Chris Jones
Chris coordinates activities related to the Iowa Water Quality Information System and conduct research on nutrient and sediment transport and general water quality in agricultural watersheds. He has been in his career for over 16 years.
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Rick Cruse
Rick Cruse is a professor in the Department of Agronomy and director of the Iowa Water Center. As director, Rick addresses administrative needs of the Center and is responsible for successful Center operations; he has been Director of the Iowa Water Center since 2006. He served as president of the National Institutes for Water Resources from 2015 – 2016, the professional organization representing the 54 Water Resources Research Institutes across the US and US territories. Rick co-leads the Daily Erosion Project with his primary research focus of soil erosion and water runoff. His passion is the out-of-doors and thrives on getting his five grand daughters involved with hunting and fishing.
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J. Gordon Arbuckle
J. Arbuckle is professor and extension rural sociologist at Iowa State University. His research and extension efforts focus on improving the environmental and social performance of agricultural systems. His primary areas of interest are drivers of farmer and agricultural stakeholder action related to soil and water quality. He is director of the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll, an annual survey of Iowa farmers, and Chair of the ISU Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture.
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Emily Zimmerman
Emily Zimmerman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management and Global Resource Systems in the Department of Horticulture. Emily’s research interests focus on understanding the relationship between land use and ecosystem services in working landscapes. Recently, Emily’s work has focused primarily on evaluating placement, costs, and environmental outcomes associated with spatially targeted best management practices in agricultural landscapes. In addition to her research, Emily teaches several courses, including Natural Resource Policy, and has co-led study abroad and travel courses on four continents. Emily has been in her current role since August 2019. She holds a BS in Biology and Global Resource Systems from Iowa State University, a MS in Natural Resources and Environment from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Science from Iowa State University.
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Matthew Helmers
Matt Helmers is the Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, the Dean’s Professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. Dr. Helmers’ research areas include studies on the impact of nutrient management, cropping practices, drainage design and management, and strategic placement of buffer systems on nutrient export from agricultural landscapes. He has a regional Extension program working to increase adoption of practices that have the potential to reduce downstream nutrient export. Matt grew up in Sibley, IA and spent substantial time on his grandparent’s farm growing up and was actively engaged in showing cattle.
John Tyndall
John Tyndall is an associate professor of natural resource economics at Iowa State University where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in resource economics, agroecosystem analysis, and forest management as part of the Department of Natural Resource Ecology & Management and the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture. John’s research and that of the students in his lab weaves economic and social analysis into trans-disciplinary work examining the capacity of agriculturally dominated landscapes to produce broader arrays of ecosystem and hydrologic services while maintaining economic viability at field, farm, and regional scales. Working with talented students and colleagues, John’s research has been expanding into integrated financial and spatial modeling so as to create innovative decision support tools for conservation planners and farmers alike. John lives in Ames, Iowa with his wife and two kids.
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