Field Notes

Tonzi: 2023-01-06 12:00:00 (DOY 6)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others:

Summary: Recent big storms, more to come, Standard data collection mostly okay, lost IRT data, removed top GMP343 CO2 sensor for testing, air escaping from Floor well, forgot to swap z-cam 1 card

Tonzi
2023-01-06

I arrived at about 12:00 noon. It was overcast and cool with the sun peeking through a couple of times. There have been a couple big storms over the last week or so closing Jackson Road from Sacramento for a few days and Twin Cities Road from the Delta is still closed. Here the pond is full and there are rivulets and puddles in the road. One big pine out by the far DBH trees fell over. I saw Rob on the way out picking up firewood from a down oak tree. He said they had to open the spillway on the pond a little but no other damage. I could see more snow in the mountains.

I added a second little solar panel to the IRT tripod same as the one already there. Then I fussed around trying to decide whether to wire them in parallel and boost their voltage to 24V or wire them in series and step down the voltage to 24V to charge the lithium power pack. Finally I wired them in series but hard to tell if it was working because there was so little sun. I collected all the data here manually – seems there was not data since the last visit.

At the tower I swapped out the keyboard that had gotten wet in the thunderstorm two visits ago. I collected the met, flux and camera data from both towers. All seemed well.
The Tower read: 419.0ppm CO2, 305.1mmol/m3 H2O, 14.4C, 99.8kPa, 100.9SS
The Floor read: 421.2ppm CO2, 343.1mmol/m3 H2O, 16.7C, 99.9kPa, 99.5SS
The Floor sonic is aligned with 34 deg true. I didn’t measure the Tower sonic heading but 60deg as reported earlier is reasonable.

The top GMP343 CO2 sensor sn N2220008 in the tower profile has not been working recently. I brought it in for testing.

I services the z-cams. I removed the old desiccant the added fresh loose desiccant in tea bag filters. Z-cam 1 had a little condensation in its window. I forgot to swap the card on z-cam 1 – should be fine until next visit.

I measured some of the better functioning Moisture Point sensors. The idea is that we can use the three new SoilVue sensors instead but I need to try to figure out an inter-comparison.

I measured the well levels. At the Floor well I noticed a hissing sound that stopped when I pulled the cap off the top of the pipe. After the measurement when I put the cap back on the hissing resumed and I discovered that air was escaping from the hole where the cable for the logger goes through the side of the pipe. I guess water is filtering into the ground and air is escaping. I measured the level again and didn’t see any change, but we can look at the logger data next time to see how fast the water level is rising. There might have been something similar at the other wells but the situation is a little different and I wouldn’t have noticed anything if I wasn’t looking for it.

Video of air escaping the well:
https://youtube.com/shorts/r6JZaT72OKM

I read the dendrometers. A pine fell over by the far pair or dendrometers taking a smaller oak with it. The hole where the roots came out was full of water.

The FD chamber was working on the one car battery I left connected last time. I had brought two more batteries but I would have had to carry them through the mud from before the main tower. I decided to not fix something that aint broke today.

I left at about 15:30

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2023-01-06	VR_well	56.45
2023-01-06	VR_pond	22.42
2023-01-06	TZ_floor	29.15
2023-01-06	TZ_tower	33.55
2023-01-06	TZ_road	36
2023-01-06	HS	4.94
2023-01-06	WP	1.15
2023-01-06	EE	1.05
2023-01-06	MB	1.67

No TZ Moisture Point data found

No VR Moisture Point data found

No TZ grass heigth found

No VR grass heigth found

Tree DBH

Date	Tag#	Reading (mm)
2023-01-06	1	12.1
2023-01-06	102	5.5
2023-01-06	2	19.4
2023-01-06	245	7.3
2023-01-06	3	22.6
2023-01-06	4	20.4
2023-01-06	5	12.3
2023-01-06	6	22.4
2023-01-06	7	13.0
2023-01-06	72	16.9
2023-01-06	79	15.2