"Applying Site-Specific Research in Crop Production and Environmental Protection to Farm Management"

John M. Norman

Professor, Department of Soil Science, Forest Ecology and Management Sciences, University of Wisconsin

Building 003 Auditorium
February 28, 2008
10:30 AM

John M. Norman has been Professor of Soil Science and also Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1988. Following his Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a fellowship in botany at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, he was an Associate Professor of Meteorology at the Pennsylvania State University until 1978 and Professor of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln until 1988.

He conducts biophysical research involving studies of the interaction between plants and their environment including instrument design, measurements of soil, plant, and atmospheric characteristics and integrative modeling of the soil-plant-atmosphere system. Applications to ecology, agriculture, forestry, hydrology and meteorology have included plant productivity and water use efficiency, integrated pest management, irrigation water use, precision agriculture, agro-chemical leaching and runoff losses, erosion, remote sensing, plant canopy architecture, and measurement and modeling of soil surface carbon dioxide fluxes.

Recent research focuses on the sustainability of agricultural production and the importance of soil in the spatial and temporal distribution of crop production and environmental pollution. Current outreach activities emphasize the use of insights gained from years of fundamental research to provide guidance to decision makers, such as efforts to assist farmers and state regulatory agencies with management decisions that maintain crop yields and minimize environmental degradation through precision farming techniques.

He is a Fellow in the American Society of Agronomy, a Fellow in the Crop Science of America, received the American Meteorology Society award for Outstanding Biometeorologist in 2004, was awarded the University of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Spitze Land Grant Award for Faculty Excellence in 2006 and is a Fellow in the AAAS. He is co-author of a text entitled "Introduction to Environmental Biophysics" published by Springer in 1998, has successfully advised 50 graduate students and post docs, given over 100 invited presentations, and has published over 180 refereed publications in the scientific literature.