President Nellis gives a speech with his wife, Ruthie, looking on.
President Duane Nellis has a long history of scientific research in the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing. Read as he talks about his experiences in the field from his undergraduate days at Montana State University to his days as Vice President for Research at Kansas State University and his views of the importance of research activities at a university in general.
How did you become interested in studying GIS and earth sciences?
I began in engineering, but eventually looked for something that allowed me more flexibility in my curriculum because I’ve always had broad interests. I looked at earth sciences because I’ve always been interested in discovering new areas while traveling with my parents. Plus, my wife, Ruthie, was in earth sciences when I was looking for a major and her classes seemed like a good fit for my interests.
It seems to have worked out well. Did you get to do any research as an undergraduate?
Quite a bit, actually. Especially at the junior and senior level. I had a capstone experience summer project, for example, where I looked at rural land use patterns and characteristics in northwest Montana. That was the start of some of my interest in land analysis and natural resource use.
So apparently you enjoyed the experience though because you kept with it, going on to graduate school.
The university educational experience was like a light bulb going on in my head. It was just so refreshing to be in an environment that allowed me to really do the things for which I really had a passion. My master’s research looked at the effectiveness of Oregon legislation that was meant to protect prime agricultural lands from urban development east of Corvallis. I used aerial photographs taken over a 10-year period and examined the changes that had occurred in land use.
I see that you finished your degree in just over a calendar year before leaping into your Ph.D. work. That must have been a lot of work.
It was certainly a fairly intense period. One thing that was really evolving nationally in geography was remote sensing. My dissertation focused on application of remote sensing in irrigation for agriculture. I was intrigued by the impact that center pivots were having on water use, irrigation and crop production. I looked at whether there were inefficiencies or irregularities in irrigation water delivery and different types of irrigation systems.
How could you tell that from aerial data?
I used thermal infrared imagery to detect where water delivery canals were leaking, for example. Soils have a different temperature where there are leakage sites. You can also delineate them with thermal imaging.
Back then, there was no GPS except for military purposes, so one of the challenges was what was called “ground truthing” or ground inspections. That’s where I correlated ground data with satellite data or aircraft data.
It sounds like you were working with some pretty rudimentary equipment by today’s standards.
Early satellite data had more coarse resolution - we thought we were in 7th heaven when we got 30-meter resolution. More recently, when I was Provost at Kansas State, I had an image of Manhattan, Kansas, from commercial satellites that had four-meter resolution.
And I remember first setting up our computers to process satellite data. The discs were 8-inch floppies; to do a statistical analysis I would start the computer, go home for dinner and come back a couple of hours later. It took that long to run the data. Today, such processing can be done on a laptop.
What sorts of research did you get into after you completed your dissertation?
At Kansas State, I did quite a bit of research out in western Kansas in the high plains region and – again using satellite data – tried to develop a model for estimating water use. The idea was to apply my model to areas that did not have water meters so that they could get some estimate of water use in the Ogallala Aquifer region where ground water depletion was an issue.
I also worked with bison at a long-term ecological research site at the Konza Prairie, part of which was fenced and supported herds of bison. We were interested in their grazing patterns and what impacts they were having on the grassland ecosystem in the tall grass prairie reserve.
Sounds pretty fascinating.
President Duane Nellis.
Actually, it more fascinating. I also had the opportunity to look at the rural land-use system in Botswana in southern Africa. Historically, one of the issues in Botswana is overgrazing and desertification. I worked on a collaborative team to develop a series of vegetation indices to estimate grazing pressure on the edge of the Kalahari Desert where they graze cattle.
While we were there, we learned that the northern part of Botswana was having issues too, with a high density of elephants. We examined elephant pressure on the landscape from satellite data. Because elephants tend to debark trees and even push them over, it’s quite impressive to see their impact on the landscape.
Did you come out of Africa with any interesting stories?
When I was in Botswana, there were all different varieties of Acacia, many of which have these huge thorns – almost like fishhooks – that if you got them stuck in your skin, it was very painful. I had one such thorn go through my heavy boot into my foot.
And in Africa was the first time I had a chance to use a GPS system in the field and it was really neat. Once we were in the field, we were out on the fringes of the Kalahari Desert and had been doing field work throughout the day, when all of a sudden the battery pack on the GPS went dead. We were using it to keep us on track because the field maps we had were not very accurate.
We had a reserve battery pack, so we plugged that in, but of course it didn’t work. So we were out on these sand tracks and none of us spoke the native language. We were going into these villages trying to find our way back to our base village and looking at sun angle for the time of the day and direction.
Luckily, we knew the general direction of the main road, so we were able to make it out. But we learned early on not to become too reliant on technology out in the field.
I’ll bet your students loved to hear stories like that in class.
Absolutely. I found that when I was able to bring in my own research into the classroom to use as an example, it had a huge impact on student learning. I think sharing data with students in a laboratory setting and having them come up with their own conclusions helps enrich the student experience.
I think that’s what’s exciting about being at a research university like the University of Idaho. Sometimes people think some professors are just doing research and that they don’t really care about teaching. But what I have found is that some of the most outstanding teachers are also the most outstanding researchers.
Speaking of the University of Idaho, do you see a lot of your areas of expertise in use on campus?
The things I’ve had experience in are directly applicable in forest analysis, like with the pine beetle infestations as well as in agriculture and water, which is such a crucial resource in this state. Remote sensing and GIS has tremendous applicability. For example, if we can gain understanding about water efficiencies more fully through this kind of technology, then we can maximize the economic gain through agricultural production. Maybe through the use of these types of technologies we can gain more efficiency in the system and better manage it for long-term sustainability.
Any chance you might jump in and get involved, lending us some of your expertise?
Well, ever since I became a provost at Kansas State, though I continued to keep up with some general reading, it has been hard to keep up with the accelerated changes in remote sensing and GIS. It’s just evolving so rapidly. But I still have a passion for my area of expertise in remote sensing and I am still intrigued by the technology and software.
And even though I wasn’t the lead on the project, I coauthored a remote sensing book that was recently published. I was very much involved in writing it, especially the chapter I authored on remote sensing of crop land agriculture. That allowed me to catch up on where the literature is on remote sensing.
But keeping up with GIS and remote sensing technology has become almost a hobby because now there’s just no time. I don’t want to divert time from being President. I mean that’s my number one, two, three, four, five and sixth priority!
