iLEAD Cohort IV Visits Southeast Arkansas

by Amy Simpson and Ali Ubeyitogullari - January 2, 2025

A couple of iLEAD Cohort IV members recap their visit to southeast Arkansas.

Day One

By: Amy Simpson, Clark County Extension Agent-Staff Chair

iLEAD Cohort IV started Day One of its third face-to-face training at the University of Arkansas at Monticello’s Chamberlain Forestry Building. After being welcomed by Jolene Hammond, outreach and engagement coordinator for the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources, the group then had the opportunity to hear from several faculty with both research and teaching responsibilities.

Dr. Don White, Jr., certified wildlife biologist and wildlife instructor, started the morning by educating the group on his work in elk herd and habitat management. After losing our native elk herd sometime around the end of the Civil War, elk were reintroduced into Arkansas in the early 1980’s with elk brought in primarily from Colorado and a few from western Nebraska. The reintroduced elk were placed not far from Jasper in Newton County and have since extended to a five-county area.

The elk program in Arkansas focuses on two main areas: 1) Elk Management 2) Chronic Wasting Diseases (CWD). White makes yearly helicopter flights to monitor where the elk are, their numbers, age, gender, etc. In March 2024, the population was 389. White noted that that is a decline in population, but it was an intentional decline to help control CWD.

CWD has been constantly monitored since first noted in Arkansas. Since 2016, 1,769 white tailed deer and 56 elk have tested positive. That may make it sound like CWD is more prevalent in deer, but because of the differences in population, only 2.9% of the deer population were positive while 9.5% of the elk population were positive.

White wrapped up his talk by discussing his current work exploring why elk visit certain locations over and over. He wants to find out what is drawing them there. He is working with a tech company to put cameras on the tracking collars he uses on the elk to help him research this.

Dr. Katy Dick, assistant professor, was next on the agenda to speak to our group about Farm Management on Soil Health in the Mid-South. We learned about soil health, biology, and organic matter, as well as ways to increase soil organic matter.

Healthy soil has a very active soil biology that includes bacteria, fungi, microfauna, microflora, and insects. When these soil organisms eat, nutrients are released, and those nutrients can then be used by plants. 

Soil organic matter consists of the living (roots, bacteria, etc.), the dead (crop residue, dead roots, etc.), and the very dead (humus, stabilized organic matter). About 58% or more of soil organic matter is carbon.

Why should we build soil organic matter? Because it:

• Improves erosion resistance
• Increases microbial activity which adds nutrients
• Improves root networks and water use efficiency
• Improves crop yields and net returns
• Sequesters carbon from the atmosphere to mitigate climate changes.

However, building soil organic matter can be challenging on a large scale, especially in the southeast because we are so hot and humid, but there are practices we can adopt to work toward increasing organic matter. These include the use of cover crops, retaining surface residue after harvest, the use of animal manures and composts, utilizing crop rotations, and practicing conservation tillage.

Our third speaker of the morning was Dr. Sagar Chhetri, assistant professor. Chhetri has done extensive research on optional locations for biochar production in Arkansas.

Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon that is made from organic waste material or biomass that is partially combusted in the presence of limited oxygen. Research on its properties and potential benefits has gained the attention of foresters and agricultural producers.

It has been used for years as a soil amendment and works on the soil similar to compost.

There are several reasons why biochar facilities make sense in Arkansas, including:

• Arkansas forest land has been increasing.
• The higher tree population is susceptible to diseases, insects, wildfire, and others.
• It provides a needed alternative market for the thinning and harvesting timber operations.

One of his objectives was to identify the potential and optimal sites and number of biochar facilities. To select potential sites, he used a list of preference criteria and exclusion criteria. Then to determine the optimal sites from those potential sites, he conducted a location-allocation analysis. This gave him 102 potential sites, which he then narrowed down to 82 optimal sites for moderate production (≥1000-100,000 tons/year) and 14 centralized production (≥100,000 tons/year) biochar plants within Arkansas.

Learning about adaptive silviculture on bottomland hardwood forests was our next topic with Dr. Marco Yanez, assistant professor. Silviculture is the management of timber lands to meet certain goals. Yanez discussed the importance of both biodiversity and production. For example, natural forests cannot compete with plantations in production, but natural forests have much more biodiversity than a plantation.

Because $16 billion is contributed to the Arkansas economy by forestry and another three billion by hunting, it is important to identify and mitigate future threats to the health of our forests. Threats that Yanez identified were the decline in the regeneration and vigor of red oaks and climate change.

There are predictions that the future climate will be warmer and drier. Yanez is interested in the thresholds of each species as they try to transition to a warmer, drier climate. However, bottomland hardwood forests are complex systems with several different species of trees that each have different tolerances to flood, fire, drought, and shade. For his research, he will first concentrate on two species by studying multiple tree cores and overlaying historical weather data with the width of the rings of each core to determine how weather affected growth of those species throughout the years. He will then take this data and use it to make predictions of the effects a potentially hotter, drier climate would have on these species’ health.

Just before lunch we stretched our legs with a walk to the Agriculture Building that has recently been remodeled. There we met up with Dr. Terry Spurlock, extension plant pathologist, for an overview of the history of extension research conducted from the location and a tour of the back of the building where the research labs are located. Spurlock was instrumental in the discovery and naming of a new soybean fungal disease found in Arkansas called Taproot Decline.

Spurlock and his crew are conducting a variety of tests for stem canker resistance in soybeans. He has trials for several different crops scattered throughout Arkansas.

After a walk back to the Forestry Building, we enjoyed a nice lunch and then prepared to cook up a little something ourselves.

After first explaining the contest rules and regulations, 4-H program Technician JeAlberne Smith put us through a mock 4-H Food Challenge competition. The 4-H Food Challenge competition had 36 teams compete in August of this year. Teams consist of 2-4 members and are classified as either Junior (9-13 years) or Senior (14-19 years). The state winning Senior team advances to the national competition each year.

 We were split into two cooking teams and one judging team.

The cooking teams had to decide what they were going to prepare with what limited food items were available while also following MyPlate guidelines. Judges were placed with each team to give scores for the cooking and food safety. Nutrition information was to be recorded, and we had to give a presentation and answer questions from a judge at the end.

The cooking team of Ali, Jennifer and Tracy cooked up a delicious looking chicken chimichanga and a “cheese rice tower” with a small dessert of blueberry yogurt on the side.

The other cooking team of Mishanna, Andrea, and Amy kept it simple with a chicken and fruit salad dressed with sour cream and yogurt with some spices added in.

The judges were Tina, Linda, Brandon, and Drew County FCS agent Hazelene McCray. Lots of laughs and some razzing of Brandon’s judging wrapped up the activity, and we moved back to the auditorium for the last presentation of the day.

Jolene Hammond gave us an overview of the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources and the Arkansas Forest Resources Center, which included a tour of the original Chamberlain building, which has seen a recent update and the beautiful new Clippart addition.

Hammond went through the different degrees and areas of focus students can choose from in their college and noted that the University of Arkansas at Monticello is the only accredited four-year college of forestry in the state. The college has 1,465 acres of forestland and 255 acres of pastureland that support hands-on instruction and faculty research.

Lastly, our Conflict Mode Assessments results were given to us. Prior to our training today, we all completed the Thomas-Kilman Instrument (TKI) which is a product of Myers-Briggs.

We then all hit the road to travel to stay the night in the quaint Boyd Farmhouse Inn in Dewitt for the next day of activities at Five Oaks Research and Education Center.

Day Two

By: Ali Ubeyitogullari, Food Science Assistant Professor

On the second day, iLEAD IV woke up in the Boyd Farmhouse Inn in DeWitt. After breakfast, the team met in a festive conference room with a Christmas tree. Dr. Julie Robinson discussed functional and relationship conflicts and provided more information about the Thomas-Kilmann (Conflict Model) Instrument (TKI). She discussed the five conflict-handling modes: Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding, and Accommodating. The cohort then discussed their TKI assessments and how they are perceived.

After the Conflict Resolution discussion, Arkansas County Extension Agents Grant Beckwith and Phil Horton joined the meeting. They spoke about the commodities (such as rice and corn) grown in the area. Arkansas County is home to two major rice millers: Riceland and Producers Rice. Beckwith also discussed the history of duck hunting and shared the importance of duck hunting to the local economy. It attracts visitors from other states for hunting, including famous people.

iLEAD cohort IV then traveled to the Five Oaks Research and Education Center. The director of the center, Dr. Ryan Askren, welcomed the group. Askren gave a tour of the facility, and the team spent some time on the porch of the center, which faced the Rodgers Reservoir. During our conversation, a lot of ducks and geese flew over the porch. Then, Askren gave a presentation about the history of the Five Oaks (why it is called Little Siberia) as well as its research and conservation efforts. His photographs and videos of wildlife were breathtaking.

After lunch, iLEAD convened to discuss conflict resolution further. We broke into three teams, and each team discussed their experiences and came up with examples for each of the five conflict-handling modes. After the teams reported back to the group, they were provided with two case studies by Robinson and Dr. Steve Siegelin. Finally, iLEAD IV said goodbye to the beautiful Five Oaks Research and Education Center.

To learn more about the iLEAD program, please reach out to Julie Robinson at jrobinson@uada.edu, Steve Siegelin, ssiegelin@uada.edu,  or Lisa Davis at ldavis@uada.edu.