Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Bouldin Alfalfa | Hill Slough
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Bouldin Corn: 2022-08-15 10:10:00 (DOY 227)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Daphne, Koong

Summary: Soil samples for Ameriflux, Max biomass samples, problems with Licor USB fixed, shadow band fell off - replaced, raised PL Arable

Bouldin Corn
2022-08-15

Daphne, Koong and I arrived at 10:10 PDT. It was clear and hot with hazy horizons and a little breeze if you weren’t in the corn! On the west side of Bouldin quite a few fields that were previously corn are planted with safflower this year.

The corn is still mostly green but the cobs look full and Daphne took five plants for max biomass.

Koong and I did the soil samples for the Amerflux soil water potential campaign led by Kim Novick. We took two profiles just west of our tower not too far from our ground sensors and then two more further out north of Tyler’s chambers. The ground was dry and crumbly even down to 0.5m. Each profile has three samples at 0-5cm, 10-15cm and about 50-55cm.

Daphne cleaned the flux and radiation sensors and topped off the wash reservoir. She collected flux, met, camera, FD and PA data. No trouble connecting to the FD chamber this time.
The 7500 read: 417ppm CO2, 692mmol/m3 H2O, 29.7C, 100.9kPa, 102SS – 103 after cleaning
The 7700 read: 2.0ppm CH4, 46RSSI – 78 after cleaning
Daphne checked the fuse on the 7700 for water but it seemed dry.

The 7550 had a USB error and only had three days of data. Daphne tried two other USB sticks with no improvement. She called Licor and James initially directed her to check the system logs on the 7550, but in the newer firmware it's harder to get system information through connecting via WinSCP. James followed up by e-mail that now there is a different program called System-Status-Checker.zip, which you unzip, run get_system_status.exe, and click the GET LI-7550 status button. This will download the system log files to the logfiles folder (under the subfolder LI-7550).

The diagnosis was that the USB port was just too loose to make a good connection with the USB stick. If you take the front plate off the 7550 there are four little metal tabs on the USB port that you can bend in to make the fit tighter. At first I made it too tight – you still might need to be a little careful plugging in a new USB stick. But now the USB stick is working. We also stripped the screw heads on the front plate screws. I put two back in gently but it needs at least three new screws.

Daphne downloaded the z-cam images and the Corteva IRT data.

The Planet Labs Arable was just below the top of the corn at about 2.2m. I raised it 2m so now it’s at about 4.2m

The shadow band had fallen off the diffuse PAR sensor. It was a simple matter of putting it back on and tightening the set screw.

We left at 11:50 PDT to rush over to BA for L8 overpass sampling.

Veg Height (cm): Tape measure from ground to top of plant - Height of biomass samples
261, 254, 256, 291, 290, avg = 270.4, stdev = 18.53

0 photos found

6 sets found

17 BC_met graphs found