John Norman: Scientific Advisor, Seed Media Project
John M. Norman, currently an Emeritus Professor at UW-Madison, was Professor of Soil Science and also Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1988 to 2009. 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 conducted 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, soils, entomology, forestry, hydrology and meteorology have included plant productivity and water use efficiency, integrated pest management, irrigation water use, precision agriculture, landscape-scale agro-chemical leaching and runoff losses, erosion, remote sensing, plant canopy architecture, measurement and modeling of soil surface carbon dioxide fluxes, soil structure effects on infiltration and soil hydraulic properties.
Recent research focuses on the sustainability of agricultural production and the importance of soil in the spatial and temporal distribution of crop production, ecosystem services and environmental degradation. Most recently he focused on holistic, operational approaches to quantifying landscape function and ecosystem services and eventually providing guidance to farmers/ranchers for accomplishing simultaneously numerous benefits that derive from regenerative approaches to increasing soil organic matter, improving soil health, sequestering carbon, reducing runoff of rainfall and increasing water available to plants, recharging groundwater aquifers with improved-water quality, stabilizing stream flows and lowering their temperature and contaminant loads, increasing system biodiversity and ultimately resilience, and reducing the use of chemicals that degrade the environment. A primary objective of this work was to use quantification of these services to support a system for linking people in rural areas with people in urban areas and providing a channel for growers to be hired and paid for these life-sustaining services in addition to the quantity of edible food they produce.
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 the Bascom Rothemel Professor of Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin, 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 American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is co-author of a widely used 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 203 refereed publications in the scientific literature in 57 different professional journals and books with 129 different coauthors. In 2008 the American Meteorological Society and the American Society of Agronomy sponsored symposia in his honor, and in 2016 the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Science.
He conducted 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, soils, entomology, forestry, hydrology and meteorology have included plant productivity and water use efficiency, integrated pest management, irrigation water use, precision agriculture, landscape-scale agro-chemical leaching and runoff losses, erosion, remote sensing, plant canopy architecture, measurement and modeling of soil surface carbon dioxide fluxes, soil structure effects on infiltration and soil hydraulic properties.
Recent research focuses on the sustainability of agricultural production and the importance of soil in the spatial and temporal distribution of crop production, ecosystem services and environmental degradation. Most recently he focused on holistic, operational approaches to quantifying landscape function and ecosystem services and eventually providing guidance to farmers/ranchers for accomplishing simultaneously numerous benefits that derive from regenerative approaches to increasing soil organic matter, improving soil health, sequestering carbon, reducing runoff of rainfall and increasing water available to plants, recharging groundwater aquifers with improved-water quality, stabilizing stream flows and lowering their temperature and contaminant loads, increasing system biodiversity and ultimately resilience, and reducing the use of chemicals that degrade the environment. A primary objective of this work was to use quantification of these services to support a system for linking people in rural areas with people in urban areas and providing a channel for growers to be hired and paid for these life-sustaining services in addition to the quantity of edible food they produce.
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 the Bascom Rothemel Professor of Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin, 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 American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is co-author of a widely used 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 203 refereed publications in the scientific literature in 57 different professional journals and books with 129 different coauthors. In 2008 the American Meteorological Society and the American Society of Agronomy sponsored symposia in his honor, and in 2016 the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Science.