Field Notes

<--2023-05-16 12:10:00 | 2023-06-16 10:45:00-->
Other sites visited today: Vaira

Tonzi: 2023-05-30 12:40:00 (DOY 150)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Dennis, Ngoc

Summary: Standard data collection, fixed Tower comports (hopefully), need to do FD chamber performance tests, fixed not recording reverse Bowen stats in tmet program. Swapped point dendrometer batteries and collected their data.

Tonzi
2023-05-30

Dennis, Ngoc Nguyen and I arrived at about 12:40 PDT. It was clear sunny and unusually cool for this time of year with a nice breeze from the west. There are still lots of flowers here but the grasses have largely gone to seed – more green than Vaira though. The trees look good.

First I swapped the AA rechargeable batteries in all the point dendrometers. Then later I collected the data so that I could see they were all running after the battery swap. Battery power for two of the sensors was pretty low around 3.7V but the other three were still okay at around 5V.

Dennis and Ngoc did midday leaf water potential and then soil moisture and finally the Road and Tower wells.

I checked on the serial ports at the Tower computer – the Floor 23x has not been connecting reliably for a while. I was able to test the existing Quatech ports with a loop back plug but the Floor was still not connecting. I plugged in an FTDI four port box, it installed and I was able to test its ports with the loop back too but the com port numbers were not in the same order as the box ports. I then uninstalled all 12 com ports (8 Quatech, 4 FTDI), unplugged both boxes and plugged the FTDI box back in. It got com ports 4, 5, 6 and 7 but in random order – I wrote the com port numbers on the box with a sharpie. The Floor 23x is connecting now and even the radio link seems a little better.

I collected the flux and camera data from the Tower top, all seemed well. I cleaned spider webs off the eddy sensors, cleaned the radiometers and the inside and outside of the phenocam window. I collected the Floor Flux and Floor well data.
The Tower read: 417.4ppm CO2, 514.9mmol/m3 H2O, 21.5C, 98.7kPa, 102.7SS
The Floor read: 424.6ppm CO2, 528.0mmol/m3 H2O, 24.3C, 98.4kPa, 99.9SS

I collected the FD data. I meant to do a performance test on them and reset their concentrations but forgot until the last moment – I’ll do it next time.

I read the dendrometers and serviced the z-cams. Cows had kicked the ground IRT around. I put it back in its sun shield and remounted it.

Last time I had added the reverse Bowen ratio stats to the Tower Top CR1000 but forgot to call the table so none of the stats were saved. I fixed the program and resent it to the logger. Some errors were thrown that I think are caused by an unstable Ethernet connection but the program seemed to be running. I’ll try to check it again remotely in a day or so. The Floor met table has the reverse Bowen stats in it now, although there are two version of q, with and without pressure. Many of our towers don’t have a good pressure with the met data anymore and I’m hoping pressure can be added in post processing without problems.

We left at about 15:30 PDT

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2023-05-30	VR_well	49.1
2023-05-30	VR_pond	18.74
2023-05-30	TZ_floor	15.7
2023-05-30	TZ_road	25.1
2023-05-30	TZ_tower	20.2

No TZ Moisture Point data found

No VR Moisture Point data found

No TZ grass heigth found

Grass Height VR 20

Date	Height reps (cm)																				Location	Average	Samp	STDEV
2023-05-30	45	51	57	39	36	33	50	42	43	31	26	35	44	24	23	39	32	67	29	39	GH_ALL	39.25	20	10.91

Tree DBH

Date	Tag#	Reading (mm)
2023-05-30	1	15.0
2023-05-30	102	3.9
2023-05-30	2	10.9
2023-05-30	245	7.7
2023-05-30	3	5.3
2023-05-30	4	6.9
2023-05-30	5	14.9
2023-05-30	6	5.8
2023-05-30	7	13.7
2023-05-30	72	19.8
2023-05-30	79	19.1