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Research Ranch Advisory Team

Dr. Phil Heilman is a Research Biologist at the Southwest Watershed Research Center of the USDA's in-house research arm, the Agricultural Research Service. He has an undergraduate degree in Economics and Ph.D. in Watershed Management, with minors in Agricultural Economics and Management Information Systems. His current major project is developing a field-scale decision support system for water quality on Midwestern cropland. The Natural Resources Conservation Service would use the system with producers, and it is being developed in cooperation with the USDA-ARS Great Plains Systems Research Unit in Fort Collins, Colorado and the USDA-ARS National Soil Tilth Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Other projects include the development of similar decision support systems for small rangeland watersheds in the Southwestern U.S. and Northern Mexico and the application of remote sensing to improve rangeland management. Future research is expected to focus on improving the scientific foundation for the Ecological Site Descriptions used in Arizona and applying value of information theory to watershed research.

Phil was a science advisor to the Research Ranch Foundation for a number of years, is a member of the Las Cienegas Technical Resource Team, is currently Co-chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Community Watershed Alliance in Benson, and is involved with management of the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed.

Before returning to graduate school for the last time, Phil worked as a bookkeeper and financial analyst, a teacher, and Peace Corps Volunteer in Burkina Faso. He also studied classics at the St. Johns College Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, NM. Two teenage children keep him from devoting much time to hobbies, but he enjoys travel, cooking (and especially eating), reading, and spectator sports.