Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Vaira
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Tonzi: 2024-12-17 11:00:00 (DOY 352)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Kuno

Summary: Power out on the Floor a bit - added solar panel, Cows on the land - all fence chargers on, check well EC - maybe bad sensor

Tonzi
2024-12-17

Kuno and I arrived at about 11:00 PST. It was cold and overcast with much of the valley in fog. Late in the day the sun finally peaked through. Everything is wet from recent rains with full puddles on the road. The trees have pretty much lost all of their leaves. The grass has sprouted and covers the ground more completely than last time but probably will not grow much until it gets warmer. There was some evidence of heavy winds - rope on the tower loose, small dead tree near the floor site down. Rob called late last week to say that cows are now on the land. We didn't see any cows but the fence around the tower was messed up. After we got the wire straight the charger was in the green.

I collected the tower data. The wash reservoir was about a third low. There were water spots all over the upper mirror.
The 7500 read: 449.4ppm CO2, 433.4mmol/m3 H2O, 8.3C, 100.1kPa, 99.3SS - 100.2 after cleaning
The 7700 read: 1.91ppm CH4, 7.3RSSI - 2.14ppm CH4, 79.5RSSI after cleaning

At the Floor the power was out due to low voltage disconnect. The batteries were better than 23V but there was only 1A coming in on the panels. I checked the current on a pair of panels and got about 0.4A. After restarting the solar controller the tower had power but was pulling 1A - not enough solar power to charge the batteries. Later I borrowed a big new panel from the SIF trailer after checking with Troy by text. The new panel was 24V and 10A - need to get the full specs next time. I had to cut one of their 15ft extension cables in half to make it all work. But after connecting the new panel to the Floor solar system, the incoming amps were about double 2.4A. Hopefully this will get the batteries charged up and help bridge the cloudy days to come. About three days of data lost altogether.
The 7500 read: 446.9ppm CO2, 412.2mmol/m3 H2O, 9.8C, 100.2kPa, 95.5SS - 96.7 after cleaning
The 7700 read: 2.08ppm CH4, 61.2RSSI - 80.8 after cleaning
The DIY wash reservoir was about a quarter low and the 7700 mirrors were pretty clean. The 7700 head desiccant need refreshing it was reading 30% humidity.

We added a fence charger to the new Floor fence we put up last time. I hooked it up to the main power - more strain for the solar system. I think it should be a very tiny draw.

The EC from the well sensor has jumped up since October of 2023 but I just noticed now. So I taped a vial to the manual water level sensor and got water samples from each well to measure with the handheld meter. The Floor was 789uS at 18.1C, the Road was 728uS at 18.1C and the Tower was 479uS at 17.3C. This puts it in the good range for drinking water but a little high for irrigation and about where the well sensor was reading before it jumped up assuming I've got units correct. Kuno also got a sample from the well at Vaira and that was close to zero uS - though think we should test that again.

I did the manual soil moisture, tree DBH, FD data and serviced the z-cams. I collected the data from HISE #1 and reseating the sensor connector plug last time seems to have fixed the bad data there.

We left Tonzi at about 15:00 PST

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2024-12-17	TZ_floor	30.35
2024-12-17	TZ_road	38.15
2024-12-17	TZ_tower	35.1
2024-12-17	VR_well	60.7
2024-12-17	VR_pond	14.32

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)
2024-12-17	1	14.5
2024-12-17	102	8.2
2024-12-17	2	17.3
2024-12-17	245	13.7
2024-12-17	3	10.8
2024-12-17	4	13.4
2024-12-17	5	22.7
2024-12-17	6	9.7
2024-12-17	7	17.0
2024-12-17	72	11.7
2024-12-17	79	11.8