Speaker Introductions

Dave Baker

Dr. Baker began teaching at the Biology Department of Heidelberg College in 1966. Shortly thereafter, he initiated studies along the Sandusky River which led to the formation of the Water Quality Laboratory in 1969. The laboratory has specialized in quantitative studies of nutrient, sediment and pesticide transport in rivers throughout Ohio.

Dr. Baker currently serves the laboratory as coordinator of the tributary loading programs. He is also serving as project director for two grants related to agricultural pollution abatement - the Honey Creek Targeted Watershed Project supported by the U.S. EPA and a Great Lakes Protection Fund grant entitled “A Phosphorus Soil Test Metric for Reducing Dissolved Phosphorus Loads.” Both projects focus on reversing the recent trends of increased dissolved reactive phosphorus loading to Lake Erie.

Doug Beegle

Douglas B. Beegle is a Professor of Agronomy and extension soil fertility specialist in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Penn State University. He has taught and conducted extension programs in soil fertility and nutrient management in Pennsylvania for over 29 years. He is also involved in applied research in these areas.

Doug is a native of Pennsylvania and received his Ph.D. from Penn State. Before going on to graduate school, he was a dairy farmer in central Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy and has received several regional and national awards for his work in nutrient management.


Dale Cowan

Dale Cowan has 29 years of experience in the Agriculture Sector. As an agronomist, business manager, owner of Agri-Food Laboratories from 1990 to 2006, General Manager for the past 3 years and now Senior Partner with AgriSense International an Ag Business consulting company working internationally as well as domestically. He is Past Chair of the Certified Crop Adviser program (CCA) for Ontario, and is currently Vice President of the Ontario Agri-Business Association representing the interest of industry stakeholders in Feed , Grain and Crop Input operations.

Dale is currently sitting as Vice chair of the Provincial Nutrient Management Advisory Committee a position appointed by the Ministers of Agriculture and of the Environment. He has also been appointed to the Ontario Drinking Water Stewardship Program Advisory Panel to advise the Minister of Environment on funding allocations to support the Clean Water Act as it pertains to rural areas.


Don Flaten

Dr. Don Flaten is a professor in the Department of Soil Science at the University of Manitoba, where he specializes in crop nutrition and nutrient management teaching and research. Don is also the chair of the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment (NCLE) based at the U of M. Don also serves on the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board and has also served on the Manitoba Phosphorus Expert Committee. Don will talk about some of the processes and beneficial management practices controlling agricultural phosphorus losses in areas where snowmelt runoff is significant.




Bil Gburek

Dr. William J. (Bil) Gburek was a Research Hydrologist with USDA-ARS at University Park, PA, USA for 40 years before retiring in 2006. Throughout his career with ARS, he conducted research applying the principles of engineering and watershed hydrology to problems of nutrient loss from agriculture and management of agricultural land use for water quality protection.

He was instrumental in applying the variable-source-area concept of watershed hydrology to nutrient transport issues. Related to this, he provided hydrologic expertise to the group that received the USDA Secretary's Honor Award for development and implementation of the Phosphorus Index, reflecting his experience, knowledge of nutrient transport processes, and ability to develop practical tools for application to complex landscapes.


Bob Hecky

Robert Hecky is a McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor in Lake Ecology at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, Minnesota. In 1996 he joined the federal Department of Environment at the National Water Research Institute and began studies on nearshore nutrient cycling on the Great Lakes. In 2000 he became a professor at the University of Waterloo where he continued studies on the coastal ecology of the Great Lakes prior to moving to Minnesota in 2007. In 2008 he was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his research contributions both in Canada and internationally on the Great Lakes of Africa.


Gail Hesse

Gail Hesse serves in two related capacities for the State of Ohio. She is an environmental manager for Ohio EPA in the Division of Surface Water and is responsible for program management for the division and administering the Lake Erie and surface drinking water protection programs. She also serves as administrator of the Ohio Water Resources Council, a consortium of 9 state agencies and commissions established to promote collaboration on water policy and program development across state agencies. During her twenty five years with Ohio EPA, she has worked with both regulatory and incentive-based programs working with stakeholders in the public and private sectors. She has spent much of her career working on land-based approaches to watershed management and water quality restoration.


Helen Jarvie

Helen is Principal Scientist in Hydrochemistry at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH; the Natural Environment Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for integrated research in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems). In 1995 Helen joined the Institute of Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire (now the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology). Helen leads the lowland hydrochemistry research at CEH Wallingford, undertaking interdisciplinary, fundamental and applied research on the fate, behaviour and transport of nutrients, major ions, trace elements and sediments, to promote sustainable management of surface freshwater resources. Her main research interests are biogeochemical cycling of phosphorus in rivers and the impacts of nutrient enrichment and mitigation, on river water qualit and ecology, particularly in relation to agricultural activities, effluent disposal and changing rural land use.


Brad Joern

Dr. Joern is a leader in nutrient management plan (NMP) development in the USA. His NMP development software tools are used in 34 states and are supported nationally by the USDA-NRCS and the USEPA to develop NMPs that meet the respective requirements of both agencies. Brad also teaches a Soil Fertility course and is the primary contact for manure and biosolids land application and management in Indiana.





Peter Kleinman

Peter Kleinman is a soil scientist with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. He is lead scientist for the watershed and nutrient management team in the Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit in University Park, PA. Dr. Kleinman’s research focuses on the management, fate and transport of phosphorus. This research ranges from assessments of alternative manure application technologies and drainage ditch management practices to investigations of pathways controlling nutrient transport from field to watershed scales.




Jerry Lemunyon

Jerry is a conservation agronomist with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service living in Fort Worth, Texas. Jerry has worked for USDA SCS/NRCS for over 30 years. Currently, he is involved in developing agronomic parameters for the national cropland assessment of CEAP. Also, he is spending time with the management of phosphorus in agricultural systems. He recently translated and published a second soil conservation book from Spanish to English.






April Leytem

Dr. Leytem received her Ph.D (1999) in soil chemistry from North Carolina State University. She began her career with ARS as a Soil Scientist in 2001 at the Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Laboratory. Over the past 10 years Dr. Leytem has written broadly on nutrient cycling in plant-animal-soil-water systems and conducted research to help assure sustainable animal production while better protecting water and air quality. Her research projects have focused on utilizing molecular techniques (31Phosphorus Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; 31P-NMR) to address the influence of animal feeding and manure phosphorus composition on subsequent reactivity of P in manured soils in order to improve our ability to better manage manure to protect water quality.


Chandra Madramootoo

Professor Chandra Madramootoo is Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Associate Vice Principal of McGill University, and a James McGill Professor in the Department of Bioresource Engineering. He was the Founding Director of the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management.

Dr. Madramootoo is an internationally respected expert in water table management, irrigation, drainage, water quality, watershed management, land reclamation, agricultural research, and international agriculture development.


Joe Makarewicz

Dr. Makarewicz is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Biology, an interdisciplinary major at The College at Brockport, State University of New York. He has been awarded the Chandler- Meisner Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Journal of Great Lakes Research by the International Association of Great Lakes Research. His research has focused on Great Lakes Research in four areas: phytoplankton and zooplankton ecology, the ecology of exotic species and their effect on pelagic food webs, pesticide movement in food webs, and fate and transport of nutrients and herbicides in watersheds. He currently is the Co-Lead for the LONNS project (Lake Ontario Nearshore Nutrient Transport Study), a bi-national project between the U.S. and Canada and recently was a reviewer of the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Studies for the National Academy of Sciences.


Ivan O’Halloran

Dr. Ivan O’Halloran is an Associate Professor at the Ridgetown Campus, University of Guelph and is the Research Coordinator of the Nutrient Management Joint Research Program that is co-sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.

His research efforts have primarily focussed on the impact of agricultural practices on nitrogen and phosphorus in agro-ecosystems, with efforts directed towards improving nutrient use efficiency in agricultural systems and reducing undesirable nutrient losses from agricultural lands.




Roberta Parry
Roberta Parry is the Senior Agriculture Advisor in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water in Washington, D.C. During her 20 years with EPA she has worked on a spectrum of legislative, regulatory, programmatic, and scientific agriculture issues. Her current focus is on the water quality impacts of biofuels production and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Ms. Parry has collaborated with a wide variety of stakeholders to implement programs and encourage research to mitigate the impact of agricultural sources of pollution on America’s water bodies and drinking water supplies. Roberta is EPA's representative to the American Society of Agronomy's International Certified Crop Adviser Program.


Keith Reid

Keith Reid is a Soil Fertility Specialist, with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, where he has worked since 1989. Prior to joining OMAFRA Keith operated a mixed livestock/ cash crop / market garden farm and worked for a crop inputs retail business.

Keith is a member of Canadian Society of Soil Science, American Society of Agronomy.






Jeff Reutter

Jeffrey M. Reutter has directed four programs at Ohio State University since 1987: F.T. Stone Laboratory (Ohio’s Lake Erie Laboratory since 1895 and the oldest freshwater biological field station in the country), the Ohio Sea Grant College Program, the Center for Lake Erie Area Research (CLEAR), and the Great Lakes Aquatic Ecosystem Research Consortium (GLAERC), a consortium of top scientists at 12 Ohio colleges.

He is US Co-Chair of the Council of Great Lakes Research Managers for the International Joint Commission, US Department of State and Past President of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML). He is the US Co-Chair of the Great Lakes Regional Research Information Network (GLRRIN) and the Lake Erie Millennium Network.



Andrew Sharpley

In 2006, Andrew Sharpley joined the Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He is Chair of the Division of Agriculture’s Environmental Task Force and Associate Director of the Watershed Research and Education Center. Prior to this he spent 25 years with the USDA-ARS in Oklahoma and then Pennsylvania.

His research investigates the cycling of phosphorus in soil-plant-water systems in relation to soil productivity and water quality and includes the management of animal manures, fertilizers, and crop residues. He also evaluates the role of stream and river sediments in modifying the amounts and forms of phosphorus transported to lakes and reservoirs in Arkansas.



Tiequan Zhang

Dr. Zhang has been a Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada since 1998. Dr. Zhang holds a B.Sc. (1982) and M.Sc. (1988) in Soil Science from Shanxi Agricultural University, China, and a Ph.D. (1996) in Soil Fertility and Chemistry from McGill University.

Dr. Zhang’s major research has focussed on soil fertility management, with specification on agronomic and environmental assessment of both organic and inorganic fertilizers in various cropping systems. This includes research on bio-availability of nutrients from organic wastes (manures, biosolids, and composts); agronomic values of soil residual phosphorus; both short- and long-term transformation pathways of soil phosphorus and their relationships with losses to water resource, soil phosphorus transportation pathways, and development of tools for soil phosphorus environmental risk assessment and of BMPs for commercial inorganic fertilizers and organic wastes.