Homer Nowlin Chair

This is an archival version of the Nowlin Chair web page from when Dr. Joe Ritchie was the Nowlin Chair professor (1984-2000). Return to the the main Nowlin Chair web site.

The Homer Nowlin Chair is an endowed chair in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. Our focus is on water quality issues in Michigan. To increase our understanding in these issues we have used and developed several crop and soil simulation models. Primarily we have used and modified the CERES family of cereal models and we are now developing the SALUS (System Approach to Land Use Sustainability) model.

People

Some of the people that are currently working in our group:

Joe T. Ritchie -- Homer Nowlin Chair Professor (Retired)
Alagarswamy -- Visiting Scientist
Brian Baer -- Program Analyst

Some of the people who have worked in the group in the past:

Sharlene Rotman -- Administrative Assistant
Julio Dardanelli -- Visiting Scientist
Reimar Carlesso -- Visiting Scientist
Marta Vinocur -- Graduate Student
Jun Wei -- Visiting Scientist
Dan Dunham -- Programmer
Laurent Gilet -- Visiting Worker
Urs Schulthess -- Post Doctoral Fellow
Daniel Rasse -- Post Doctoral Fellow
Ricardo Braga -- Visiting Worker
Carlos Paglis -- Graduate Student
Samira Daroub -- Post Doctoral Fellow
Ayman Suleiman -- Graduate Student
Bruno Basso -- Graduate Assistant
P. B. Ramkrishnan -- Visiting Student

DSSAT variables

Below are three lists of variables for the CERES and CropGro programs. They were compiled by a number of users of these models. These lists are certainly not complete and probably incorrect in some cases. They are provided as a guide and not as authoritative listings.

Variable list for CERES 2.1
Newer variable list for CropGro 3.1 ?
N transformation variable list for CERES ?.?

Software

Software developed by the group:

CIDSS - Crop Irrigation Decision Support System (for Windows 3.1)
Watbal for Windows - Water Balance Program for Windows 3.1
TEST.EXE - Stand alone water balance and tillage
TRIANGLE - Software for soil textural classification
SWLIMITS - Software to find the water limits and sat. hydraulic conductivity of a soil
P MODEL - Phosphorus versions of CERES and CROPGRO 3.5
Programs and utilities related to new ponding/runoff module in SALUS

Data

Data collected or used by the group:

SOIL WATER LIMITS - Subset of data from Ratliff, L. F., J. T. Ritchie, and D. K. Cassel. 1983. Field-measured limits of soil water as related to laboratory-measured properties. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 47:770-775. This subset does not include 13 observations whose DUL was higher that 90% of total porosity.
United States weather data - DSSAT/ICASA format weather files for 230 stations in the United States

Publications

In house publications:

CERES Wheat 2.0 - Unpublished book by Joe Ritchie and Doug Godwin
Sunflower Model Technical Documentation - Model-specific algorithms for OILCROP-SUN V5.1 by F.J. Villalobos and A.J. Hall
Soil survey laboratory data, field descriptions and field measured soil water limits for some soils in the United States. Ritchie, J.T., L.F. Ratliff and D.K. Cassel. 1987. ARS Technical Bulletin. For the main document click here. To get the entire document (including 200+ pages of appendix) click here.

Irrigation Conference

In November, 2000 the Nowlin Chair held a conference on the future of irrigation in Michigan. Click here for more information

Modelling Conference

On 10-11 November, 2000 the Nowlin Chair held a conference on crop and soil modelling in Detroit Michigan. Click here for more information

Other Groups

Modeling is complex, multidisciplinary endeavor in which we work with a number great groups and indivduals around the world. Some of these groups and people are:

The Crop Systems Modeling Group, Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department, University of Florida

Dr. Gerrit Hoogenboom The University of Florida, Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Crop Models in Research and Practice, a symposium honoring Joe Ritchie, was held during the American Society of Agronomy (ASA)Annual Meeting, Novemeber 2000

Go to the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences page

Go to the Michigan State University home page

Homer Nowlin Chair Group - E-mail the webmaster