Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Vaira

Tonzi: 2023-03-16 11:50:00 (DOY 75)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others:

Summary: A break in the rain, No leaves yet, Swapped 7500s, collection point dencrometer data and check batteries, trouble connecting to CR200, replace Z-cam 2 clock battery, Reset manual dendrometers.

Tonzi
2023-03-16

I arrived at about 11:50 PDT. I was clear and sunny with a cool breeze that seemed to be coming from the southeast when I left. The water level has gone down a bit at the pond and I could see places where more puddles had recently been. Still lots of water on the surface though. The trees don’t look close to leafing out except for the mutant one near Mr. Tonzi’s house that already has some leaves. There were some gun shots to the south just before I left – sounded like target practice.

I checked on the point dendrometers intending to swap out their batteries. Mukund said that battery voltage above 4.5V should be fine for another couple of months. When I copied the data from the micro SD cards the battery voltages were all above 5V so I didn’t swap any batteries.

I collected data from the Tower. The tower met and co2 profile loggers were on secondary collection status again but collected immediately when I poked them. The IRT hadn’t reported since the 13th but also became current after a power cycle. The reworked lithium power pack there seemed to be working but only 3 out of five green lights.

I swapped IRGAs for calibration.
Tower sn 0418 came off and sn 1594 went on
0418 read: 427.3ppm CO2, 460.3mmol/m3 H2O, 14.0C, 99.2kPa, 102.0SS
1594 read: 427.3ppm CO2, 422.3mmol/m3 H2O, 14.6C, 99.2kPa, 101.5SS

Floor sn 75H-2180 came off and sn 75H-2182 went on.
2180 read: 424.6ppm CO2, 451.9mmol/m3 H2O, 17.1C, 99.3kPa, 99.7SS
I forgot to write down the new values but they were reasonably close to the old ones.
I updated the pressure coefficients, set clocks and reset both boxes.

The BF5 had a little condensation in its dome. I wanted to put a new metal tin of desiccant inside it but the tins are too big. I settled for three tiny packs but should swap with the regenerated, larger packs I removed next time.

This was the first trip with the new laptop. It seemed to work okay. I had problems connecting to the Floor well CR200 though. I could not connect to the CR200 with the connect screen but the Device Configuration Utility could connect and I changes its PackBus id from 1 to 7. The Utility also has a data collection tab but that failed collecting only one line. The CR200 seemed to be running though so I just left it for now. I was going to pull the Global Water logger from the Road Well because it’s so old that getting a serial driver on the new laptop is hard. But I left it in place with the CR200 being iffy.

I measured the Moisture Points and the wells, serviced the z-cams and read the dendrometers. I replaced the clock battery in z-cam2 – no more bad times for a while. Z-cam1 had some condensation inside its window. I swapped its desiccant with a new tin box one. I reset four of the dendrometers that were getting close to maxed out – Trees: 2, 3, 4 and 6. At Tree 2 the hinge was getting absorbed into the trunk. I freed it and remounted it without the broken hinge part. I recorded before and after values plus circumference. A couple of the scales were falling off the mounts. On Tree 2 I taped it in place on Tree 4 I brought the large scale home. Need some cleaning supplies and super glue next time.

One of the 40W solar panels at soil CO2 has a broken solder joint on its diode. I tried to resolder it but not possible upside down and no flux and maybe too much metal to heat up. I ended sticking the diode in the screw terminals which should work. Still not using this panel for now. The two FDs on that system seem to have complete data.

I fixed the cow fence around the tower. At least a couple of cows wandered through leaving deep hoof prints in the soft soil. The charger had rotted off the positive terminal on the battery. Not sure there’s much juice there now any way. Again need to test some batteries and chargers in the lab and swap out. One lonely cow came to see me while I was working on dendrometers – I think he wanted to join my herd.

I left at about 16:15 PDT

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2023-03-16	VR_well	47.75
2023-03-16	TZ_floor	19.1
2023-03-16	TZ_road	26.4
2023-03-16	TZ_tower	21.7

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)
2023-03-16	1	12.9
2023-03-16	102	6.4
2023-03-16	2	19.8
2023-03-16	245	7.5
2023-03-16	3	23.5
2023-03-16	4	21.5
2023-03-16	5	12.6
2023-03-16	6	22.9
2023-03-16	7	13.6
2023-03-16	72	17.7
2023-03-16	79	19.1

No water potential data found

No TZ Grass Biomass data found

No TZ OakLeaves Biomass data found

No TZ PineNeedles Biomass data found

1 photos found

20230316TZ_MutantTreeLeaves.jpg ( 2023-03-16 11:46:06 ) Full size: 1440x1920
The mutant tree near Mr Tonzi’s house has leaves but the rest of the trees still look dead