Field Notes

<--2024-01-02 11:15:00 | 2024-02-09 12:50:00-->
Other sites visited today: Hill Slough | Vaira

Tonzi: 2024-01-25 12:15:00 (DOY 25)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others:

Summary: Cows broke all the fences and disturbed things, reglued Zcam-1 window, Zcam-2 and 3 lost power - restored. FD open, PPT, IRT and Rnet tipped by cows, collected pt denro data

Tonzi
2024-01-25

I arrived at 12:15 PST. It was a nice spring-like day with blue sky, white clouds and green grass. There has been serval days of rain and the ground is completely saturated. The pond doesn’t seem to have added much water and the ground water is about the same. Young punk cows trashed all the fences and disturbed things.

I collected the Tower flux and camera data and the Floor flux and well data.
The Tower read: 425.3ppm CO2, 427.8mmol/m3 H2O, 16.0C, 99.7kPa, 99.8SS
The Floor read: 424.6ppm CO2, 454.6mmol/m3 H2O, 16.9C, 99.8kPa, 99.4SS

Cows had pulled the cable off of Zcam-2. I plugged it back in and it seemed to work. They had also chewed the Zcam-3 cable. I spliced the bad section with a screw terminal and put it in a plastic bag. There was no camera in Zcam-1 which is a good thing because it is still leaking – the plastic bag I had tied over it was gone. The desiccant I put in last time was wet and looked like dark purple caviar. I cleaned up all the water as best I could, removed the window, cleaned up the old sealant and glued the window back in place. We will see if it leaks again before it gets a camera.

The cows had broken the fence around the Floor tower. I reset a fence post and added a strand of barbed wire to the fence. No other damage other than the chewed camera wire.

At the soil CO2 site the cows had knocked over the open FD chamber, turned and tilted the net radiometer, tilted the tipping bucket, and opened the battery box for the fence charger and disconnected the battery along with totally destroying the fence. I moved two fence posts to make the fence line a little smaller and added two more fence post to make some long runs shorter. There was a wet sucking sound when I pulled the fence post from the ground. The cows had also dumped the water potential table and extension saw.

I collected the FD data, did the manual soil moisture and well depths and read the dendrometers. I didn’t collect the Road well pressure data because I forgot the power plug for the old laptop. It should be fine until next time.

I collected the Point Dendrometer data. The solar panel I added on Tree 1 seems to keep the batteries charged. I also still need to figure out how to reset their clocks to PST instead of PDT.

The ground IRT sensor was out of its mount but still generally pointed at the ground – MEAN COWS!

I left at about 17:00 PST

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2024-01-25	VR_well	59.8
2024-01-25	TZ_floor	29.65
2024-01-25	TZ_road	37.8
2024-01-25	TZ_tower	34.4

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)
2024-01-25	1	20.2
2024-01-25	102	10.4
2024-01-25	2	16.1
2024-01-25	245	10.4
2024-01-25	3	6.8
2024-01-25	4	8.8
2024-01-25	5	17.9
2024-01-25	6	7.6
2024-01-25	7	14.9
2024-01-25	72	7.1
2024-01-25	79	7.1

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

20240125TZ_CoolMushrooms.jpg ( 2024-01-25 14:35:20 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Bright yellow fungus that seems to be related to more mundane tree mushrooms