Hiking uphill to the Lawrence Berkeley Lab in comparison to walking on the flat beach, is undeniably different. But the map service on your phone, using Digital Elevation Models, might tell you it is the same distance. 

This ambivalence about topography does not only affect navigating your life, but also the science we do at the lab. Here, we use grid- or pixel-based models at all scales. As an Earth scientist, I use them to quantify the area affected by wildfires or landslides. 

But I found current models underestimate the real surface area by up to 30%.  

An inacceptable error margin, whether on the nanoscale or for Yosemite Valley. So, I investigated and found three problems. 

The first problem with topography is that it is simply ignored and only the 2D horizontal area is given. If, though, we would consider the 3D data at hand, we would see that the horizontal grid forms triangles with the elevation. If you remember trigonometry, the sloped edge is always greater than the horizontal plane.  

This brings me to the second problem with topography. We measure it remotely from a bird’s eye view.  If you sample horizontally equally spaced points in that view, you place only few on steep slopes, like the face of Half Dome, and no data where there is an overhang! 

Looking at this, you might suggest, let’s go to higher resolution! But the third problem with topography is, regardless of the resolution and scale the underestimation and unequal sampling of sloped surfaces persists.

Turns out, topography is not the problem. It is how we model the data we got. 

On the bright side, explaining the problem to you, I already shared the solution. 

As it all depends on geometric relations, we can use trigonometry to resolve the error. This is as good as a mathematical surface integration but faster and with less math, and only a few additional lines of code.

So now, I can accurately quantify earth surface processes. My colleagues can check the real area of new carbon capturing materials, and you can brag about the actual distance you made - assuming you all hiked to the lab today!

Every year, a massive 21 million tons of chemical fertilizers get poured into American soil to help the crops grow better. To give you an idea of how much that is, if you could magically spread it evenly all over the land in the contiguous United States, you'd have enough to cover the entire country about 7,000 times! Now, think about California, the biggest farming state in the U.S. Yes, It gets a lot of these fertilizers. And so news like animals dying at the Eel River, human babies born with unusual blue skin, massive groundwater/air pollution, and more cancer cases in some communities are common here. All these problems are linked to the excessive use of chemical fertilizers, and sadly, they're becoming more common as we try to grow more food for our growing population and deal with changing environments. One solution here would be utilizing biofertilizers and the best candidate for that would be, MICROBES.

Years of studying the tiny, microscopic bugs that live in and around plants have shown us something amazing: many of these little microbes are actually secret helpers for plants. They make plants grow better and help them fight off pests and stress. So, why do we still use chemicals if these microbes are so helpful? Well, one big challenge is figuring out exactly which bugs do what for the plants. And this is where my research comes in. We've created a special team of bacteria that we call synthetic bacterial communities "syncom." We selected these bacteria from the natural root microbes. By studying and evaluated the contributions of each bug to the plant health, and handpicking a few that have the most significant positive effects on plant. Here, think of syncoms as a close-knit group of few great friends that brings the best in you and that you would pick if have to, out of hundreds of acquaintances you know. Our 15-member syncom is very effective in improving overall plant overall health. We have shown in lab that it helps plants grow with more shoot biomass. Not only this, Syncom also helped these plants grow better in stresses such as drought and high salt condition. So, overall, our syncom harnesses the benefits of these microbial allies to increase the plants productivity and help them be resilient. Imagine a world five years from now where we are not poisoning our soil and water by pouring tons of chemical fertilizers, but let our microbial friends do the job without any harsh effects.