Rick has been PI or co PI on 102 successful grant proposals, was the lead on the majority, totaling over $7 million. He has authored or co-authored over 40 Extension documents and popular press articles, 50 journal articles and 90 proceedings papers or abstracts.  In 2010, he was the senior author on the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management’s Outstanding Paper for the entire year.

 

He’s worked on nutrient management projects on dryland and irrigated fields, organic and conventional systems, and micronutrients and macronutrients. I wanted to highlight a few of his bigger accomplishments today.

 

Until about 1995, the cause of “Physiological Leaf Spot” in cereals was unknown, though some thought it looked like disease. Rick ended up convincingly determining that Cl deficiency was the cause of the leaf spot which has helped producers correct the problem, and researchers identify tolerant varieties.

 

Until about 2005, it was generally thought that urea did not volatilize if applied from late fall to early spring in northern Great Plains. I even wrote that in Extension documents; but Rick thought that should be tested, identified the gold standard of measuring volatilization, ran 23 trials finding volatilization losses averaged about 16% and could be as high as 44%. He has published multiple journal articles and Extension documents on the topic. A survey of producers determined that his findings saved them approximately $5 million PER year.

 

He has also studied nitrous oxide emissions, finding losses were much smaller in the NGP than previously assumed. Since 2015 he has been studying soil acidification to help producers prevent and mitigate this emerging problem that is leading to complete yield loss on some fields.

 

Not sure it’s a goal of Rick’s but if you think back to some of his biggest accomplishments, they were to prove previous theories wrong. 

 

As MSU’s Extension Soil Fertility Specialist, I would not be able to do my job nearly as well if it weren’t for the wealth of research results that Rick shares freely with me.

 

Rick has also given over 100 talks to producers and taught our department graduate seminar 7 times. His graduate students have received numerous awards in part due to his mentoring.

 

12 review panels. Associate editor of SSSAJ and CJSS. Reviewer for 19 different journals and 2 book chapters. Served on the GPSFC planning committee since 2014.

 

And for those who don’t know Rick, he is passionate about fly fishing, cross country skiing, and travel. Even though he retires this August (or as he puts it: graduates), he is leading MSU’s charge to design a modern Soil and Plant processing facility. This will not help him at all, which demonstrates Rick’s unselfishness. He is truly deserving of this Leadership Award.