Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Mayberry | East End | Bouldin Corn

Gilbert Tract: 2024-05-23 08:20:00 (DOY 144)
Author: Daphne Szutu
Others: Robert

Summary: Rob Rhew and his crew taking chamber measurements, regular data collection/cleaning, shadowband not spinning--fixed, found ants + aphids on a thistle

2024-05-23
Gilbert Tract

Robert and I arrived at 8:20 PST (9:20 PDT). It was breezy, sunny, and mild. We met with Rob Rhew and his students Charlie and Gigi. Their plan today was to run the LI-7810 and Smart Chamber for a few hours as a pilot for their anticipated 24-hour campaign. They installed 3 collars near their previous "Site 1." Each collar was at the edge of the wetland, on the north side of the degraded road that runs west-east (just south of our tower). They waited 1 hour after installing the collars before taking measurements. They took 36 measurements total, rotating among the 3 collars.

Robert and I helped them get set up, then started the regular tower maintenance. The staff gauge read 35cm at 10:42 PST. I downloaded met, cam, USB GHG, and miniDOT data. I changed the eddy clock +1min from 8:36 to 8:37 PST to match the laptop time and restarted logging. Robert cleaned flux and rad sensors. I changed the miniDOT desiccant. We topped off the wash reservoir.

I paired the Song Meter Micro with my phone, synched its location and time, and installed it on the north side of the tower. It was fresh lithium batteries and a fresh desiccant minipak. Its memory was 13% full, even though I thought I cleared its microSD card back in the lab. I'll take a closer look next time.

The shadowband was not spinning. As I was inspecting it, I accidentally pulled the red power wire off of the motor. I re-soldered it with our new field soldering iron--wow! so much hotter than the old field iron! The motor seemed fine after reinstallation.

As I was soldering, Robert started digging up a thistle near our path down to the tower. As he knocked it over, a whole bunch of Argentine ants came streaming out. He then noticed that the thistle was covered with aphids, especially near the top of the stems. He concluded that the ants were farming aphids, and collected a few ants for his entomologist friend and fellow ESPM PhD student.

Robert measured the surface water conductivity off of the boardwalk pier.
Sample, temperature-compensated conductivity, temperature
Surface, 305 uS, 22.0 C

Robert and I got to the channel around 11:05 PST. The tide was still going out. River Partners was near the breach, fixing irrigation. They are watering some new plants they put in to fill in some gaps and replace plants that died. I set the ADCP clock upon prompting, declined to calibrate the pressure, downloaded data, and restarted logging. There were 7 files that popped up to download. The first 6 were various files since 2024-02-12 that I had deleted from the laptop b/c they had no samples; only the last file had the most recent data. I guess the ADCP tries to sync its own data files with the designated folder on the laptop.

We checked in with Rob Rhew and his students one more time. They were having trouble seeing the analyzer data from the Smart Chamber software. The analyzer and Smart Chamber were connected well physically and within the Smart Chamber software. I directed Charlie to turn off the chamber and turn it back on again. Things seemed to work ok after that. We left them with all 6 collars, the 4th lithium battery, the mallet, a Japanese tape measure, and 2 pieces of scrap wood. Gigi was wearing one pair of our boots, which she returned at the end of the day back to the lab.

Charlie returned on 2024-06-20: 6 collars, 4th lithium battery, mallet, Japanese tape measure, and 2 pieces of scrap wood. He will return the SmartChamber next time.

We left around 11:40 PST (12:40 PDT).

Looking at the data in the lab, temperature from dissolved CO2 eosGP probe has been bad since 2024-04-22.

1 photos found

20240523GT_AntsThistle.jpg ( 2024-05-23 11:56:30 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Many many aphids and a few ants clustered on multiple stems of this thistle plant