Field Notes

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Tonzi: 2025-07-08 11:00:00 (DOY 189)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Charlie

Summary: Standard fieldwork, Troy has removed the SIF trailer, Tower sonic bird spike disturbed, plume of smoke to the north, new spray head on the Floor 7700, collected point dendrometers, troubleshot SWP_C, new power pack for OSU SP3

Tonzi
2025-07-08

Charlie and I arrived at about 12:00 PDT. It was hot and sunny with a nice breeze that made it tolerable in the shade. The pond continues to shrink. Only some tar weed on the ground that is still green. Troy came and got the SIF trailer sometime in the last couple weeks. He's in Montana and the trailer will eventually follow him there. He's got plans to write up the data he got at Tonzi. There are two anchors they couldn't get out and one solar panel current powering the 7700 on the floor left from him. He didn't seemed concerned about getting those back.

Charile got started with Kuno's chamber work. More comfortable this time but still took almost five hours. Small sinks and sources.

I got started on the tower. I set up the new laptop to get the tower top GPS data and collected the eddy, and camera data. I cleaned the eddy sensors and the radiometers. The wash reservoir was full. Both RH/T ventilation fans were good. The bird spikes are on the sonic were disturbed and one was missing - new ones for next time. I could see a plume of smoke to the north from the tower - maybe a controlled burn.
The 7500 read: 416.7ppm CO2, 500.3mmol/m3 H2O, 25.2C, 99.2kPa, 106.5SS - 109.6 after cleaning
The 7700 read: 1.97ppm CH4, 60.0RSSI - 83.7 after cleaning

I collected the Floor flux and well data. I swapped the spray head for the one Patty gave me from Eden that was plugged up and I fixed in the lab. I think it is a better spray that the home made one and the cheap pump seems to supply plenty of pressure.
The 7500 read: 427.1ppm CO2, 499.1mmol/m3 H2O, 29.2C, 99.4kPa, 96.6SS
The 7700 read: 1.999ppm CH4, 62.2RSSI - 76.5 after cleaning
The wash reservoir here too was full.

I did the manual well readings, read the dendrometers, collected the tree bole temperature data, collected the FD data and serviced the zcams.

I also did the quarterly collection of the automated point dendrometers. The HISE on the tree closest to the road had some bad values. I unplugged and replugged the sensor jack. Probably should check it next time. The TOMST on the little pine had nearly been over grown by the trunk. I removed the sensor, dug a nut out of the bark, unscrewed the bolt out of the trunk about a cm and reinstalled the sensor. The other pines are getting close too. I need to note the min and max values for both the TOMST and HISE point dendrometers so I can know when they need to be physically adjusted.

I tried to troubleshoot the METER soil water potential sensor on the OSU SP1 system. Yesterday, I stripped that data logger program down to the essentials and remotely sent it to the CR3000 - big change in data columns. Still, I can use the terminal to read the METER SWP sensor but the instruction in the program returns NAN. It was on control port 3, but 5 was open too, so I moved it to five and updated the program same symptoms. I've queried Campbell.

OSU SP3 has been mostly dead due to a failed solar battery. I added the big lithium power pack and used a DC-DC converter to connect the solar panel to the power pack's input port. There were a lot of shadows on the panel at the time so I hope I got the voltages right. The system was sending data to the tower later.

We left at about 17:00 PDT

Field Data

No tank data

Well Depth

Date	Location	Depth (feet)
2025-07-08	VR_well	55.35
2025-07-08	TZ_floor	24.2
2025-07-08	TZ_road	32.9
2025-07-08	TZ_tower	28.4

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)
2025-07-08	1	18.1
2025-07-08	102	8.8
2025-07-08	2	19.1
2025-07-08	245	14.9
2025-07-08	3	11.7
2025-07-08	4	15.0
2025-07-08	5	9.8
2025-07-08	6	10.5
2025-07-08	7	17.8
2025-07-08	72	9.6
2025-07-08	79	13.0

Water Potential - mode: raw

Time	Species	Tree	readings (bar)
2025-07-08 13:21:00	OAK	102	-36	-28	-36
2025-07-08 13:21:00	OAK	92	-36	-39	-40

No TZ Grass Biomass data found

No TZ OakLeaves Biomass data found

No TZ PineNeedles Biomass data found

1 photos found

20250708TZ_PointDendrometer.jpg ( 2025-07-08 14:49:34 ) Full size: 1440x1920
The pine tree has grown up to nearly touch the body of the point dendrometer