Field Notes
<--2021-09-02 10:00:00 | 2022-11-18 11:00:00-->Other sites visited today: Mayberry
Sherman Wetland: 2021-11-23 10:30:00 (DOY 327)
Author: Ariane Arias-Ortiz
Others: Robert, Carlos
Summary: Collected soil cores for the Sherman Wetland Hotspot Experiment
| Robert, Carlos, and I arrived at Sherman Wetland at around 10.30 am. Daphne dropped us off, and she headed to service the tower at Mayberry. Mayberry's tower had many issues, and Daphne spent all the day there while we were sampling at SW. The visit was to sample long soil cores at the open water and hotspot location and collect porewaters. Soil cores took all day; therefore, we left porewaters for another occasion #fieldworknotworking. For core collection, We used 1-meter long steel tubes, a piston, and a tripod. Soils at the open water location are compacted and consist of a hard crust, the reason why we chose steel tubes rather than PVC. The method worked well; but, the soils were a nightmare to penetrate. We spent most of the morning getting one core at the open water location. We used wood blocks to avoid damaging the top end of the tube when hitting with the hammer. The blocks broke. The hammer broke. We still had a mallet. We kept going with the mallet. The top of the steel tube became deformed and compacted. All this during at least 1 hour, perhaps 2, and the tube was ~58 cm into the soil. We took that as a victory and extruded the tube from the borehole using a ratchet strap. The ratchet was attached to the tripod's top, and the strap was tied to the pipe. Worked well. We extruded the soils inside the corer near the boardwalk entrance, where we had a picnic table set up. We had a plunger to push soils out of the tube and a PVC sleeve to place the extruded soil column. However, soils did not cooperate. We struggled a lot to get the soils out of the pipe, had to hit the plunger with the mallet to get soil samples out. We called Daphne asking for help and a 10-pound sledgehammer. Daphne arrived at around 2 pm with the sledgehammer and drove us to the hotspot location, where we finished slicing the core that we collected at the open water. Repeated the piston coring set-up at the hotspot and used the sledgehammer this time. Coring worked nicely, and it was a ton easier at this location. We pulled the tube from the borehole and tried to extrude the soil using the plunger. Despite the softer soils here, soils did not cooperate either. We had to hit the plunger with the hammer again; our morale was low. The Farm Jack was an extra heavy item to bring to the field but would have helped a lot if combined with the plunger. In fact, Daphne, Carlos, and I ended up extruding the soils in the lab with the farm jack as Daphne came to pick us up before sunset at around 4.40 pm. We collected a total of 2 ~50 cm cores at both locations. Some compaction occurred at the hotspot during coring. We sliced both cores at 5 cm thick intervals and subsampled for DBD, mineralogic, and microbial analyses. Microbial subsamples were kept in a cooler with dry ice and stored at -80C at Hilgard. Bye, happy thanksgiving! |
4 photos found
20211123SW_SoilSlicing.jpg ( 2021-11-23 18:54:03 ) Full size: 1920x1440
Ari and Carlos slicing the soil core in the lab after a long day of sampling so that they can be preserved ASAP
20211123SW_PistonCorer.jpg ( 2021-11-23 15:38:14 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Carlos and Robert sampling a soil core at the hotspot location using the piston coring settup
20211123SW_Hotspot.jpg ( 2021-11-23 14:26:28 ) Full size: 1920x1440
Phragmites is filling in the hotspot location
20211123SW_FinalResult.jpg ( 2021-11-24 16:06:30 ) Full size: 1440x1920
The metallic tube bent and flattened due to hammering
7 sets found
Can't check MBWPEESWGT_mixed
Can't check MBEEWPSWEPGT_cam
No data found for SW_met.
No data found for SW_flux.
Can't check MBSWEEWPBCBA
Can't check SW_Temp
14 SW_Temp graphs found
No data found for SW_arable.