Field Notes

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Bouldin Alfalfa: 2024-02-14 10:00:00 (DOY 45)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Cove

Summary: Standard data collection, swapped Arable Mark 3, lots of weeds, spraying fields to our north.

Bouldin Alfalfa
2024-02-14

Cove and I arrived at about 10:00. There was a variable overcast with a cool breeze from the southeast with rain expected later today. Our field has somewhat recovered from grazing but still pretty sparse. Lots of weeds coming up everywhere. I pulled some thistles around our tower (I think Milk Thistle Silybum marianum). There were some bird of prey leftovers under the radiation boom. Fields to our east look in worse shape from grazing. They were spraying something (herbicide?) on the fields to our north.

We swapped out the Mark 3 Arable unit: sn B301045 came off and sn D006812 went on with 2D sonic sn 022365394. It took some work to figure out how to mount the unit so that the solar panel was somewhat south, the sonic didn’t shade the radiometers and the sensors were looking at field and not tower. We added a meter long arm off the south west corner near the tipping bucket. I initially forgot to turn the unit on so we had to come back after corn to push its button. Loreli at Arable said she would send me an adapter to connect the long Sentek soil moisture probe to the new Mark 3 and we could then also remove the old Mark 2.

I did the regular data collection, met, flux, camera and FD.
The 7500 read: 464.7ppm CO2, 501.7mmol/m3 H2O, 13.7C, 101.8kPa, 97.7SS

I decided not to do spectra because the light was changing fast. Veg height between 0 and 20cm, very patchy, on average probably on the low end.

We left for corn at 11:00. The automatic gate on the north side of Hwy12 wouldn’t open for our code. We went back around, over the bridge and looped around.

Next Mowing: 2024-02-16

1 photos found

20240214BA_NewArableMark3.jpg ( 2024-02-14 10:29:24 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Cove swapping Arable Mark 3