Field Notes

Gilbert Tract: 2024-03-25 08:45:00 (DOY 85)
Author: Daphne Szutu
Others: Dennis, Izzie

Summary: Visitors, a few green reeds, deployed bird recorder

2024-03-25
Gilbert Tract

Dennis, Izzie, and I arrived at 8:45 PST (9:45 PDT) at the gate to wait for our Belgian visitors for the day, Ivan Janssens and his wife, who were driving in from San Francisco. Izzie is an Environmental Sciences senior using Delta data in PEPRMT for her thesis. We waited for about 15 minutes, and then decided to get started on the tower work. Around 10:20 PDT, we heard a car honk, and Dennis drove back to the gate. He found our visitors (they were /not/ the car that honked) and led them to the tower.

At the tower, it seems like the edges of the wetlands have been mowed again. It was near low tide and ebbing, but the ground was still pretty muddy right around the tower. The staff gauge read 43cm around 9:45 PST.

New reeds continue to push up through last year’s liter; some of the individual green plants are more than a meter tall, but most of the wetland is still brown.

It was mostly overcast and cool with lots of interesting clouds in the sky. Dennis pointed out some clouds right above Mt. Diablo created by orographic uplift. It was near low tide and ebbing.

Dennis cleaned flux and rad sensors and topped off the wash reservoir. I downloaded met, cam, and USB GHG data. I also downloaded the miniDOT data and swapped its desiccant. The middle boardwalk has a few cracks in it now and definitely needs to be replaced.

I turned on the Song Meter Micro, updated its time zone (GMT -7) and location via the phone app. Even though we might prefer the data to be in PST, GMT -7 makes more sense because the recorder uses location + time zone to calculate sunrise/sunset times and records an hour before and an hour after. Leaving the recorder in GMT -8 would probably throw off the recording time. I also put in a dry desiccant pack and ziptied it to the uppermost, north, side of scaffolding.

Izzie measured surface water conductivity off of the pier.

Sample, Temperature-compensated conductivity, Water temperature, Notes
Surface, 321.5uS, 12.9C, about 10cm below water surface
Surface, 360uS, 12.6C, about 30cm below water surface

The 7500 read: 422ppm CO2, 425mmol/m3 H2O, 16.8C, 101.5kPa, 103SS—104 after cleaning
The 7700 read: 1.96ppm CH4, 53RSSI – 85 after cleaning

I tried to dig up some soil for Izzie to look at it, but with all the plant roots along the pier, it was hard to get a good shovelful. There was some proto-peat (partly decomposed plant matter).

We all went to the channel around 10:10 PST to download Flo’s data. The data downloaded ok, then I stopped logging, reset the clock through the interface, and restarted data logging. I could see a lot of submerged aquatic vegetation above the ADCP, but it doesn't seem to have impacted the ADCP data yet.

We left around 10:30 PST (11:30 PDT).

0 photos found

7 sets found

Can't check MBWPEESWGT_mixed
Can't check MBEEWPSWEPGT_cam
16 GT_met graphs found