Posts Tagged: natural resources

Green Hall of Famer Oki retires after 29-year UC career

UCCE specialist's research prevents water pollution, reduces water use

When interviewed to become a University of California Cooperative Extension specialist in environmental horticulture, Lorence “Loren” Oki was asked what kind of research he wanted to conduct.

In response, he showed the hiring committee a photo of a residential gutter. “Water is a big concern, and I found very little research on runoff from homes,” said Oki, explaining that studying residential runoff is what “started his career” with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources back in 2002.

Although he remains active supporting growers and advising industry leaders, Oki retired from UC ANR in July 2023. Before joining ANR, Oki worked as a researcher for UC Davis' Department of Environmental Horticulture studying greenhouse irrigation in 1994, bringing his total time with the University of California to 29 years.

Oki, professor emeritus of Cooperative Extension at UC Davis, led many research projects that advanced the green industry which includes landscapes, nurseries and floriculture.

“Loren is the epitome of a specialist,” said Darren Haver, UC ANR's Research and Extension Center system director, who has worked with Oki for more than 20 years on projects that have  significantly improved urban water quality and water conservation efforts across California.

Research influences pesticide management

With a $3 million grant funding a statewide study, Oki and Haver set out to characterize runoff from residential sources over a five-year period. They determined the volume of irrigation runoff from residential land use, as well as the pollutants in the runoff.

Oki and Haver, co-principal investigators, along with researchers from UC Davis and UC Riverside, discovered that the degradation products of the insecticide fipronil – commonly found in runoff water – were more toxic than its parent compound. The study led to an investigation of human pathogens and pathogen indicators in residential runoff, the first of its kind.

Another contribution was the early detection of a new pesticide used for ant control, enabling strategies to be put in place to prevent it from reaching local streams and creeks. Oki and Haver's work also persuaded the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to change pesticide labels to minimize the chances of pesticides moving off target during irrigation and rain events.

These changes included preventing pesticide application before predicted rain and preventing irrigation after applications, keeping pesticides from impervious surfaces, and restricting applications on lawns and landscape beds within two feet of impervious surfaces and others.

Plant trials expand beyond California

Oki was also the principal investigator of the Climate-Ready Landscape Plants project, which may be the largest irrigation trial in the western U.S., and the UC Plant Landscape Irrigation Trials, the California component of that project. The UCPLIT trials originated in 2004 at UC Davis as a research project by Karrie Reid, retired UCCE environmental horticulture advisor for San Joaquin County, while she was pursuing her master's degree. In 2017, the irrigation trials were duplicated at the South Coast Research and Extension Center.

These projects evaluate landscape plants under varying irrigation levels to determine their optimal performance in regions requiring supplemental summer water. Throughout the trial, Oki identified many landscape plants, including rose cultivars, that remain aesthetically pleasing with little water.

Today, the trials have expanded beyond California as the Climate-Ready Landscape Plants Project at Oregon State University, University of Washington, University of Arizona and Utah State University.

Growing up in the nursery industry

In 2017, Oki obtained tenure, allowing him to expand his professional responsibilities to include production horticulture, specifically greenhouses and nurseries, an industry he was extremely familiar with. “I come from a nursery family,” Oki explained. “My grandfather started Oki Nursery in the early 1900s.”

During World War II, Oki's family was incarcerated in the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona and lost their homes and property. When they were released, they returned to the nursery industry to rebuild their lives. “After World War II, my father and uncle got more involved with my grandfather's work,” he said.

The Oki family played an instrumental role in technological development for nurseries in general. Oki Nursery, which was located in Sacramento, worked closely with IBM and was the first to use a computerized system in the industry.

Oki developed computerized scheduling for the bedding plants, poinsettias, chrysanthemums, bulbs and other crops.  He developed a method to calculate the cost of any crop grown by the nursery at any point in the crop cycle and computerized greenhouse environmental and irrigation controls. This may not sound impressive now, but that was in the 1980s.

“My father was known for being progressive and he also knew everyone at UC Davis,” said Oki. “He wanted to work with anyone who had an interest in doing something good for nurseries.”

Inducted into Green Industry Hall of Fame

In the 1950s, Oki Nursery partnered with researchers from UC Davis' agricultural engineering program and developed the overhead sprinklers commonly used in nurseries today. Until the 1980s, Oki Nursery was the largest nursery in Northern California. Before it shut down in 1993, Oki worked in the family business as a greenhouse manager when runoff became a growing concern.

“I remember getting served with a notice by the Regional Water Quality Control Board stating that we needed to prevent runoff because it was polluted with nitrate fertilizer, which was common in the nursery industry,” Oki said.

One of those efforts focused on using controlled-release fertilizer instead of applying fertilizer via irrigation as a liquid feed. “What we learned is that if we converted nurseries to controlled-release fertilizer, we could reduce the nitrate runoff,” he said. While a member of the Oki Lab, Bruno Pitton earned his Ph.D. studying nursery hydrology and the fate of nitrogen fertilizers in container crop production adding to the information on runoff and nitrate management. Pitton is now the environmental horticulture advisor for Placer and Nevada counties. 

In 2023, Oki was inducted into the Green Industry Hall of Fame, which recognizes individuals with a minimum of 20 years in the landscape, nursery or floriculture industry and who have made significant contributions to the field.

Having grown up in the industry, Oki said that his father taught him to never be afraid to try new things. “If you think you have an idea that might work, do the best you can to make it work. If it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. And that's OK,” he said. 

Revitalizing space for greater impact

This mentality encouraged Oki whenever tackling new tasks, like rebranding the California Ornamental Research Federation, a space for education and collaboration, as UC Nursery and Floriculture Alliance.

In 2009, Oki and David Fujino, executive director of the California Center for Urban Horticulture, became co-directors of CORF, which catered to the cut flower industry. At that time, Oki and Fujino realized that nurseries generated much greater revenue in the state than cut flowers.

“It was a strategic decision to change CORF to UCNFA, which included floriculture and nurseries in the name,” Fujino said. Combined, nurseries and floriculture have consistently placed in the top five agricultural commodities in the state.

When reflecting on their partnership, Fujino said that working with Oki was a “natural fit.” “I couldn't have asked for a better partner, a better colleague and, ultimately, a better friend to have my back and work side by side,” he added.

Since UCNFA's launch, the two have worked to maintain the group's impact by hosting “Ask your Advisor” webinars to connect advisors to growers, as well as co-hosting large-scale events such as the annual conference for the International Plant Propagators' Society — an organization focused on greenhouse and nursery production education — for the Western Region, which Oki's father helped establish in the 1960s.

Encouraging a return to education

Gerry Spinelli, UC Cooperative Extension production horticulture advisor for San Diego County and member of UCNFA's administrative committee, described those who have learned from Oki as his sons and daughters. “When I meet someone that's learned from Loren or worked with him, that person instantly becomes my friend. That's the kind of effect Loren has on us,” Spinelli said.

Grant Johnson, UC Cooperative Extension urban agricultural technology advisor for Los Angeles and Orange counties, credits Oki for his master's degree in horticulture from UC Davis.

“Loren gave me a lot of direction as far as career choices and research interests. He instilled in me a dedication to life-long learning, just like he continues to do,” said Johnson. Before Oki became his professor, Johnson worked with Oki as a staff research associate at the South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine.

Another influential person in Oki's life is John Kabashima, emeritus environmental horticulture advisor for UCCE Orange and Los Angeles counties and fellow Green Hall of Fame inductee. Like Oki, Kabashima grew up in the nursery industry.

Oki, who earned a bachelor's degree in ornamental horticulture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a master's degree in plant science from UC Riverside, decided to pursue a Ph.D. in ecology at UC Davis with Kabashima's encouragement.

While Oki was still working in his family's business, Kabashima said that Oki relied on UC ANR researchers for scientific information and felt like Oki wanted to be one of them. “I told him that he's a good nursery guy, but he's a better scientist,” said Kabashima. “His heart is in science.”

The two began working together as soon as Oki became a graduate student and have been colleagues and friends for nearly 40 years. “My favorite response from Loren whenever people ask him a question is, ‘It depends,'” Kabashima said. “It always leads to people opening up and giving more context. That's what Loren does, he gets you to think.” 

UCCE academics enliven Western Region International Plant Propagators’ Society meeting

In late January, the University of California Nursery and Floriculture Alliance co-hosted the 62^nd Western Region International Plant Propagators' Society (WR-IPPS) Annual Meeting in Temecula.

UCNFA, associated with the Nursery and Floriculture Workgroup of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, is a statewide partnership of researchers and educators, growers, floriculture associations and allied industries. It serves the educational needs of California's agricultural industries that produce greenhouse crops and nursery products including vegetable seedlings, ornamentals, fruiting trees, vines and shrubs.

“Up until 2007 and before almonds and grapes became a big deal, nursery and floricultural products were the top crop commodity in the state,” said Loren Oki, specialist emeritus of Cooperative Extension at UC Davis and co-director of UCNFA. “Nurseries and floriculture are a $3.6 billion industry in California, but not many people know about it.”

Since its inception in 1951, IPPS has sought and shared plant production knowledge globally with an emphasis on nursery production. Oki has been a member of IPPS since the 1980s. His father, George, who owned and operated Oki Nursery, helped establish the Western Region in the 1960s, paving a path for Oki who served as president of WR-IPPS in the 1990s.

Although this year was the first that UCNFA co-hosted, Oki is confident that it won't be the last. “We're already planning a conference for the fall in conjunction with WR-IPPS. Since the target audience of UCNFA are growers, it just makes sense to partner with growers for these events,” Oki said.

This year's meeting involved 145 attendees, 29 exhibitors and 23 speakers and occurred over four days – two of which were dedicated to grower tours and the other two offering educational presentations in both English and Spanish, another first for WR-IPPS.

Gerry Spinelli, UC Cooperative Extension production horticulture advisor for San Diego County and member of UCNFA's administrative committee, was instrumental in coordinating the event. When he wasn't moderating sessions or facilitating Q&A, Spinelli was sharing his expertise on measuring pressure, distribution uniformity and improving irrigation management in English and Spanish.

“It's rewarding to see so much statewide interest in nurseries and floriculture,” said Spinelli.  “WR-IPPS is a great opportunity to showcase the extraordinary San Diego nursery and greenhouse industry on an international stage, and a perfect occasion for clientele to meet our new UC Cooperative Extension advisors.”

Bruno Pitton, who became the UCCE environmental horticulture advisor for Placer and Nevada counties in November, appreciated the increase in science-based talks compared to previous years.

“Before, there were more talks on production practices from grower to grower. This year, I noticed that there's more science extension talks – which is a good thing,” said Pitton, who also gave a presentation on nitrogen management in nursery production and irrigation training.

Recent UC ANR hires like Emma Volk, production horticulture advisor for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, had the opportunity to learn not only from industry leaders nationwide, but fellow ANR colleagues. For example, she heard Don Merhaut, UCCE specialist for nursery and floriculture crops based at UC Riverside, present on controlled release fertilizer dynamics in containers during a one-year growing cycle for Southern California.

UCCE advisors and specialists had a significant presence at this year's meeting, leaving a positive impression on attendees, including Tony Shireman, WR-IPPS president, who said that partnering with UC ANR experts helps IPPS achieve its mission to seek and share plant knowledge globally.

“We're fortunate to have connections to people like those joining us from Cooperative Extension. It allows us to expand our knowledge and extend our reach,” Shireman said. 

Johanna Del Castillo Munera and Kosana Suvocarev, two professors of Cooperative Extension at UC Davis, also attended and joined Spinelli for both English and Spanish sessions. Del Castillo Munera presented on disease challenges and management for nurseries, and Suvocarev talked about crop water requirements for irrigation scheduling in nurseries and greenhouses.

“There's a good sense of community here and there's a lot of passion from the speakers,” said Grant Johnson, UCCE urban agriculture technology advisor for UCCE Los Angeles and Orange counties, adding that he valued the opportunity to learn from growers and scientists simultaneously.

After attendees spent an entire day touring local nursery and floriculture operations and learning from growers in North San Diego County and Riverside County, they concluded the day with a dinner and keynote address from Karen Ross, California Department of Food and Agriculture secretary.

On the last day, Chris Shogren, UCCE environmental horticulture advisor for Los Angeles County and member of UCNFA's administrative committee, and Eric Middleton, UCCE integrated pest management advisor for San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange counties, talked about pest and pathogen management. The advisors offered fascinating visuals including photos comparing the size of agave mites to a penny, and led a stimulating Q&A session.

To learn more about the UC Nursery and Floriculture Alliance, visit https://ucnfa.ucanr.edu/.

 

 

Forest research and outreach compiles forestry voices in new story map project

For the past four years, Kim Ingram has been listening closely to the private forest landowners who participate in her Forest Stewardship Workshop series. During the workshops, landowners share their experiences clearing thickets of vegetation, replanting post-wildfire and tackling invasive species, and their concerns of who will take care of their forest when they're gone.

To alleviate their stress, Ingram–Forest Stewardship Education coordinator with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources–turns to natural resource professionals from CAL FIRE, local Resource Conservation Districts, and the U.S Forest Service who can share knowledge and resources with participants. Recently, Ingram developed a story map that aims to provide landowners with a platform they can use to share their experiences and ways that they have been empowered to manage their land.

"It's not uncommon for small forest landowners to feel overwhelmed with their forest management responsibilities and uncertain over what steps to take first," said Ingram. "Through the Forest Stewardship Workshops and this story map project, we hope to show that there is an entire community of forest landowners in the same situation, learning from each other and moving forward towards their management goals."

The Forest Stewardship Story Map team used ArcGIS StoryMaps to design the project, with 15 participants providing interviews and visual content. StoryMaps provides a user-friendly interface where website visitors can either click on a county to view specific interviews or scroll to view the stories.

The forestry team plans to interview at least one landowner and natural resource professional in every forested county in California so private forest landowners have a local contact or can become inspired by a project in their area.

Theresa Ciafardoni, a forest landowner in Nevada County, said that the UC ANR Forest Stewardship Workshop helped her manage postfire restoration and long-term land use planning.

"It opened up so many options and possibilities," said Ciafardoni. "All the individuals who presented in the Forest Stewardship Workshop were open to phone calls for specific questions and provided invaluable technical assistance."

Involving landowners and forestry professionals with this project was an early decision made by Ingram, who believed it was important that the map held appeal beyond hosting stories. Now, the project functions as a networking tool for landowners seeking professional assistance, too.

Past Forest Stewardship Workshop presenters shared their contact information and the motivations behind their forest management work so that landowners could find assistance in their area. The professionals currently hosted on the map include Resource Conservation District managers, UC ANR forestry advisors and private contractors. 

"The most motivated landowners are invested not only economically, but their heart is into it," said Ryan Tompkins, UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor for Plumas, Sierra and Lassen counties. "The natural world is full of uncertainty, but they're committed to continuing education and learning about how to be a good land steward. This takes a certain level of humility recognizing that our tenure as a steward on the land is a very short period of a forest's lifetime."

Looking ahead, the team envisions the map as a working document that will eventually include interviews with indigenous tribal members who focus on traditional ecological knowledge projects, interviews and information from the UC ANR Postfire Forest Resilience Program, and a feature that will filter stories by topic (e.g. reforestation or prescribed burning).

"This isn't a project that could be completed by one person," explained Grace Dean, Forest Stewardship communications specialist. "The same way that Kim and other presenters explain forest management as a collaborative process holds true for this project."

The Forest Stewardship Workshop series gives participants the ability to start as beginners and build upon their knowledge and experiences. In the same vein, this story map provides the Forest Stewardship team a solid base of real stories to add on to over time. The hope is that it will grow into a multifaceted tool reaching new forest landowners, eventually enveloping their stories within the small forest landowner community.

To view the Forest Stewardship Story Map, visit: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bd062108d9894da7920d7aef06fe2c2c.

UC Cooperative Extension advisor John Karlik retires after a 38-year career in Kern County

John Karlik, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Kern County for environmental horticulture and environmental science, will retire July 1. Karlik began his work in Kern County in 1984 with an emphasis on the commercial rose plant industry and local horticulture outreach.

Karlik's teaching activities included five levels of 12- to 15-week horticulture education classes offered in three locations in Kern County, usually two or three classes held each year. For the past 25 years, he has collaborated with Darrell Feil, co-owner of Abate-a-Weed in Bakersfield, to hold landscape management seminars that connect community members with experts on a wide range of topics.

“What I love about John is a couple of things: first, his knowledge base is amazing – he's a treasure of Kern County, for what he's done education-wise,” Feil said. “And second, he has a very active mind – and so many people benefit from that in our community.”

Karlik expanded his teaching to include 10 horticulture study tours to gardens and landscapes of Europe and Asia, and the photographs from those visits enhanced his outreach and contributed to his chapters on landscape design in the Arizona and UC Master Gardener Handbooks.

He earned his B.S. in soil science from the University of Minnesota and M.S. in horticulture from Michigan State University.

Taking advantage of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' flexibility and sabbatical leave, he completed a doctorate at UCLA in Environmental Science and Engineering, and changed his research focus to air-quality-related projects. That led to a lecture series on atmospheric science and policy, including climate change, which Karlik offered annually for 15 years as a visiting professor at Central European University in Budapest, and resulting in a service award from that institution.

In recent years, he led four tours to study ecosystem response in the still-radioactive Exclusion Zone at Chernobyl, Ukraine, site of the world's worst nuclear accident.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Karlik shifted from in-person classes and offered 75 hour-long Zoom presentations on horticulture, landscape design, climate change and environmental science topics, finding an audience in California and in other states.

Karlik also has held a variety of positions in ANR committees, including Academic Assembly Council and the Communications Advisory Board.

“I especially appreciate the many collegial relationships I have within UCCE, ANR, and on several campuses,” Karlik said. “Authorship on many publications reflects those relationships.”

In retirement, Karlik expects to offer assistance at the UCCE office in Kern County and as an editor for a forthcoming ANR book. He intends to pursue interests in instrumental music and the study of languages.

“We've been really blessed to have a guy like John around,” Feil said.

College of Natural Resources receives $50 million naming gift

The College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley, has been renamed the Rausser College of Natural Resources in honor of a landmark $50 million gift by Gordon Rausser, former dean of the college and the Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor Emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley.

The gift, the largest donation ever received by the college and the largest naming gift of any academic unit at UC Berkeley, will support the school's land-grant mission to take on key economic, social, environmental and health challenges facing the state and the nation. Major initiatives led by the college include mitigating and adapting to climate change, accelerating the clean energy transition and improving food security and nutrition for all. 

“The state of California, and the nation as a whole, face enormous environmental risks today that didn't exist 20 years ago, and we as a society haven't found the will to address them squarely,” Rausser said. “Rausser College has some of the best economists in the world and some of the best scientists in the world, and by working together, as they must, they uniquely position the college to provide not only the fundamental science, but also the practical solutions, needed to tackle these challenges.” 

Rausser's gift is a major component of UC Berkeley's landmark $6 billion “Light the Way” fundraising campaign, which officially launched Saturday, Feb. 29.

“Gordon Rausser's incredible contribution of his own personal resources to support the mission of UC Berkeley and Rausser College is an unparalleled vote of confidence in the college, the university and our mission,” said Chancellor Carol Christ. “Gordon's legacy of outstanding leadership at the college in and of itself left an indelible mark on our campus and community. His willingness and ability to now provide a strong financial foundation for the college's future is a contribution whose true value is beyond measure.”

The majority of the funds will create an unrestricted endowment that can be used at the direction of the dean, in consultation with faculty leadership, to support a variety of needs across the college's five departments — from supporting graduate students to launching new interdisciplinary research programs.

In addition, a portion of the gift will be used to establish the Gordon Rausser Endowed Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, where Rausser served for over four decades. Another portion will help set up a Rausser-Zilberman Program Endowed Fund for the Master of Development Practice (MDP) Program, which will support students, curriculum enhancements and field opportunities abroad. 

“An endowment gift of this size and nature provides the college with a permanent funding source that will fuel innovation and creativity, enhance the quality of our programs and help us stay competitive — it is truly extraordinary,” said David Ackerly, dean of Rausser College. “We will invest in graduate student support to recruit and train the world's best scholars and support innovative interdisciplinary research to tackle major problems at the state, national and global levels.”  

Other priorities include faculty recruitment and retention, equity and inclusion programs and curriculum innovations, Ackerly said.

More than 40 years of commitment to Berkeley

Rausser first joined the Berkeley faculty in 1978 after leaving his faculty position at Harvard University. He went on to serve as chair of the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics on three separate occasions before being appointed dean of the College of Natural Resources in 1994. As dean, Rausser oversaw a massive expansion and reorganization of the college, growing the number of faculty at the college by approximately 20%. 

Rausser foresaw the need to increase the college's fundraising enterprise, and under his leadership the college greatly expanded its philanthropic activity. During his time as dean he worked in partnership with the alumni community to create eight new faculty endowed chairs. Today, these endowed chairs are a crucial tool for recruiting and retaining the highest-quality faculty. He also spearheaded the Berkeley-Novartis Agreement, a creative research and development agreement between the College's Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and the Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute to advance fundamental research in plant biology and genomics. The Berkeley-Novartis Agreement was novel at the time and laid the groundwork for future public private partnerships.

Outside of Berkeley, Rausser has distinguished himself as an economic and policy adviser to the U.S. government and the state of California, as a business consultant and venture capitalist and an entrepreneur. While on academic leave, he served as senior economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1986-1987) under Ronald Reagan and subsequently became chief economist of the U.S. Agency for International Development (1988-1990). His accomplishments also include co-founding Emeryville-based OnPoint Analytics, which provides business consulting services specializing in expert testimony in economics, data analytics, finance and statistics, and co-founding with Berkeley colleagues the Law and Economics Consulting Group. 

He is the recipient of 29 academic research, teaching and leadership awards. The most recent of which is having his professional society — the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) — honor his work by naming the conference keynote, in perpetuity, in recognition of his lifetime research achievements and exceptional intellectual leadership of the profession. The first Rausser Keynote address will take place this year at the AAEA annual society meetings. 

Rausser said the gift is a continuation of his more than 40-year commitment to the campus and its public mission — and that his success as a business leader and entrepreneur enabled him to make it happen. 

“Personally, I can think of no institution in California that's had a greater impact on our past, or has a greater power to shape our future, than Berkeley has, and I take great pride in the fact that Rausser College is one of the cornerstones of this remarkable institution,” Rausser said. “I know what the college is capable of, given the right resources, and I want to ensure that the college achieves an unparalleled level of excellence.”

 

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