In a subtle, coincidental way, the direction and content of the agrometeorology/agroclimatology career of  Dr. Richard Stuff was significantly influenced by three engaging drought episodes. The first impacted his high school tomato production project in south central Pennsylvania during the late 1950’s when the region’s fruit growers were doing cloud seeding for hail suppression. Many crop producers believed it prevented hail by preventing rain, and the ruckus got so loud that no one in a town-hall meeting could hear a NOAA meteorologist and a Penn State University scientist trying to explain that it was related to a 22-year sunspot cycle.

In 1959 Richard began formal study of meteorology and climatology along with agricultural and biological sciences as parts of a comprehensive Bachlor of Science program at the Pennsylvania State University. In the early 1960s, classroom meteorology was taught as an exact science but the forecasting labs drew partially on map-drawing art and luck, and the effect of cloud seeding was delegated mostly commercial hocus-pocus. During two summer study breaks Mr. Stuff worked for the Pennsylvania soil survey characterization and erosion laboratory.

After two years as a Peace Corp Volunteer in Uruguay, he received an assistantship to study applied soil physics and plant physiology at Purdue University. The assistantship involved a global soil-climate survey and soil water holding capacity studies. His thesis research was laboratory based plant water relations investigations from which the title “Controlling Soil Moisture Potentials to Study Their Effect on Plant Growth” was completed in 1967.

Then the second drought incident occurred during post Masters work on a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Argentina. Rainfall probability tables were computed and analyzed in relation to water holding capacities of particular soils. A second part involved a region-wide CIMMYT-INTA corn variety and nitrogen fertility experiment in which the more variable Pampas rainfall produced severe drought conditions over a couple of the test sites. At the stricken sites one or two of the “native” varieties did produce small ears on the zero and low nitrogen treatments, but not sufficient for machine harvest and  inclusion in the split-plot analysis. Dr. Norman Borlaug provided career-motivating insight relative to the crop-weather-fertility information gaps.

In 1969 Richard Stuff was back in the Purdue Graduate School’s new agricultural climatology program. The main assistantship research was instrumented field based along with extensive routine field sampling and support measurements. Development of a soil moisture model became the part used for the thesis entitled ”A Soil Moisture Budget Model Accounting for Shallow Water Table Influences “.

Immediately after graduate school, Dr. Stuff began work at the NASA Earth Observations Division in the Johnson Space Center. He was one of three original ag meteorologists involved in the space agency’s response for global crop monitoring after a  major drought in the Ukraine disrupted the world grain supplies and markets. The LACIE/AGRISTARS grew to include major NOAA, USDA and university resources to develop an extensive set of crop monitoring and forecasting technologies, models and systems. During the program’s last 2 years Dr. Stuff  was a member the scientific team in Research, Test and Evaluation Branch responsible for assessed crop yield related R&D tasks for both conventional and spectral crop models.

When NASA moved its Earth Observation Division from Texas to Maryland, Dr. Stuff joined project colleagues from NOAA and the University of Houston to form an applied climate consulting company and Climate Assessment Technology was incorporated in 1981. Some of the main early clients were the Control Data Corporation, the USDA, System Development Corporation, and the UN-FAO.

As the consulting work loads grew, micro computers came on the scene – first as smart terminals to reduce time share costs for using  mainframes, then as stand alone machines for which software development offered a whole new business opportunity. Dr. Stuff was mainly responsible for the “Weather Analyst – Crop Weather Analyst” series. The basic program obtained a large user base across US schools and amateur meteorologists.

With the advent of the Internet during the 1990’s Dr. Stuff expanded the structure and capacities of the crop application software for in-house operation to produce weekly crop stage and yield reports for US district level corn and soybeans. The system utilized about 1500 weather stations to generate contour maps as well as statistical tables for internet subscribers. Also during this period Dr. Stuff became sole owner and president of Climate Assessment Technology, Inc.

Over a 2-year period from 2008 to 2010 the crop model product was transferred to ZedX Inc. for incorporation into making of the CropForecaster.com system for utilizing satellite spectral data and additional weather data for estimating and forecasting at a county level of  detail. 

---------------------    Experience recap    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prior to beginning the current consulting position, about two-thirds of my career sustenance has been applied research and development in the crop-environment modeling domain - concentrated around the water factor. The accumulated experience crosses a broad range of the agronomic system matrix - from climate to local soil moisture back to continental crop production dynamics.

When developing the CAT business plan in 1980, the need for independent assessments of models, model estimates and forecast products was so ubiquitous, that it netted this function a place in the company name and assumed a large part of my professional work. In turn, research to quantify accuracies often identified weaknesses and deficiencies that could used to improved source model components, calibrations, etc. For example, several phenology model elements as described in the  white paper at ClimateAT.com were developed and incorporated into operational systems.

This professional experience is now brought full circle into the ClimateAT consulting service. And the 2010 drought in the Ukraine appeared again to reinforce a central agrometeorology/agroclimatology interest in the moisture factor – from climates, to soils, to crop yields - and its quantification through data analysis and simulation models.