Field Notes

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Tonzi: 2024-11-15 11:00:00 (DOY 320)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Kuno

Summary: Ana Maria installing psychrometers, Kuno doing bole flux, power problems at north bole temp set fixed, DIY washer kit for Floor 7700, collected dendrometers, pulled some coax, phenocam images missing.

Tonzi
2024-11-15

Kuno and I arrived at about 11:00 PST. Ana Maria and her husband were about 20min behind us. It is a cold and partly sunny day. There was a little fog lower in the valley. There has been a little rain in the last week - just enough to knock down the dust. The trees are much browner and I didn't see any sprouting grass yet.

Kuno did his rounds of tree trunk and soil collar fluxes. He tightened up the IRT cross arm on the west bole temperature set. A wasp had filled that IRT port with mud and larva. I cleaned it out a best I could with a stick. Some Q-tips would be better next time. Kuno also used the tree corer to bore holes in the trees and measured high values of CH4 being released from inside the trees.

The east and west bole temperature sets were fine with full data and nearly full battery packs. The north one had a nearly empty battery pack and was missing some data from the last day or so. The solar panel only seemed to be producing about 10V. I tried to run 12V from the Floor tower but it was only about 11.5V at the box. So I ran 24V from the tower to the DC-DC converted the solar panel was using. This seemed to work but the DC-DC converter over heated (probably trying to recharge the battery) and shorted out. Finally I just ran 12V directly to that data logger and all seemed well.

I also ran a 12V line from the Floor tower box to Ana Maria's sensors to the northeast. This has its own DC-DC converter which might have saved things as she initially had a short in her line. I think she installed two psychrometers and has plans for more and some sap flow sensors. They will be back in a week to install more. They left two large Campbell enclosures full of stuff at the main tower. I think I will extend the cow fence to encircle all of this equipment.

I pulled out a section of the old MD9 coax cable from the road to the Floor tower to use the conduit for Ana Maria's stuff and the power line to the north bole temp set. The coax cable will go in the trash.

I added a DIY wash reservoir and spray head to the 7700 on the Floor tower. It worked, but I should write up some notes separately to document what worked and what didn't. I collected the Floor flux and well data.
Floor 7500 read: 421.7ppm CO2, 436.4mmol/m3 H2O, 10.6C, 99.0kPa, 94.1SS
After cleaning: 445.6ppm CO2, 364.0mmol/m3 H2O, 10.7C, 99.0kPa, 100.4SS
Floor 7700 read: 2.02ppm CH4, 54.0RSSI - 77.3 after cleaning

I read the dendrometers, measured the soil moisture, collected the FD data, serviced the zcams, did the well readings (missed the Floor well) and collected the TOMST and HISE point dendrometer data. The TOMST medpine dendrometer had a data hiccup from 8/21 to 8/28 - maybe a full download will recover it. HISE dendrometer 2 has a bunch of drop outs starting 8/31 at 6:00am - maybe the cable is loose.

At the tower top I moved the wash box up to the top railing and used a hose clamp mount to secure it. With some longer tubing I could move the box back down to the level below. I also swapped out the teal Ethernet cable from the 7700 to the 7550. The first one a super stiff connector and a crack in its outer jacket. We might be able to use in the lab for calibrations. Afterwards all seemed well and the spray and spin worked. I collected the Flux data
Tower 7500 read: 434.0ppm CO2, 373.9mmol/m3 H2O, 13.3C, 98.8kPa, 100.4SS - 101.4 after cleaning
Tower 7700 read: 2.11ppm CH4, 69.6RSSI - 74.1 after cleaning

The phenocam card was empty. I had Windows check it and it said it repaired it. I put it back in the CR1000, manually ran the phenocam script from the camera and made sure new images were recorded.

The battery box on the UC Davis trailer was open, uncovered and wet inside. I let it dry in the sun while we were there and then closed it and tucked the trap in around it again. I let Troy know by text.

We left at about 16:00 PST

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2024-11-15	TZ_road	37.7
2024-11-15	TZ_tower	34.35
2024-11-15	VR_well	60

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)
2024-11-15	102	4.1
2024-11-15	2	17.1
2024-11-15	245	11.1
2024-11-15	3	9.2
2024-11-15	4	10.5
2024-11-15	5	21.2
2024-11-15	6	8.9
2024-11-15	7	15.7
2024-11-15	72	10.3
2024-11-15	79	10.9