Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Gilbert Tract | Mayberry | West Pond
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East End: 2022-09-15 13:55:00 (DOY 258)
Author: Daphne Szutu
Others: Kanishka

Summary: Regular data collection/cleaning, low water level, swapped 7500 for calibration, trimmed tules around precip bucket and solar panels, uploaded new picam code "sun fwb", first fall precip expected soon, record-break heat wave last week

2022-09-15
East End

Kanishka and I arrived at 13:55 PDT. It was warming up with a hazy sky and not much breeze, with showers expected this coming Sunday. Last week 2022-09-05 to 2022-09-08, most the Bay Area had a record-breaking heat wave with 3 days of all-time high temperatures. We went through 2 sheep gates coming from the south. The guard dog was very shaggy and half of his face was caked with mud.

The tules are still tall and green along the road and around the tower. Kanishka trimmed back some of the tules from around the rain bucket.

It's dry under the tower and the water level here is now below the staff gauge. The miniDOT was in air and the conductivity sensor was in dry mud.

I downloaded met, cam, USB GHG, and miniDOT data. I swapped desiccant for the miniDOT and water level sensors. Kanishka cleaned the flux and rad sensors and we topped off the wash reservoir.

I uploaded a new picam code. This one is set to "sun fwb". I enabled "x" (chmod executable) for all users and rebooted the camera. All seemed fine of the browser page.

We also swapped the LI-7500 for calibration: sn 0041 came off and sn 75H-2667 went on. The bird spike cracked in half so we need a new one here. I uploaded a new config file and updated the pressure coefficients. I changed the eddy clock -2:00 min (every few months this 7550 is fast compared to the laptop). I reset the box and all looks ok.

Sn 0041 read: 413ppm CO2, 691mmol/m3 H2O, 24.8C, 101.4kPa, 92SS
After cleaning, sn 0041 read: 414ppm CO2, 623mmol/m3 H2O, 24.7C, 101.4kPa, 94SS
sn 75H-2667 read: 404 ppm CO2, 641mmol/m3 H2O, 24.7C, 101.4kPA, 100SS
The 7700 read: 2.0ppm CH4, 65RSSI – 79 after cleaning

From the met data download, I could see BattV decreasing day by day. I put on the waders and waded through the vegetation to check the solar panel. It was dusty and the tules were shading the panel. I cleaned the solar panels as best as I could and trimmed back tules on the south and west side of the panels. Some of the tules were quite large, with DBH=5cm. There was at least 1 wasp nest under the solar panel, but luckily it was relatively small and far away from where I need to put my hands to navigate around the solar scaffolding. After the cleaning, solar improved from 14.7V to 15.7V on the charge controller. The load amps was still reasonable so I assumed the tower was still fine and I didn't accidentally snip any wires.

We left at 15:25 PDT.

0 photos found

11 sets found

14 EE_met graphs found