Feature: Olympics Grass is Greener Thanks to MSU Scientists
In keeping with the university’s world grant mission, MSU turfgrass experts played a key role developing the playing field of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Athletic turf is about minutia.
A seamless blanket of verdant green is nothing but the sum of hundreds of little parts that all must work. Look at turf during a sporting event and it seems such a given—all you can see, and nothing that you notice.
Welcome to the world of John “Trey” Roger III—the world of so many things that can go wrong, and no room for any error. The world of the athletic turf at the Summer Olympics in Beijing.
This is MSU’s game.
MSU has been contracted to help China build a portable athletic turf in the new Beijing National Stadium, which will be home to the Olympic’s main track and field competitions, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.
It’s a feat MSU has accomplished before—with its premier being the 1994 World Cup at the Pontiac Silverdome. That marked the first time World Cup soccer had been played indoors, and caused a veritable fever in the sporting world. Film crews flocked from all corners of the world to behold the turf. Writers churned out miles of copy about it.
It was famous. Then MSU’s turf grass program, with its renowned expertise in crop and soil science and specifically turf grass management, went and did it again. In Athens, Greece, in 2004. Then in Spartan Stadium—the ultimate home field.
So to say the eyes of the world will be on MSU in the most global sense isn’t far off the mark.
What the world won’t, for the most part, get to see is some impressive maneuvers of science, logistics and innovation. That’s where Team MSU comes in.
The challenge goes like this:
Olympics is about spectacle as well as sports. The Bird’s Nest will host an elaborate spectacle, an event hardly suited to athletic turf. Shortly thereafter, the games will begin—events that demand exacting standards of grass.
Professor Rogers and doctoral student Alec Kowalewski from MSU’S crop and soil science program traveled to Beijing in late August, along with Weijun Zhao, director of MSU’S China Initiative in the Office of International Studies and Programs.
Their journey—a slice of what the early days of the celebrated turf held—was a lesson in tech transfer, of cultural differences, and of learning new ways to do old things—and old ways to do new. In a way, the turfgrass is a laboratory for the dynamic, exciting and sometimes bewildering process of taking a university from land grant to world grant.
Here’s what the first day on the ground went like for the team:
Chinese men wear the traditional broad-brimmed woven straw hats as they drag primitive wooden hoes and rough pushcarts over a broad expanse of barren soil that’s tucked away in a corner of northern Beijing.
As the MSU turf team arrived at the construction site, it was a toss up to tell what’s more mindboggling—the monumental task of exactingly taming tons of soil, sand and gravel with centuries-old technology . . . or how fast they’re doing it.
Rogers, MSU’s established Sultan of Sod, proclaimed “Lawn Geek,” and leader of the university’s tested, acclaimed and in-demand athletic turf grass program wastes little time wallowing in paradigm shifting. As Kowalewski breathes “Holy cow, they’re doing it by HAND!” Rogers starts a rapid-fire techno speak through translators.
The jangling of a Blackberry shatters the momentarily surreal time warp.
At this stage, some 6,474 plastic modules filled with gravel, sand and soil were fitted tightly together to form what looked, to the untrained eye, like a big field of dirt.
Well—and technically it was a big field of dirt—but one assembled with years of science and experience born in East Lansing and moving quickly to Beijing. China has its own team of professionals working on the field. Even over the course of a few days, the speed was blinding. Tall towers of lights quickly appeared. Water supplies were built in. Rogers and Kowalewski quickly hammered through technical matters—the minutia--how the seed is spread, at what concentration, how the soil is compacted, even how the sprays of water fly. It all matters.
Variation is the enemy of this soil. Have one spot neglected in watering, one spot too crowded with seed, and troubles can emerge. Troubles mean turf with bare spots, disease, failure to thrive.
So they discuss, negotiate, educate, advise.
Chinapresents its own challenge. It’s partly a climate thing. Rogers consulted meteorologists, looking for an analogy to a United States venue. Indeed, there are similarities—its hot summers are Kansas City, MO, but it gets brutally cold in the winter. Then there’s the heavy rain. When it comes, it seems more like Miami.
“We asked them to overlay the climate in Beijing to someplace in the United States, and their answer was no, they couldn’t,” says Rogers. “That makes this the most unique project yet.”
There’s also the language barrier, adding an interesting twist to the consulting role. The other managers on the project speak English, and there are translators, but even so, it’s hardly the easy flow of information.
“You get a lot of time to think here because you’re not involved in a lot of conversations,” Rogers explains. “I’ve done enough of this to develop a lot of sympathy for foreign students on our campus—and they have some English. They have my respect.”
In their week in Beijing, the team supervises the preparation of the root zone and the seeding of the field. It was a time of negotiation, of compromise, and learning on both sides.
This is literally the laying of the groundwork. The seeds germinated within two weeks, covering the vast expanse with a light mist of green. The grass took root, and then went dormant for the winter.
Kowalewski stayed in Beijing into October to watch the grass grow—hardly the metaphor for dullness the cliché suggests.
While in Beijing, Kowalewski couldn’t walk past an athletic field—and the group toured plenty—without kneeling to pluck up a fingerful of grass. It seemed to speak to him—about its condition, its pedigree, its invaders.
“The plants and weeds here in China are the same ones we have in Michigan,” Kowalewski says. “Even though everything is so different, the plant biology is very similar to Michigan.”
So he stayed to tend the turf, serving as Rogers’ eyes and ears via e-mail and Internet phone.
Moving the field into the stadium will be itself a spectacle—each module picked up, loaded onto a truck, and driven through the crowded city to its nest. Rogers says it’s clear the Chinese weren’t interested in a one-trick field, but wanted one that would live beyond the Olympics.
That’s what they’re aiming for—a piece of work collaboration that will endure, just as Michigan State’s presence will be there long after the medals have been awarded, the torch has been extinguished, and the crowds have turned their attention to other amazing feats.
Sue Nichols is the senior communications manager for science and research communications in the MSU office of University Relations. She’s traveled twice to China to report on MSU activities—in 2002 to cover Jack Liu’s research on biodiversity and panda habitat, and in August 2007 to watch grass grow in anticipation of the 2008 Summer Olympics.
MSU PRESENCE IN CHINA IS STRONG AND GROWING
Michigan State will be a dynamic and growing part of China long after the Olympics spotlight sets on the stadium turf.
After all, we’ve been there a long time already. While China often seems like the latest word in economic development, MSU is pursuing a long history of innovation, education and partnership.
Nearly 30 years ago, long before it became fashionable for U.S. institutions to look for partners in China, MSU sent its first official delegation there and MSU’s faculty worked with top Chinese scientists on rice, wheat, and soybean crops to improve the breeding and production of these crops in China.
MSU’s ties to China are long and deep. These connections began with its agricultural roots and have grown to all areas related to food security, environment and education.
"China has for a long time based its internationalization on strong partnerships, which means that we are only limited by our imagination,” said MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon. “Furthermore, partnerships grow and change over time, allowing institutions to effectively become part of this global village of education. We consider this to be the best model for us in the 21st century.”
MSU’s interests in China are diverse and expansive—from educational opportunities to research initiatives to creative partnerships.
Among them:
- Biodiversity and science-based policy: Jianguo, “Jack” Liu, the Rachel Carson Chair in Ecological Sustainability and director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, is an internationally known researcher on how humans and natural systems interact. His work not only has had an impact on environmental policy in China, but also has revolutionized decision-making processes all over the world.
- The China-U.S. Education Research Center: MSU’s top-rated college of education, together with Beijing Normal University and the Sun Wah Education Foundation, aims to study how we can integrate the best of the Chinese and American education systems. The objective is to promote the solid sense of fundamentals that is often the hallmark of the Chinese system of education, and mix it with the innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship that are considered the essence of the American educational system, so as to produce a student that has indeed the best of both worlds.
- Turf grass management: Students take two years of courses at their home institutions and then take two years of MSU courses, plus a one-semester internship in the United States to get a dual degree in turf grass management.
- Zhejiang University and MSU have been collaborating on research and student exchange for a number of years on environmental science and education, particularly in the area of aquatic science, technology, and policy-related fields. In March, MSU and ZJU co-organized a five-day intensive workshop at Zhejiang University and a follow-up workshop to be held at MSU in the summer. The workshops are dedicated to discussions and presentations of state-of-the-art methods, models, technologies and governance practices for addressing coupled aquatic and human systems.
- In anticipation of the Summer Olympics, Yong Zhao, University Distinguished Professor of educational psychology and educational technology, has created the world’s first comprehensive online video game that teaches Chinese culture and language. The interactive game—called Zon/New Chengo—creates an immersive Chinese environment where players can visit markets, read newspapers, watch television, chat and trade with other players and even find employment as if they lived in China—but with the tools to help them decode the language and decipher the culture.