Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: West Pond | East End
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Gilbert Tract: 2022-02-18 11:00:00 (DOY 49)
Author: Daphne Szutu
Others: Ari, Oscar, Joe

Summary: Installed ADCP and solar panel/power enclosure, Soil cores for Oscar's thesis, Regular data collection/cleaning, Crew installing more plants on degraded roads, Changed PARin wiring to avoid noisy channel, Installed 2nd Ottercam

2022-02-18
Gilbert Tract
Ari, Oscar, Joe, and I arrived around 11:00 PST. It was a mild and sunny day with a gentle breeze. There was tons of cattail fluff on the ground, but thankfully it was not windy enough for the fluff to be flying around in the air.

We went first to the breach site to install the Sontek Side Looker sn SL2149007. Joe installed the sensor on the mounting plate and had to drill some new holes in the plastic mounting backplate. The mounting plate was almost vertical, so we did not add shims to it for now.

We hung the solar panel sn T21009229B43579 and enclosure with SLA motorcycle battery and charge controller sn 03220377 on the metal post we installed last time. We wired everything up, with the Sontek dongle inside the enclosure. We powered up the sensor and Joe and Ari fiddled with the software settings. They determined it was probably working for now so we could check the data later in the day.
The four of us then drove to the impounded marsh on the north side of the Gilbert parcel, picking up 2 corers from Scott along the way. We dropped off Ari and Oscar to take 2 soil cores for Oscar’s senior thesis.

Joe and I went to service the GT tower around 13:00 PST. A crew was installing plants and irrigation drip tubes on the degraded road just south of the tower.

It was near low tide and the water level was much lower than last time when we installed the boardwalk. All of the water sensors that Ari had tied up to the middle post of the last boardwalk were now in the air. Joe moved the sensors to the end post of the boardwalk where the water is a little deeper and lowered them into the water - HYDRO21 and MiniDot are tied to the post and held above the mud, the Eos CO2 probe in laying on the bottom. The boardwalk farthest from the shore was a little lopsided; Joe thinks that a high tide probably floated the whole boardwalk and its legs off the ground and then it didn’t get put down by the receding tide in quite the same place. We probably need taller and stronger legs in the future.

I downloaded met, cam, and USB GHG data. Joe cleaned flux and rad sensors and topped off the wash reservoir. I changed the eddy clock +1min from 13:28 to 13:29 to match the laptop time and made sure to start logging afterwards.

I changed the PARin sensor from mux channel 10 to channel 12 b/c there’s a lot of noise on channel 10. I updated the met data logger program with this wiring change and also to fix a typo in the Bowen-variance calculations. I accidentally used [Pa]=[kPa]/1000 initially, but now it’s corrected to [Pa]=[kPa]*1000.

I downloaded the files from the Ottercam—this time there were 300+(!) videos. The 10 or so that I checked were mostly of grass waving in the wind. Joe trimmed down the grass right in front of the ottercam.

Joe installed a 2nd ottercam by the solar panels, higher up the slope and facing the water. There’s another otter trail there so let’s see if we see any wildlife. Its settings are the same or similar to the other ottercam.

LI-7500 readings:
CO2 423ppm
H2O 335ppm
T 21.1C
P 102.3kPa
SS 97 --> 100 after cleaning
LI7700 readings:
CH4 2.1ppm
RSSI 40 --> 82 after cleaning

Afterwards we checked on the current profiler. It had recent readings with a current of 0.3m/s which looked reasonable watching debris float past on the surface. There did seem to be multiple currents - incoming tide in the middle of the channel with back flowing eddies along the edge. At high tide the current profiler will be about 3m from the edge of the channel and will miss currents along the near edge. Hopefully it will pick up the far edge. We downloaded five readings at 15min intervals.

At around 14:00 PST we headed back up to the impounded marsh to check on Ari and Oscar. They were halfway done with their first core and were having trouble removing the extender bars from the core. Joe helped them get it apart in 5 seconds, of course. Joe and I headed to Twitchell Island shortly afterwards to service those sites while Ari and Oscar continued with their soil cores.

We came back at around 17:00 to pick them up and we all headed back to the lab.

0 photos found

8 sets found

Can't check MBWPEESWGT_mixed
Can't check MBEEWPSWEPGT_cam
16 GT_met graphs found