Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Vaira | Tonzi

Mayberry: 2023-07-25 15:30:00 (DOY 206)
Author: Daphne Szutu
Others: Dennis

Summary: Sheep fence troubles, mosquitoes up the wazoo, swapped methane wash tubing, measured porewater conductivity, lower water levels

2023-07-25
Mayberry

Dennis and I arrived around 15:30 PDT. This was just a quick stop to finish up two tasks that I didn't do yesterday.

It was warm, sunny, and clear. A mower had recently come through to trim the gravel levee road—I don’t think it looked like this yesterday. There was a pickup truck parked in the clearing right when we get down from the gravel levee road, where the trailers used to be. Dennis thinks the truck belong to the person driving the mower.

Just like yesterday, the sheep fence was up just beyond the clearing. Just like yesterday, we removed the three stakes closest to the road and laid the fence down so I could drive over it. Unfortunately, not just like yesterday, something got caught under the car. Dennis pulled up two more stakes close to the blackberry bushes that were end of the fence roll, so he was able to lay the fence completely down on the ground without any tension. Luckily the fence was not electrified. But the weeds on the interior roads made it hard for the fence to be completely flat, and our rental Corolla had minimal clearance. It had a modified body with a longer front overhang so that the body extends closer to the ground and has a protruding rim. Both the weeds and the overhang made it really hard to get a good look under the car. I slowly drove the car back and forth while Dennis worked on loosening the fence. Finally I got both tires in front of the piece of fence, and we were able to work the fence free from under the car, ripping a few fence strings in the meantime. There were also a ton of mosquitos in this area—a few dozen swarming around us and another dozen at least waiting for us in the car when we got in. Dennis said it was just like BOREAS in the summer.

We drove through the fence and hurriedly put it up temporarily. At the tower, there were fewer mosquitoes because there was a bit more of a breeze. The weeds around the solar panels had all been cleared by the sheep in the last day. Unfortunately they didn't eat this one spiky plant right by the boardwalk, but Dennis stomped it down.

We swapped the methane wash tubing. The old one had broken off near the 7550 box where probably an animal had chewed it. I ran the spray and spin and confirmed all was working. I confirmed the USB was logging but didn’t collect any data. Dennis confirmed the wash reservoir was still full.

We then measured porewater conductivity from the sippers by the boardwalk. The staff gauge read 21cm and there was no standing water at the sipper site, so Dennis measured the surface conductivity under the tower. We weren’t able to sample water from the 10cm, 20cm, and (blue) depths. We heard a wet suction sound when we tried to sample the 20cm depth, but no water came up. Some of the depth labels in sharpie have rubbed off, but the colored tape was still there. I need to check with Kyle about which colors respond to which depths. I should also print sticker labels with the depths for next time.

For each sample, I took three pulls from the syringe. The first pull was to rinse the syringe and the sample vial. The second pull was to rinse the syringe, rinse the sample vial, and Dennis dunked the conductivity probe into the sample vial as a probe rinse. The third pull was measured as our sample. Afterwards, I poured some DI water into the sample vial and then dunked the conductivity probe in the vial to rinse off the probe.

Depth, Temperature-compensated conductivity, Temperature
Green, 10.33mS, 27.7C
Yellow, 11.82mS, 25.7C, sample had a lot of sediment
Surface, 4.77mS, 28.8C

We left around 16:00 PDT. I had to edge around the sheep to make sure they could run behind me, not in front of us toward the hastily installed fence. We took the fence down, drove through it, and put it back up. There are some broken strings on the bottom; hopefully nothing leaves or enters that shouldn’t be leaving or entering. We drove with the windows down and the climate control on full blast to chase mosquitoes out of the car.

1 photos found

MB_picam_20230724_0515.jpg ( 2023-07-24 05:15:05 ) Full size: 1917x1440
Bird feet in the air