Missoula Soil Science Consultant Speaks

Tell someone you are a soil scientist and it invariably requires an explanation of what you do. It's interesting that few of us do the same things and the telling of it reveals much about the person as well as the community they serve. For that reason I like to collect other folks' descriptions of their work. Certainly the telling of Barry Dutton's life work stands among my favorites because he built his business from scratch in a particularly cost-conscious region. He did it largely without the benefit of the 2 main drivers of regional soil consulting booms: booming suburban sprawl and booming energy prices driving increased well drilling and surface mining for coal and oil shale. I've heard several iterations of Barry's telling over the years and look forward to future installments.

Barry Dutton consults out of Missoula, Montana for PBS&J which purchased his company last year. Barry addressed the June 14, 2004 National Cooperative Soil Survey Western Regional Conference in Jackson, Wyoming (pdf source):

I was asked to review what private soil scientists are up to these days and will use my own company to illustrate. I started Land and Water Consulting Inc. 25 years ago and now have 50 employees and five offices. Our staff includes soil scientists, hydrologists, botanists, wetland scientists, biologists, water rights specialists, engineers, surveyors, GIS specialists, technicians and support staff. Our wetland projects this year include wetland delineation on over 10,000 acres. We will restore over 60 wetlands impacted by ski area and golf course development. We will design several dozen wetland mitigation projects and will monitor over 100 wetland projects constructed as mitigation for highway project impacts.

Our vegetation projects this year include several thousand acres of vegetation mapping for EIS studies, vegetation management plans for ski areas, and vegetation TES inventories for project sites. We will also conduct weed and riparian area inventories on private, state, and federal lands.

Our streambank and shoreline projects include restoration along hundred of miles of streams and lakes. We are working on removing a 100 year old dam on a large river within the largest superfund site in the country. This work includes channel design, wetland rehabilitation and riparian area enhancement. We will also conduct watershed analyses and implement TMDLs (Total Maximum Daily Loads) for dozens of streams.

I do a lot of expert witness work and soil survey often has a role in the cases. My oldest case has been going on for over 30 years and the focus is the definition of Peat. The 1911 Soil Survey got it right in describing the site as “high organic content silt loam.” However, the 1959 soil survey called the site peat. The owner sold the “peat” and has been arguing over the definition of peat ever since with the peat miner who purchased it. In another expert witness case, a friendly NRCS soil scientist tried to do a county planner and a developer a favor and produce a wetland map. Unfortunately this person had insufficient training in wetland delineation. The developer filled up to the wetland line and built a parking area before the ---- hit the fan. He spent $250,000 on lawyers, experts, fines and restoration activities to correct his mistakes and is now considering sending NRCS the bill. I am also involved each year in a half-dozen wet basement lawsuits and in almost every case there is a soil survey covering the site that predicted the problem if anyone had known or taken the time to look.

We are also involved in numerous reclamation projects for mine sites, pipelines and other projects. If you want to evaluate soil survey accuracy there is nothing like a 300 milelong pipeline trench across the landscape.

Likely because a longer litany wouldn't add any value, Barry didn't mention several other areas: his extensive work with water use efficiency for irrigation districts, his work instructing health district personnel on soil features relevant to septic systems and his work mapping soils but using project specific approaches that describing would only have distracted NCSS audience from his core message:

The decline of the soil survey program is leading the decline of the soil survey profession.

This is a powerful statement to lay on NCSS, the keepers of the national soil survey program. I plan on discussing it further.

Barry Dutton's message is also at the core of the brand of concern for soil science survival that I was dismissive of at the end of my previous post, a position based on observing the ever increasing demand for consulting soil scientists. Speak with Barry, as I did this afternoon, and you will find his concern is not waning despite his considerable business success and despite the high demand for his individual services. I am reevaluating my position and will present it in a future post. Certainly we soil scientists have the work but without academe, without soil survey sufficient to maintain our critical mass, won't what we do continue to be parceled out among the other disciplines? Any comments on this issue would be most appreciated.

Tech Tags: soil science consulting pedology

Why folks choose a career in science

Robert Samuelson (Newsweek) has an article about the much touted knowledge gap. But it is what Samuelson said about why people choose a career in science that rang most true:

Only about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce consists of scientists and engineers. Having an adequate supply depends on what thousands—not millions—of smart college students decide every year to do with their lives. People choose a career partly because it suits their interests. This applies especially to science. "Physics is like sex," the physicist Richard Feynman famously quipped. "Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."

Tech Tags: science career

Where are the soil science jobs?

SimplyHired 's Google Map mashup makes it handy to map demand for consulting soil scientists in the USA. A narrow search shows the hottest demand to be currently in a narrow band along the urbanized eastern seaboard and in the Seattle WA area. Why is that?

Broadening the search criteria to reflect a soil science preference (versus requirement) shows a familiar and heartening scatter distribution from coast-to-coast. Recent openings in the Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas are prominent, confirming that big city jobs beckon at this level also. But what is with all those homeland security jobs?

Tech Tags: soil science jobs

Thoughts on Peter Drucker

Consulting soil scientists generally work in separation from academia. This post pulled hard on my sense of science-business identity. On the one hand, we at SSSA and NSCSS do hold closely to Peter Drucker's position that the knowledge worker gains access to work, job and social position through formal education. Qualifying for voting membership and leadership in either soil science society requires formal education. As it should. Yet, in common with the poster, we in soil science consulting achieve and maintain our success almost entirely through informal means.

Over 10 years ago in 1994 Peter Drucker gave a lecture at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government about knowledge workers.

He starts by saying that “in the first place, the knowledge worker gains access to work, job and social position through formal education” and continues to explain the importance of formal education for becoming a knowledge worker. He emphasizes the role of formal schooling as the central gravity for new knowledge workers and that learning knowledge work cannot be achieved through apprenticeship or any other method than formal education.

I really appreciate much of the ideas presented by Mr. Drucker. He has influenced much of my own thinking, but this is something I can hardly agree on nowadays. I’m a glitch in his system, because I have achieved my social position and access to work mainly through informal means. I find it very hard to achieve my current social position through any other means than my own informal knowledge working practices. A lot of advanced level knowledge workers I know and appreciate work systematically with knowledge in informal settings.

He continues: “Increasingly, an educated person, will be someone who has learned how to learn, and throughout his or her lifetime continues to learn, especially in and out of formal education.“

Spot on. In my opinion, it’s not only the role of formal education that will be central to continuous learning after preliminary education, but rather systematic working practices in networks of knowledge: informal or formal.

In formal education we still focus much of our time on learning theories without proper application. Drucker says that “in the knowledge society, knowledge basically exists only in application” and that “knowledge in application is effective only when it is specialized“. While formal education mainly teaches us to be generalists by just requiring us to pass a certain designated level of “good enough”, in knowledge society leadership will concentrate around specialists who have acquired additional specialized skills that have importance in application. The only way to acquire those skills is to have the passion for learning and to deeply explore new territories with other people

I agree thoroughly with this last point. Soil science consultants need to become aware of the issues surrounding open access (OA) to scientific knowledge. Our effectiveness and our growth depend on it. In closing, I think we should recognize the considerable advances made (and continuing) at the SSSAJ to balance the benefits of OA with the need for revenue sufficient to support publishing.

URL: OA update to Peter Drucker
[from: Open Access News]

Tech Tags: soil science professional business knowledge opinion

Jobs web site: demand is up for soil scientists

While playing around with Indeed.com's nifty graphs for displaying trends in job postings, I made a graph at Indeed for "consulting soil scientists" or "soil science consultants" and was pleasantly surprised to get a definite upwards trend. Removing the consultant label has the same trend and about double the job listings. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out into 2006.
Update: A year ago, Fast Company had geoscientists listed among the top 25 jobs for 2005 in an index weighted 35% to job growth. Seems they predicted correctly, at least as far as soil scientists are concerned. Fast Company also has a top 25 list for 2006.

Tech Tags: soil scientist job demand trend

Dept of Licensing Surveys Soil Science Practice, Recommends Regulation

The Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) has submitted a requested Sunrise Review of Soil Scientists to the State House Commerce & Labor Committee. The report recommends that the practice of soil science be regulated.

Members of the Washington Society of Professional Soil Scientists (WSPSS) can find much to be proud of as well as cause for renewed vigilance in DOL's report. Soil science has been in DOL's sights before but the current set of events that led to the sunrise report started in 2001. That was the year that soil scientists became concerned that under the Geologists Licensing Act, practicing soil science would require being a registered geologist. Timely action by WSPSS resulted in an exclusion for the practice of soil. It also reignited WSPSS' interest in licensing.

Renewed efforts followed shortly in 2002 when soil reports prepared by a soil scientist were rejected by the Pierce County Planning Department. The planning department required a licensed geologist, consistent with a draft model Critical Area's Ordinance (CAO) being prepared by the State Department of Community, Trade & Economic Development (CTED). Subsequent effort by WSPSS to revise CTED's Model CAO to include soil scientists as qualified to submit soil reports were initially successful but, for reasons that have not been determined, the soil science profession was not included in the final draft.

Without licensing, soil scientists are failing in their efforts to maintain their professional standing with county planning departments, health districts and permitting agencies in Washingtonm State. Draft legislation to license the practice of soil science was submitted to both State Senate and House committees during the 2004/2005 legislative session. Lobbying efforts resulted in the House Commerce & Labor Committee request to the Department of Licensing to prepare a “sunrise� report that would define the reasoning and metrics underlying the request to be regulated.

An excerpt from that report:

Considerable evidence compiled in this report, through out-of-court settlements and litigation, show harm to property, health, safety and welfare of the public. Public health endangered by improper soil analysis ... has led to contaminated wells and groundwater; septic system failures; and compromised wetlands. Harm to the public exists when [action] is approved without a comprehensive soil analysis conducted by a soil expert to support decision[s] taken. Public harm occurs when ordinances excludes a professional group that hold an expertise through education and experience. Exclusion of a qualified group to practice diminishes choice. A significant number of court settlements indicate that there are professionals [who] practice soil science beyond the scope of their expertise. In view of the findings regarding the practice of soil science, the following recommendations [are] made for consideration by the Legislature:

1. That Soil Scientists be regulated; and
2. expertise should be defined to minimize overlap of work to be performed.
   

The sunrise report goes on to indicate that defining what is soil science, and identifying who is a soil scientist is a challenge. Furthermore, without a commercial yellow pages heading for the profession, consumer access to soil scientists is limited to an informal referral system. Professional soil science societies are viewed in the report as ineffective in protecting the public from unprofessional acts by soil scientists or purported soil scientists. Specific examples of damage are provided in the report, including at least $3,000,000 in damage claims due to septic system problems in Cowlitz County in western Washington. Also cited were 20 cases in eastern Washington, provided to DOL by the Washington Department of Ecology, where earlier or more competent soil science consultation could have saved resources and protected human health.

Now that the sunrise report has been submitted, the legislature can move forward during the 2006/2007 legislative session to act on the previous draft. Prospects look good for passage, but regardless of the outcome, Washington soil scientists cannot help but be lifted up by the findings of the sunrise report: Practitioners of soil science are needed in Washington State to a degree that individual practitioners could not have been aware of. While it is extremely disturbing to learn of several instances of unprofessional work by purported soil scientists, it is good to read that quality work is highly valued and recognized as critical to protecting health and resources. Washington soil scientists already know that we are in some demand: once a soil scientist establishes a niche, it is rare to find that individual idle. DOL's survey offers us a unique glimpse into the bigger picture as to why that is.

1997 photo of sprayfield with soil problem.
Olympia Cheese. Lacey, WA.

Technorati Tag: Soil science Licensing