MAERC MOU/ Data Management Meeting, 9/1/98, Gainesville

Thanks, Hilary.

 Present – Attending: (from Nancy Peterson’s list) Taufiquil Aziz, Ken Campbell, John Capece, Jeff Dismukes, Mike Fanning, Don Graetz, Jim Johnson, John Holt, Jeff Mullahey, Nancy Peterson, Ken Portier, Alan Steinman, Robert McSorley, Hilary Swain, George Tannersee.

 1. Request for new business items.

Campbell For USDA reporting, start date was December 1. CRIS reporting Dec. 1. Need a standard report and non technical report. Hilary Swain we should have a standard reporting format for all progress reports, will help with compiling reports and posting on web site. Nancy Peterson to prepare an outline.

Nancy Peterson NRAC meeting tentative at Buck Island Ranch 9-10 December (HS 10^th is "current research symposium" day at Archbold, but should not be major conflict) –Nancy Peterson needs a list of ongoing projects from all MAERC participants. Dianne Cummings, Hilary Swain’s Assistant will send 1997 MAERC Archbold Annual Report to Nancy for IFAS to use as a working basis.

Graetz soil sampling twice since Feb. Extensive on winter and summer – several hundred. Water soluble P in sample. Some samples archived for future work. Over 300 samples. Routine soil test analysis. Sampling design - each pasture in 5 segments (each about 200m long). Marked with steel bars and un-corrected GPS readings, within which took two random samples with 4 depths down to 30 cm. Examined sample data in terms of total # – no analysis yet on within segment, within pasture, or among pastures.

Capece. Instrumentation is set up, has been working on DEP project requirements, training field personnel and site maintenance. Since there are 16 sites & 100 instruments, we should not expect all going to be working all the time. Encoder problems – equipment supplied was not adequately weather sealed. Now have an inventory on site to rapidly replace faulty instruments. 5/8 summer sites and 8/8 winter sites basically functioning. Had to use new digital encoders – which use different software – very different from ultrasonic detectors originally used. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are now on the IFAS BIR web site.

Mullahey existing exclosure cages have been found and new ones built to replace those lost. Will begin next week for monthly sampling – forage quality and phosphorus content. Experimental design not finalized. Mullahey will get together with Gene to get an annual pasture management calendar.

Holt - economic models, going well regionally. Not yet done for B-I-Ranch. Hilary Swain requested that Gene Lollis will need input on what pasture project specific economic measures the economic team needs. Holt to touch base with Gene Lollis

Fanning – worked with Gene Lollis, herd identified – know which cows to select from. Will have shade, water structures out. Water troughs are going to be stationary. Winter pasture molasses feeders will be moved around. Now acquiring ear tags to identify treatment groups. Also interested in getting animal dispersion info – grant application pending concerning with GPS tracking of cows. Fanning has general cattle management calendar from Gene,

Tanner – hired Jim Johnston. Spring survey bird datasets done (not yet received from Pranty). Spoken to Jared Verner (international expert in ornithological sampling) about point counts – not really suitable for pastures, too overlapping. Transects better. Decided on two strips, fixed width 50m wide, per pasture, standardized to narrowest width and shortest length. Bird sampling quarterly.

McSorley Feb samples of soil nematodes taken from winter pastures. In May went back and sampled all the pastures – extracted nematodes back in lab. Now have data on common taxa - additional work needed on rarer species. Actual #s not just Presence/Absence. Al Steinman Is sampling coordinated with Don Graetz? Response Sampled round one of Graetz’s markers in the northernmost segment of each of the pastures. Took extra samples in Feb. Expect big difference in winter and summer arrays. Al Steinman Have the effects of location of shade and lounging been considered? If see animals are congregating could look at nematode communities in congregate/non-congregate area. McSorley will sample around times when change over in stocking occurs. Effects in nematode communities would persist for a couple of months. Will track changes in composition of functional types and individual genera.

Swain Patrick Bohlen, new research biologist at Ranch, will arrive in 2 weeks, 14^th September. Potential critical role in determining the effects of cattle on water quality through understanding actual processes e.g. mineralization processes. There is a need to know actual rates, cycling. e.g. how soil fauna can accelerate the processes. May need intense sampling of small field blocks. Hilary Swain will arrange for Patrick Bohlen to visit with other PIs after arrival.

Jeff Dismukes PostDoc UF, working with Capece. Computer scientist & environmental sciences background. Programming for instrumentation and data management tasks and SAS application.

Dr Aziz DEP Contract manager for 319 project. Visited re progress report last month.

Ken Campbell provided timeline chart showing data collection and grant funding schedule for 319 and USDA. Lead into discussion about start date of treatments. Although there has not been enough time with instrumentation running during the equilibration period to collect enough BEFORE data for a BACI design, this was never specified in original experimental design. Rather the equilibration period was seen as a chance for opportunistic data that could be collected during a settling out period. What measurements depend on pre-data? Most data are event driven, therefore the equilibration period was not necessarily representative. The equilibration period was originally for allowing construction and instrumentation settlement. Portier equilibration period needed to be so that the measurement techniques are in control. Capece - data (from DEP progress report see web site) suggest sites, except possibly W2 (construction pit disturbance), seem to have settled down. In the first data report to DEP – summary tables from winter sites – show temporal trends that seem to follow the same pattern at all sites. Group expressed some concerns

• Need to use the differences rather than actual numbers
• Means are not weighted by flow
• Different sample sizes
• Is Capece sure about these trends? Portier would like time to develop a signature of each plot and tease out and compare so can later pull out what effect of treatment. He needs a couple of weeks to finish this. Capece The signature of flow profiles not going to change post construction, or in relation to treatment.
• General concern starting project without water table - well data. (may answer why winter flowing and not summer at present). Water table storage – is big component of the water budget – e.g. we are assuming water is ponding up in summer pastures. Will need at least one well in summer/winter. Time to get it done. Al Steinman offered District staff and an auger to get 2 wells installed. Ranch WQ staff could check depth manually after installation until instrumentation available. Capece needs to follow up.
• Need Harney Pond Canal structure S70 data linked to web site –J. Johnston said now available on SFWMD web site.

Conclusion Need to move forward on treatments – even though high noise experiments. Therefore need to start this winter period, ok to start without BEFORE data, just proceed into treatments.

Gene Lollis has provided Fanning with animal schedule for the year. Hilary Swain emphasized this schedule may fluctuate depending on weather, forage etc. Now weaning and palpating herd. Getting pregnancy data. Needs to get into winter pastures by earliest mid-October to calve in winter pastures. Latest date probably early November. Not going to worry about cow body weight, but use a condition score. Will get calf body weights at 3 mo. intervals at normal working times. Al Steinman Does cow condition score relate to fecal production or nutrient loading? ? Not known – condition score is a standard based on– amount of body fat on ribs, spine, hip bones and tail head. Animals allotted to treatments by age (mid-age cows) body condition score and all pregnant. Nice to get pregnancy staged, but with 90 day season not big variation in the calves. Cannot split by calf sex, assume 50:50.

So start of treatments and experiments will be in a minimum 6–8 weeks. We are putting cattle out into somewhat rank set of pastures now (did not burn last winter). Mullahey – pastures will be fine (Hilary followed up with Gene Lollis later and he said no problem). Gene Lollis will need to do a growing season burn in winter pastures in May/June 1999. Then burn the summer pastures this winter Jan/Feb 1999 at normal times. If Gene Lollis needs the grass for the rest of the commercial herd he can:

• put a different 15 cows, during the summer, in the winter pastures but only in the 6 treatment pastures.
• he can put 15 cows in the winter pastures during the summer, but only in the 6 treatment ones.

Need to move the shade structures frequently so no excessive trampling. Hog damage needs to be recorded – by Jim Johnston. Pasture management schedule. Jeff Mullahey will contact email Gene Lollis and get together for pasture management.

Hilary Swain Needs for ditch maintenance (not discussed while Al Steinman at meeting) but, - Al had offered additional District (work crews/prison detail) people to occasionally manually clean out the ditches. Capece to determine when needed and notify Al Steinman in time about upcoming needs. Gene Lollis will schedule annual mechanical ditch cleaning in conjunction with Capece.

Procedures employed for allocation. In summer pastures we use the two with natural shades as the controls - 1 and 8. Select treatments from 2 – 7. In winter we randomly select one control from 1 – 4 (with shade) and one from 5 –8 (without natural shade), and do treatments at the same time. Blocking on randomization. This selection was conducted during the meeting the treatment allocations were.

EVERYONE THERE IS A MISTAKE ON NANCY’S MINUTES

WINTER 2 HAS 20 UNITS NOT ZERO.

PASTURE TREATMENTS

Winter

1. C
2. 20
3. 35
4. 15
5. 35
6. 15
7. C
8. 20

Summer

1. C
2. 20
3. 35
4. 15
5. 35
6. 15
7. 20
8. C

 6. Establishing a "sampling" grid in the pastures

Discussed that would be useful for a lot of operational and other sampling concerns to have a coarse grid of "cells" within the pastures to identify locations. Al Steinman, at the SFWMD, offered to send a team of District GPS staff and equipment for a day (or maybe a couple if needed) to do all the GPS points for the fence boundaries for the Ranch pasture project - the 16 pastures. Roberta Pickert (Archbold GIS) will coordinate. Each pasture is about 1000m long and 160 - 190 m wide (VERY ROUGH) but they vary more than the engineering drawings. The plan is to have the fence boundaries accurately surveyed in. Then we would like to subdivide each of the 16 pastures into 10 (SEE BELOW FOR AMENDMENT) approximately equal sized "cells" in a grid using painted fence posts at key points round the fence and a line of PVC poles for a central transect. This should get done (at least the winter pastures) before Gene Lollis moves the cattle into the winter pastures (sometime between mid-October and mid-November).

Fanning and Mullahey could use this cell grid for pastures to give Gene a mgmt plan for moving around e.g. shade structures.

SUBSEQUENT TO THIS MEETING A SUBSET OF THIS GROUP HAD VARIOUS EMAIL DISCUSSIONS ABOUT GRID CELL SIZE. WE (PORTIER/ SWAIN/SOME INPUT FROM AL STEINMAN). WE FINALLY DECIDED ON AN APPROX STANDARDIZED CELL SIZE – I.E. 16 CELLS IN THE WINTER PASTURES AND 10 CELLS IN THE SUMMER PASTURES AS THE PASTURES ARE A DIFFERENT SIZE (80 VERSUS 50 ACRES). INDIVIDUAL RESEARCHERS DO NOT HAVE TO USE THIS AS THE BASIS OF THEIR SAMPLING DESIGN (THEIR SAMPLING PROTOCOL WILL DEPEND ON THEIR OWN NEEDS) BUT ARE OBVIOUSLY FREE TO SET UP TO USE THESE GRIDS IF THEY WISH.

 7. Data analysis

Portier developed sheet showing data categories. Portier has reviewed different databases –Fig. provided Largest unknown is the ag database practices. Swain MS Access database partially developed by Archbold – draft metadata handed out (Swain, Pickert and Gene Lollis). Attributes in this are basically a chronology of operational events. Holt and Fanning need to input to Gene Lollis about their precise needs for production, pasture and economic data and the scale required. e.g. what about tracking cowboy time. Portier It will be critical to have a metadata file for all data categories. Key priority for PIs to develop. Portier will work on a format. Swain requested a due date on this. Al Steinman what type of analysis envisaged - will take time series, or inferential statistics. Portier depends on how approach it. In general terms, will be integrating continual time series data like flow (rainfall driven) with intermittent sampling data (like concentration series, although more dampened). Integrate out events that occur. What to do about the gaps? Need to cross-link gaps based on rainfall events etc. Bring down to parameter statistics. Need to compare among plots. What % of the variability to allocate to different sites versus the 4 treatments? Which characteristics? Will be critical but not yet known. Al Steinman recommended Portier speak to SFWMD modeling staff.

Portier Plans on using an SAS CATALOGUE – with views that can create a report catalog as an internet page. (see Figure) Will take the normal kinds of datasets, put in a SAS catalogue. Develop SAS internet product to look at views. Can be limited in anyone in the group or can be universal. Some will be static, some dynamic, primarily temporal views. Now working. Will need to take summary of information of event history. Catalogue transportable to any platform. Need metadata file from all participants. Look at web site and develop each aspect of it. John will continue to work on web site.

 6. Executive Decisions

Gene Lollis needs an Executive Decision team for the Pasture Project who will give him the go-ahead and specifications in the following operational areas

 Fanning –animal production, stocking, cow selection, cattle work instructions.

Holt- information on what economic and financial information to collect and when.

Capece –instructions on major mechanical treatment for flumes, ditches, ditch cleaning and maintenance, and other hydrology issues

Mullahey –instructions on pasture management.

Fanning and Mullahey will have Gene Lollis’ animal and pasture annual work plans to guide them. This group needs to keep in touch with Gene Lollis by email to convey information to him about when activities are to be scheduled. All operational decisions about pasture project should be consistently sent to all members of this team and Gene Lollis. Gene Lollis will inform and keep in touch if he sees problems looming or things coming up, but he cannot be solely responsible for final stocking and operational management decisions for these pasture projects.