We just installed it about the past two years. Last year was our first year of water quality data collection. We are in the process of learning more about that manure application timing, getting the cover crop established, and then using strip-till in the system. We have the UAN application, we have a split UAN with a side dress, we have a early winter manure application.
(17:14):
Not early fall or late fall, but we’re calling it early winter to again try and close that window between application and planting. Then we have a spring manure application. This is all poultry manure. It’s actually a 27 plots. We have with and without cover crops, and then everything is under strip-till management. Just one year of data, but so far, we did see, at least from the water quality perspective, really promising results for the early… or the spring manure application and the cover crop and the poultry manure combination.
Jamie Duininck (17:51):
Yeah, I was just thinking about that in regards to your earlier comment with the prairie grasses and the deep root systems and thinking about cover crops and all the… you might have five, six, seven different root systems in a cover crop if it’s planted with different things. I just naturally would assume that that would have good benefits for water quality. Interesting. One thing I wanted to touch on and have you touch on is you work with a lot of students in your research, from what I’ve heard. Talk about that and how you go about that and the benefits that you see of engaging students in your research.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (18:34):
From a research perspective, the reason I love being at a university is the opportunity to engage with students. We have series of undergrads. We usually hire couple undergrads every summer. We have undergrads that work in the lab throughout the year. That can be a really nice way for students, similar to the experience that I had at Kansas State, to learn about research, to get involved with all of the different field sites, to learn how to collect data for different types of analysis.
(19:07):
Then they also can work in the lab and learn how to process the samples, how to do benchtop experiments. We use those students to get a really variety of experiences when it comes to research and exposure to different potential career paths. Maybe they really love to be in the field, maybe they like the lab aspect, maybe they like the data or modeling. We try to give the students a really broad experience, the undergraduate students, so that they can get some guidance as far as what they’d like to do with their career.
(19:45):
Then we also have a team of graduate students. Many of the projects that I talked about will have one to two graduate students that work on those. The graduate students, they might be towards the end of their undergraduate career, they want to do a BS, Bachelor’s of Science, Master’s of Science combination degree. So that can work well because they can start taking classes while they’re still an undergraduate, but then they can stay about one more year, maybe another year in a summer, and get a master’s degree in the process.
(20:20):
So that’s a really great way for students to get that Master’s of Science. When we look at engineering and engineering consulting firms, the Master’s of Science is a really great degree because it gives the students some project management experience. Oftentimes, they get some experience supervising undergraduates. So they just get some really nice experience in addition to the science, the writing, the communication skills, the data analysis that’s part of the thesis.
(20:49):
They also get some professional development skills that are appealing to a lot of employers. Then sometimes master’s students will come from other institutions. It’s nice to go to different schools to learn about different landscapes. So we’ll have students that come to Ames from different parts of the country to pursue either a master’s degree or a PhD.
Jamie Duininck (21:16):
That’s pretty neat what you’re saying because it’s so often that students come out of college and… You mentioned a bunch of things that just make them a lot more well-rounded for their first real job working in the outside of academic world when you’re getting some management, managing people experience, and dealing with project management, dealing with conflict, dealing with data. All of that stuff is something they’re going to face relatively soon.
(21:45):
So if they can come out of college, it just gives them that much of a headstart for an employer. That’s pretty neat. I appreciate you sharing that. You mentioned earlier woodchip bioreactors and that you’ve been working with them for roughly a decade already now and pretty familiar with that. But I’m curious what you guys see in regards to, when you have woodchip bioreactors, how long is the life of one and is there a timeframe in which they’re really the most productive in years? Two to four? I don’t know what that’d be, just as an example.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (22:25):
Yeah, it’s funny. That’s the number one question we get from farmers, is how long will this woodchip bioreactor last? I can tell you the first bioreactor was installed in Iowa in 2008. It was recharged… which is the word that they’re using when they have to go back in and take out the wood chips and replace them with a fresh batch. So I think it was recharged probably in 2020. So that one had about a 12-year lifespan. It was the first. So with that, there were some challenges with the installation.
(23:04):
If I understand correctly, they ran out of wood chips and ended up going with a different wood product. So it wasn’t quite as refined as the systems that we’re installing now. Ideally, they would last 10 to 15 years before that recharge would be necessary. In some cases, we’re seeing that the recharge is required around 10 years. I think there’s still kind of a baby practice here in Iowa when you think about how long we’ve had them on the ground and we’re still having the opportunity to learn from them.
(23:45):
There’s some thoughts about if the flow is just… the material, the wood has started to degrade, and the flow is short-circuiting, so it’s going kind of straight through the bioreactor, maybe we could just dig up that front part and put in some new fresh wood chips and try to help disperse that flow a little bit better and extend the life. That’s definitely something we’re very interested in, is how can we maximize the lifespan of these. Yeah, we have a new project from Iowa NRCS and then also the US Forest Service in collaboration with Dr. Billy Beck.
(24:29):
That’s looking at forest management in combination with water quality management. So a lot of farms may have a little patch of woodland that’s close by. To manage those for natural resources, we need to be thinning some of those lower quality trees in order to lend space for some of the more valuable ones, such as oak or black walnut to grow and then be harvested later on. So some of that idea is putting forest managers in contact with water quality managers. And we’re working with different chipping strategies and ways to really make that process of getting the wood chips to the bioreactors more efficient.
Jamie Duininck (25:13):
Well, thanks for sharing that. It’s obvious your passion around all this stuff is… You’ve now been at Iowa State for quite some time and your passion is paying off with a lot of the things you’re doing. So what else would you like to share with us here on The Water Table, things you’re working on that you feel our listeners should know?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (25:35):
Just back to that careers that the students go to. We have students in all different kinds of industries. We have students going to state agencies, we have students that have gone to work for commodity groups, nonprofits. Only a couple of my PhD students have ended up as faculty at other academic institutions. So when you go into this academic job, you think, “Well, I’ll be creating other teachers and researchers.”
(26:08):
But it’s been really amazing to me to see the different and diverse career paths that the students have taken after they graduate. I guess one more project that we’re really excited with about the woodchip bioreactors. We have put corn cobs into a couple of our pilot scale reactors. So these reactors are about 4 feet wide and 20 feet long, so they’re kind of mini reactors. We have nine of them in parallel. It’s a really popular tour site.
(26:38):
People who have done conservation practice tours in affiliation with Iowa State or the BioCentury Research Farm, they often come by and see these pilot bioreactors. The corn cobs have been in the bioreactors for four years now and they’re still working really well. I know that there was some thoughts like how long would a corn cob last in comparison to a wood chip? But so far, we’re just getting really good data and still the corn cobs are outperforming the wood chips. So there’s a lot of questions about how we could get the… there’s corn cobs all over, right?
Jamie Duininck (27:18):
Yeah.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (27:18):
How can we get those corn cobs and gather them up and get them into some bioreactors? But that’s another idea, looking at different carbon sources to see which ones might be a little bit more efficient than the wood chips and whether or not it could pay off to use the corn cobs. The big question really is, how long could they last?
Jamie Duininck (27:43):
Yeah, such an interesting and great idea to work with corn cobs.
Dr. Michelle Soupir (27:48):
We’re looking at a pumping system too. We have a site south of Iowa State University where… actually Big Creek. We’ve got a pump that we’ve installed. These bioreactors often will dry up around July. I mean, depends on the year, but the drainage, there’s that point where the… primarily corn and soybeans need all the water that they can get. So there’s not a lot of drainage at that time.
(28:16):
So the idea is, can we pump… some of our streams have pretty high nitrate levels, so pump some water from Big Creek into the bioreactor and continue to use that bioreactor resource later into the summer and clean up some surface water. We’ve been trying to work on that and see if we can get that to extend the life of the bioreactors as well.
Jamie Duininck (28:40):
Oh, really interesting. I hadn’t thought of that or heard of that. Now, are you saying that the bioreactors, when they dry up, does that affect their life, the life of the bioreactor?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (28:53):
Yeah. Yeah, it can because it goes from an anaerobic to an aerobic system, and so the different microorganisms become active and that can degrade the carbon more quickly when they’re in aerobic system. So keeping water flowing through them, we think, could expand the life of those wood chips.
Jamie Duininck (29:13):
Sure. Interesting, interesting. Well, we’ve learned a lot today. Appreciate you being here on The Water Table. I’d like to have you join us again sometime in the future. By the time this episode gets aired, we’ll know what happened in the Big 12 tournament that’s going on right now. But-
Dr. Michelle Soupir (29:33):
Yeah, I know.
Jamie Duininck (29:34):
… until then, go Cyclones, right?
Dr. Michelle Soupir (29:37):
That’s right. Good luck.
Jamie Duininck (29:39):
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Soupir, on The Water Table and we’ll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Thanks so much.
Jamie Duininck (29:52):
Thanks for joining us today on The Water Table. You can find us at watertable.ag, find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, and you can also find the podcast on any of your favorite podcast platforms.