Field Notes

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Mayberry: 2024-04-09 09:45:00 (DOY 100)
Author: Kyle Delwiche
Others: Huiqi

Summary: Testing porewater sippers

Huiqi and I arrived at Mayberry around 9:45am. It was a sunny, warm (but not too warm) day, perfect weather for field work.

We started by trying to sampling some of the 15 porewater sippers I previously installed around the flux tower. All fully-screened sippers were clogged and we were unable to pull any sample into the syringe. Some of the sippers with half of the holes screened and half unscreened weren't clogged and we could pull enough water into the syringe to measure water conductivity.

I pulled out all sippers in the blue profile and re-installed them. After re-installation I pushed ~60-80mL of surface water into the sipper to "develop" the well (per suggestion from M.H.E., the sipper manufacturer). I will try sampling on Thursday to see if this helped.

I pulled up 2 of the half-screened sippers, pulled off the screens, reinstalled, and pushed ~60-80mL of surface water into the sippers. I will see on Thursday whether there is a difference between the screened and unscreened developed wells.

We tried out the peristaltic pump borrowed from UCSC. For clogged wells the pump didn't work, it just collapsed the flexible tubing. For one well that was not clogged but hard to sample with a syringe we got the pump to successfully pull a sample. However, the pump couldn't pull the sample at low speeds and had to be cranked up to a higher speed and sample was then pulled out quickly. Large diameter tubing in pump head means a lot of sample needs to be removed. I don't think this is a viable sampling method (plus the pump had intermittent power failures).

The data we did get are:

(Sample ID, Temperature-compensated conductivity, Water temperature, Notes)
black-black, 11.2 mS, 20.0C,
black-green, 8.06 mS, 21C,
red-black, 8.46 mS, 20.5C,
red-white, 9.18 mS, 29.6C, sampled by pump so high temperature is presumably due to heat within pump head

We left the site around 12:30. Saw someone in a pickup truck loading kayaks into the wetland to the East of the flux tower, but didn't get close enough to wave.

0 photos found

11 sets found

7 MB_flux graphs found