Field Notes

<--2019-09-04 12:30:00 | 2019-09-18 11:40:00-->
Other sites visited today: East Pond

West Pond: 2019-09-10 08:30:00 (DOY 253)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Ariane, Alex, Camillo, Ken

Summary: Soil coring and ABC interview, fixed boardwalk, still draining slowly.

West Pond
2019-09-10

Ariane, Alex, Camillo and I arrived at 8:30 PDT. A reporter from ABC, Ken Miguel, was already there waiting for us. It was clear sunny and warm getting hot with a light breeze. USGS was supposed to fly their CH4 drone with a new version of the CH4 sensor but canceled because the forecast they were looking at showed high winds. They will try to fly on Thursday instead.

The water level was about the same. The water pressure sensor was reading 0.92psi (which would be about 28cm on the staff gauge).

Ariane, Alex and Camilo started to pull soil cores and Ken followed with camera and mic. We took 5 soil cores in total. We sampled the three previous coring sites and two new sites at 50 and 120 m from the EC tower. This time we tried several methods: Hargis cores from USGS and piston corer with cutting head. Even with the serrated edges incorporated, it was hard to cut through the 30 cm rhizome layer. The method that worked best was coring in two steps using the piston corer with cutting edge. First, we took a core of the upper 30-50 cm and then we repeated the procedure to sample the soil below that depth. We could get more than a meter of soil using this procedure. The water table was right below the surface, except for the site 50 m away from the tower, where the water table was slightly above the surface.

I worked on repairing the beginning of the boardwalk. I was able to free the boardwalk that stopped me last time and found another layer below that. I ended up cutting that boardwalk off and freeing the one leading down at an angle from standing boardwalk. I put in a new stand pounding in some 2x4s with 2x4 cross pieces. I put in two boardwalk planks to bridge the gap. Seems okay and will stay above the water. There are two spare 8ft boardwalk lengths and some spare lumber stacked on the platform next to the tower.

Ken left about 10:30 and I made two short trips to East Pond and East End while the others continued to pull soil cores.

Alex decided to leave the water off for another week and hope that West Pond will drain a little more. We did not look at the drains but they walked around much of the wetland without getting wet.

We left about 14:00

2 photos found

20190910WP_SoilCoreFun.jpg ( 2019-09-10 10:35:00 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Ariane, Camilo and Alex taking soil cores