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Field Notes

<--2001-05-25 09:30:00 | 2001-06-01 15:08:00-->
Other sites visited today: Tonzi

Vaira: 2001-05-31 09:00:00 (DOY 151)
Author: Dennis Baldocchi
Others: Ted Hehn, LiuKang

Summary: Extreme heat killed grass & also caused malfunction in LI 6400; drought effect on oaks uses more air than usual from tank; T/Rh is aspirated.

5/31/01 Dennis, Ted, Liukang
Where: Tonzi/Vaira Ranches
Who: Baldocchi, Hehn, Xu
When: May 31, 2001, D151

Conditions. Record heat. High for the day reached 40 C and soil temperatures
near the surface were 54 C. The grass is dead, but the trees seem to be
functioning.

Our goal for the day was to inspect the new set up, take A-Ci curves and
leaf water potential.
The extreme heat played havec on the LI 6400 so only 2 samples were taken.
Leaf temperature was 30 C plus. We also had problems with leaf water
potential. In the morning, were consistant at about -23 bars, but on
inspection, weird things were happening. After hitting the high mark, I'd
drop the pressure and the leaf would keep exuding water. I would finally
drop the pressure to about -10 bars and work back up, with a new set point
at about -16bars. In the afternoon, we tried to read values on Nancy's
trees, but we could not get the Pbomb higher than -29 with no response. The
tank was filled with a new tank, yet in the field at start it only read
about 1400 psi. The strong drought effect on oaks uses much more air than
crops and temperate forests. Ted will bring a big tank to the field.

~1000 Checking out the Tonzi floor system. The signals looked good. We were
able to read md9s 2 through 5, but not six. When I tried to add the 6th md9,
that on the tower, we lost communications with all the other systems. Ted
had to reset the whole software system after trying to debug hardware
problems, which were non existant. We also need a new Task to read the md9
for the tower. Signals on the sensors look fine. The floor system did not
get back in operation until about 1400. Then we also swapped irgas and
installed number 41.

Climbed the tower and inspected the flux system. The sonic system had not
been re-elevated. We elevated it around 1100. Then made a measurement of its
height. The height from the ground to the base of the sonic was 22.75 m.
The sonic and the LICOR were about 0.75 m apart with the licor not on the
extender. This is ok. Kristensen shows that it is better to have an open
path sensor below the sonic. I felt the lateral separation distance was
rather large. I had Ted move them closer. They are now about 0.25 m apart,
but we need to remeasure everything. Also in moving the sensors together,
Ted had to move the orientation. Now North is pointing 53 degrees East of
North. This change needs to be put in the code. We also need another clamp
on the sonic pole for stability and safety.

The net radiometer is extended nicely from the tower. But because this is a
savanna and the tower was placed in the open for the guys, the net does not
see any trees. It is mostly seeing bare red dirt below. We need to consider
this fact during any attempt to close or test energy balance closure.
Overall the landscape has a nice flat and extended forest. A fair number of
pines are noticable to the North east.

The T/Rh system is aspriated, but with the 0.1 amp fan. This is probably ok
,as it is windier on the tower. Lab tests did show in a calm room that the
0.5 amp fan did not work as well as the 0.5 amp, but we need to conserver
power.

The rain gauge is on the floor met tower near the tree. It needs to be moved
to the tower for better exposure.

Data was downloaded from the flux systems. The battery on the pc died, so we
could not download tower met data.

1500 At Vaira ranch. Down loaded data, took down the Net radiation
calibration system. We also need to work up relations with long wave
radiation, since that is a 4 stream system. We need to decide if we should
run that system full time for model purpose and long wave radiation inputs
and parameterization.

Turned on the ventilation fan on the T/Rh sensor. Temperature dropped from
about 41.1 to 39.6 C. A substantial drop. We should be generating enough
power that the current draw from the fan should not be a problem during the
summer.

Ted todos:

1. Aspirator, floor T/RH, Tonzi
2. Move precip sensor to Tower
3. Fix soil moisture at Vaira and install repaired sensor
4. tap extra holes on sonic mount so alignment has more flexibility. We want
to guage height and orientation, to the sensor is put back in the same place
everytime it is moved.
5. 0.1 amp fans for aspirators
6. insulation/reflectix on CR 10 and Cr 23x boxes
7. check and fix md9 #6.
8. Put gillsonic program with fixed disk drive reading on other systems
9. check clock on Rnet data logger

Field Data

No tank data

No VR Well data found

No TZ Moisture Point data found

No VR Moisture Point data found

No TZ grass heigth found

No VR grass heigth found

Tree DBH

DateTag#Reading (mm)

No water potential data found

No VR Grass Biomass data found

No VR OakLeaves Biomass data found

No VR PineNeedles Biomass data found

0 photos found

Graphs display:
9 sets found

16 VR_met graphs found

Temperatures

System Power Voltage

Soil Temperatures Set 1

Soil Temperatures Set 2

Soil Temperature Set 3

Soil Temperature at -4cm

Soil Heat Flux

Soil Moisture

Photosynthetic Active Radiation

Short/Long Wave Radiation

LED sensor

Vaira PPT

Peltier SHF Plates

Peltier SHF Temperatures

LED NDVI

NDVI SRS Raw Data

2 VR_flux graphs found

CO2 Density

Sonic Wind

No data found for VR_soilco2.
No data found for VR_pond.
Can't check TZVR_mixed
No data found for VR_fd.
No data found for VR_processed.
No data found for VR_arable.
No data found for VR_soilvue.

 
 

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation and US Department of Energy. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporters.