A Virtual Tour of Our Research Facilities

Luqi Li Author

07/30/2020 Added

20 Plays

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Matt Sousek - A Virtual Tour of Our Research Facilities

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[00:00:02.690](upbeat music)
[00:00:23.190]Hey, everyone.
[00:00:24.023]I'm gonna do a virtual tour of the facility using a drone.
[00:00:28.670]So, bear with me.
[00:00:30.350]I'm gonna try and fly this thing around
[00:00:31.820]and show you our turf plots.
[00:00:33.520]First off here,
[00:00:34.440]I'm gonna start with looking at just a broader overview
[00:00:37.939]of our East Campus Turfgrass Research Center.
[00:00:41.250]You can see here on the map that we have roughly 108 plots,
[00:00:46.860]irrigated plots that encompasses about 700 heads
[00:00:51.252]and almost eight miles of underground pipe.
[00:00:54.180]So, it's a pretty big area of research
[00:00:58.280]where we have multiple areas that we use throughout the year
[00:01:02.220]for different studies
[00:01:04.220]from less than an eighth of an inch,
[00:01:07.050]all the way up to three and a half, four inch height of turf
[00:01:10.900]with various different studies
[00:01:12.310]throughout the whole entire area.
[00:01:15.140]So, starting now,
[00:01:17.441]I'm gonna get flying this drone
[00:01:19.160]and I will take you kind of a tour of what we have.
[00:01:21.870]Right now, I'm in their office.
[00:01:23.630]It's one of the two sheds.
[00:01:24.960]We have a smaller area in here
[00:01:27.260]where our central computer runs our irrigation system.
[00:01:31.280]This side is all based off of solar and wind power.
[00:01:37.430]We have no electricity from the power lines
[00:01:40.050]that you can see run right through our plots,
[00:01:42.600]but there is no dropdowns,
[00:01:43.460]so, we use solar and wind power to run our irrigation system
[00:01:48.850]and all the power needs that we have,
[00:01:50.230]a couple of electric mowers that we use
[00:01:52.580]and basic day-to-day stuff that we use
[00:01:56.290]requiring electricity.
[00:01:58.040]So, just going up now, we have our two buildings here,
[00:02:00.760]both about 14 by 35 feet,
[00:02:05.150]and they hold a lot of our equipment
[00:02:08.060]and obviously our office,
[00:02:10.120]and it's actually a perfect sized area
[00:02:11.690]to be able to do what we need out here
[00:02:14.280]and makes it easy for us to do research
[00:02:17.780]so close to the plots,
[00:02:18.730]not having to have an area
[00:02:21.710]farther away to get the mowers here in and out.
[00:02:25.220]So, getting up to altitude here,
[00:02:28.840]this area on the left
[00:02:30.040]would have been the first established area,
[00:02:32.570]it's roughly one acre,
[00:02:34.870]and you can see that
[00:02:36.510]we have some yellow nutsedge research plots in there.
[00:02:39.200]Bill's doing some tall fescue disease,
[00:02:44.640]nitrogen growth models,
[00:02:46.946]and then we have our weed garden up to the top
[00:02:50.070]next to the sheds,
[00:02:51.110]along with some of the turfgrass varieties that we have,
[00:02:58.280]that we use for teaching,
[00:03:00.250]and also just for people to come look
[00:03:02.270]and see what kind of different grasses are
[00:03:04.520]and their different growth characteristics.
[00:03:07.090]So, that area on the left was one acre,
[00:03:08.760]then in 2015, we added another two acres,
[00:03:13.510]and then in '16, the area above on top of the road,
[00:03:17.840]we actually added that, another two acres,
[00:03:20.400]and then last on this right side of the screen,
[00:03:24.820]we added another two and a half acres in 2017 and '18.
[00:03:29.600]So, right now, we're up to about a seven and a half
[00:03:31.978]acre of research facility,
[00:03:33.770]which is a perfect size for what we need,
[00:03:37.500]and it also has a great opportunity
[00:03:40.060]for students that are on campus.
[00:03:42.930]They can come out here and work on this.
[00:03:44.280]We can actually take classes out here
[00:03:45.740]and teach a lot easier,
[00:03:47.350]and we have such a variety of equipment out here
[00:03:49.980]that we can do pretty much anything.
[00:03:53.010]Weed plots.
[00:03:55.040]We finally have some good crabgrass plots,
[00:03:58.300]so, you can see on the bottom left side of my screen here,
[00:04:01.550]sorry, it's moving a lot,
[00:04:02.740]but, so we're finally up to basically full capacity
[00:04:07.490]of this facility
[00:04:08.540]with using a lot of the high maintenance areas,
[00:04:13.205]bentgrass for a lot of golf research
[00:04:16.300]and a lot of the lawn height stuff.
[00:04:18.120]We're using different areas for various weed research
[00:04:21.470]and also growth models,
[00:04:23.130]looking at fertilizer applications
[00:04:26.050]and making those with growing degree day models,
[00:04:30.380]also, basically being able
[00:04:34.130]to have all these different types of grass.
[00:04:39.150]And when it comes to doing research,
[00:04:41.416]you don't have to start from scratch.
[00:04:44.420]We already have a lot of established areas
[00:04:46.894]where we can go in
[00:04:48.380]and pretty much do any study that we need to.
[00:04:53.283]So, right now, I'm just above the weed garden,
[00:04:56.130]and the two turf sheds, you can see our solar panels here.
[00:05:00.600]It's eight panels that are 800 Watts
[00:05:05.090]that actually charge a bank of batteries
[00:05:08.920]that are inside that shed.
[00:05:10.630]Here is basically the wind turbine.
[00:05:13.170]Obviously not very windy today.
[00:05:15.210]Zero wind, which is perfect for flying around.
[00:05:17.440]Hopefully, I don't hit a power line
[00:05:19.700]crossing this area.
[00:05:21.240]So far so good.
[00:05:24.130]Here's our USGA putting green.
[00:05:27.010]It's 12,000 square feet.
[00:05:29.480]We built that one in 2016.
[00:05:32.350]We brought in, basically, half of it is 100% pure sand
[00:05:37.530]with a four inch base of gravel underneath of it.
[00:05:40.880]The other half is an 80/20 mix of sand and peat.
[00:05:47.780]So, we have a sand side and then basically the peat side,
[00:05:51.100]which the peat side is a lot easier to keep moisture in,
[00:05:55.830]sand side is gonna require a little more water.
[00:05:58.310]To the top left, we have the rainout shelter
[00:06:02.000]that we've built in the last year.
[00:06:03.790]Greg Ferguson has done a great job engineering that.
[00:06:06.670]We now have it hooked up to Wi-Fi
[00:06:09.240]and it's got its own motor.
[00:06:10.590]So, it's basically drives on and off
[00:06:12.793]with the click of a button.
[00:06:14.610]And we'd like to have that hooked up to a rain sensor also,
[00:06:18.980]so that it can go on with sense of rain,
[00:06:22.280]and we can do drought research studies on that plot
[00:06:25.780]or if we need to,
[00:06:26.613]we can move it to a different plot.
[00:06:29.464]Here's more bank grass putting greens below.
[00:06:32.360]There's some studies going on,
[00:06:35.077]looking at various DMI fungicides on that bottom left,
[00:06:40.343]and then the left here we have NTEP Kentucky bluegrass,
[00:06:44.950]and you can see in those,
[00:06:45.795]it's amazing how much difference there is
[00:06:47.760]in Kentucky bluegrass cultivars.
[00:06:49.920]Some of them have gotten hammered with dollar spot,
[00:06:52.240]some are just a little bit more drought tolerant,
[00:06:55.430]and you can see that there's some really big differences
[00:06:57.998]within these plots.
[00:07:01.470]Just another overview,
[00:07:03.270]and to the left here,
[00:07:04.500]we have our NTEP ryegrass,
[00:07:08.290]same thing,
[00:07:09.620]a little bit hard to see a lot of the differences
[00:07:12.620]within plots,
[00:07:13.830]but you can see that there are some definite differences.
[00:07:20.000]Just driving over the top here
[00:07:23.650]flying over Michael Carlson's work,
[00:07:27.490]where he's looking at a variable rate nitrogen applications
[00:07:35.010]using a sprayer,
[00:07:36.480]trying to figure out when those applications are needed
[00:07:39.400]and how to create the maps
[00:07:40.780]to do variable rate applications of nitrogen
[00:07:44.240]corresponding with sensor based imaging.
[00:07:49.070]Here, we have a bare area
[00:07:51.270]that you can see is full of little trees,
[00:07:53.440]and those are weeds.
[00:07:55.250]It's probably about two weeks of growth on those weeds
[00:07:57.400]and they're starting to get out of hand
[00:07:59.170]and we'll need to control them.
[00:08:01.160]Flying right down now on the tall fescue NTEP,
[00:08:04.850]and you can see there are some differences,
[00:08:07.100]the one that has an L-shape around it, that is K31.
[00:08:10.390]It has that lime green color,
[00:08:11.840]but a lot of the tall fescues look kind of similar,
[00:08:16.430]not as much difference as the ones you can see
[00:08:20.710]in the Kentucky bluegrass.
[00:08:23.410]We did just have an inch 80 of rain,
[00:08:27.010]and all of our plots are sloping to the Northeast.
[00:08:30.520]So, you can see a little bit of water standing in these,
[00:08:32.630]but usually it does not last more than half a day
[00:08:35.710]and the water dissipates.
[00:08:37.690]So, just find down now on the clover patch that we have,
[00:08:42.340]there's about 10,000 square feet of clover,
[00:08:47.690]and you can see some studies in there
[00:08:50.060]that Eric is working on,
[00:08:57.120]and here's just another area that we're trying
[00:09:00.460]to get established for crabgrass research.
[00:09:03.200]And that's where you can see the water's standing,
[00:09:05.650]and there's some buffalograss selections,
[00:09:12.040]nicely sprayed out.
[00:09:16.230]Keenan's working on looking at some of the different
[00:09:18.030]varieties collected from all over the US.
[00:09:22.380]And here's just another look around at the entire area
[00:09:27.090]of the research facility.
[00:09:32.110]We have a lot of room for new studies.
[00:09:35.480]I mean, a lot of this stuff has only been established
[00:09:37.490]for three to five years.
[00:09:39.390]So, it's nice to have something finally set in motion,
[00:09:44.050]and it's nice to have this new facility
[00:09:46.130]where we can do very precise research,
[00:09:50.917]whereas we can also have a very broad area
[00:09:55.620]of different studies going on at this research station,
[00:09:58.790]and also a great opportunity to have students come down
[00:10:01.900]and conduct some of the research
[00:10:02.974]and learn as we are growing this facility
[00:10:07.317]and as we're growing as a program.
[00:10:11.900]I'm gonna attempt here just to give you a little tour
[00:10:14.210]of these little buildings that we have.
[00:10:17.050]They do store a lot of stuff
[00:10:18.320]and they are very convenient having them
[00:10:20.500]within 20 feet of the plots.
[00:10:28.040]It's not as easy as it looks,
[00:10:29.660]but I just thought I'd give some entertainment for those
[00:10:31.780]of you that are sitting here and watching this video,
[00:10:34.480]seeing if I can crash this into a wall.
[00:10:38.990]A lot of our equipment needs
[00:10:41.200]for conducting just general maintenance
[00:10:45.200]and also a lot of our mowers that we use
[00:10:47.160]for clipping collection,
[00:10:48.710]obviously you gotta have a nice
[00:10:54.720]set of tools that you can take care of the equipment,
[00:10:59.080]and it is a really nice shed to use
[00:11:01.700]to stay out of the elements and also protect the equipment
[00:11:04.440]and keep it in good condition.
[00:11:07.960]So, I think I'm gonna make it through here
[00:11:09.840]without hitting anything.
[00:11:11.530]And that's pretty much just a broad overview
[00:11:13.930]of our facility.
[00:11:14.763]I encourage any of you, if you want to,
[00:11:16.500]to come down here any day of the week.
[00:11:20.580]Me or Craig or whoever's out here,
[00:11:24.000]would be willing to give you a tour firsthand
[00:11:27.450]so that you can see what's going on
[00:11:28.830]and what kind of research we're doing.
[00:11:30.620]But this is just a quick way of showing
[00:11:34.260]around the research facility,
[00:11:36.340]going into the office here, gonna end the tour,
[00:11:39.870]and thanks for watching this
[00:11:42.480]and thanks for watching our virtual turfgrass field day.
[00:11:46.470]I know it's not the same as normal.
[00:11:48.500]We really like seeing you guys out here
[00:11:50.380]and showing you what's going on and interacting with you.
[00:11:53.690]So, this is one way we can just show what's going on
[00:11:55.840]but we'd still love your feedback.
[00:11:58.480]Anytime, give us a call, give me a call.
[00:12:01.490]If you wanna come out and look at plots,
[00:12:03.870]we're always open for people to come out and chat with,
[00:12:09.110]maybe entertain the idea of new research
[00:12:12.650]or what can be done to help the industry.
[00:12:18.710]So, with that, I thank you all,
[00:12:20.970]and hope that we can do it in-person next year.
[00:12:26.920]Thank you and have a good day.
[00:12:29.617](upbeat music)

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A Virtual Tour of Our Research Facilities

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