UNews - Chris Hugenholtz

Alums Myshak, Brown turn knowledge into business

trevor.kenney — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:34:16 +0000

When they began their academic adventures at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, co-owners of the newly formed Isis Geomatics Incorporated, Steve Myshak (BSc '10) and Owen Brown (BSc '09) were heading down very different career paths.

In fact, Brown wasn't planning on staying at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ for long. Originally enrolled in pre-engineering, he intended to transfer to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary to complete his degree there, but one semester in geography at the U of L and he knew he was hooked.

Myshak entered the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge as a mature student, looking for a fresh start. He initially majored in history but after switching majors several times, he found his true passion.

"I took Geography 1010. They had it set up so that all the different geography professors came into the class and each took a week to show us the breadth of geography," says Myshak. "After I took that class, I decided that geography was what I liked and what I wanted to do."

Owen Brown, left, and business partner Steve Myshak are off and running with ISIS Geomatics Incorporated.

They both graduated from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ with their bachelor of science degrees, Brown in 2009 and Myshak in 2010, and are both set to complete their master of science degrees at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ this summer.

"I'd always thought about getting my masters. I had a good relationship with my professor, Chris Hugenholtz; I had done some independent studies with him and I liked the classes he taught. I took a semester off after I graduated, but when Chris asked me one day if I would be interested in the masters' program I just ran with it," recalls Brown.

Myshak, who began studying for his masters under the supervision of Drs. Craig Coburn and Karl Staenz, also began studying the possibility of starting up his own company.

"When I was doing my masters, I was working with Agriculture Canada and I spent a lot of time in the field. We were using ground-based remote sensing. I thought there had to be a better way to get the data. I came up with the idea to attach sensors to UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and get the data that way. I looked into government funding, IRAP and Techterra, and found that there was funding available, but I needed someone else's opinion," says Myshak. "Our masters' class used to unwind on Fridays at Backstreet Pub. That is where I approached Owen. I told him I needed a partner and asked him what he thought of my idea. We had taken a couple of classes together in our undergrad and in our masters. Owen is very mature in the way he thinks, he has worked in industry and hasn't just spent all his time at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. Working with Owen was just a natural fit."

"He caught me a little off guard I guess, because I always thought I would just get a job when I finished my masters. I never thought about a business. I talked to my parents and they were very supportive. I decided to try it," says Brown. "We got started right away. Steve had already gotten some government funding, so we put a business plan together, put our nose to the grindstone and got to work."

They incorporated in August 2011. Although there has been a definite on-the-job learning curve, both Brown and Myshak feel strongly about the knowledge base they received and the support they continue to get from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ.

"You gain a lot of critical thinking skills doing research and lab work at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. You are given a task and there may be several different ways to do that task. You just have to break it down and do it step by step," says Brown. "We have learned fantastic problem solving skills. The breadth of knowledge we have gained is unbelievable, and the support from our professors on our business has been great."

Using the technical knowledge they gained throughout their academic and work experiences, Myshak and Brown are quickly breaking into the agriculture industry. Judging by the feedback on their recent presentations, they are hopeful that ISIS Geo will soon become a familiar name in the oil and gas industry as well.

"We use UAVs to acquire imagery and then transform that imagery into data using geographic information systems (GIS). UAV's have been used in police and military applications but there are many applications for it in the commercial world," explains Myshak.

"For example, we do vegetation health mapping for remediation, livestock counting and recently we have been doing a lot of work for municipalities, measuring volumes of gravel piles for municipal audits. We have also done some mapping applications as well," says Brown.

Such aerial imaging work has traditionally been done by satellite, but ISIS Geo has a much more detailed response and quicker turnaround of data. With satellite information data, each pixel is 5m x 5m, but with UAV technology, Myshak and Brown can provide data that is 3cm x 3cm.

"One of the advantages is the much better resolution," says Myshak. "The other advantage is that we can fly and have the data the same day, whereas satellite data can take up to two-to-three months to get. We are also less expensive than satellite and we can work when it is cloudy because we fly the copter under the clouds."

Over the past eight months, they have been working on pilot projects that have proven to be highly successful. For this innovative new company, the sky's the limit.

This story first appeared in the February 2013 edition of the Legend. For a look at the full issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Dust switch flicked by humans, Hugenholtz

trevor.kenney — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:47:49 +0000

We all know it is windy in southern Alberta, but there are only a few people who can tell you just how windy it is, why it is windy, where it is really, really windy, and what the long term effects of wind are on our environment. The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Dr. Chris Hugenholtz is one of those people.

Hugenholtz is jointly shared by the U of L and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary as the Cenovus Research Chair in the Faculty of Environmental Design, and was recently profiled in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The story, by editor Liz Kalaugher, is re-printed below.

+++++

In the 1930s the North American "Dust Bowl" saw drought and poor land management result in extensive soil erosion and economic hardship. Since then farmers have introduced measures to cut soil loss and dust formation but it's been hard to track their success.

Now researchers in Canada have found that blowing dust has occurred markedly less often since 1990, indicating that such attempts are working.

"While climate does play a central role in entraining soil particles, it is mostly the actions of humans in the Canadian Prairies that expose or protect the soil," Chris Hugenholtz of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary told environmentalresearchweb. "Our findings demonstrate an example where human influence on the landscape can 'flick' the dust switch."

Individual farmers, as well as government agencies, have responded to soil erosion by developing programmes to promote soil conservation, says Hugenholtz. Such measures include reducing summerfallow (the practice of leaving fields unused in the growing season) and employing direct seeding to cut down on tillage and the associated disturbance of soil.

Hugenholtz, Thomas Fox and colleagues examined data for the start of the growing season, when most dust occurs, from seven sites in and near the Palliser Triangle.

This is the most arid region of the Canadian Prairies. They found that blowing dust frequency declined between 1961 and 2006, as did climatic wind erosion potential – a ratio of wind power to aridity. The frequency of blowing dust exhibited a significant drop-off from 1990 onwards.

"Initially, we were concerned this step change was not real, but some artefact of changes in data collection around 1990," said Hugenholtz.

"After an extensive search of metadata and many correspondences with scientists at Environment Canada, the federal agency that supplied the data used in our study, we confirmed that it was a real signal of a change in dust frequency."

The link between climate and dust also became stronger after 1990. The researchers reckon that before this date the role of climate was compounded by poor conservation management, leading to higher dust frequency and lower correlation.

But after 1990 the role of climate became more prevalent because the effects of soil conservation initiatives began manifesting across the region. "It is as though land use began cancelling out after 1990, yielding a better correlation with climate," said Hugenholtz.

"Although we were unable to establish a cause–effect relation between dust and land use, we examined agricultural census data and found a steady increase in soil conservation practices since the 1960s, particularly the extent of direct seeding and summerfallow," said Hugenholtz.

"We also found an expansion of soil conservation programmes in the decade preceding the change point. Overall, our findings suggest that soil conservation has had an impact in reducing airborne dust on the Canadian Prairies."

Hugenholtz believes Canadian farmers are now better equipped to handle conditions with moderate climatic wind-erosion forcing than in the past. "Extreme events will always lead to some level of erosion but under moderate conditions the likelihood of dust emission is now much lower," he said.

Projections indicate that the southern Canadian Prairies are likely to dry as climate changes. In the American southwest, scientists have suggested that climate change will bring more dust, which could have major implications for human health and ecosystems.

"At this point it is too early to extend this hypothesis to the Canadian Prairies," said Hugenholtz. "With that said, one of our goals is to establish better empirical relations between climate, land use and dust before applying this knowledge to forecast future conditions. If we can get a sense of future scenarios, we may be able to offset negative impacts by being better prepared."

UNews - Chris Hugenholtz

Alums Myshak, Brown turn knowledge into business

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