Blog from August, 2017

Soil samples

As part of soil sensor installation, I asked John to collect a soil sample at each site.  The primary reason is to have the soil bulk density, which is needed to convert from the EC-5 volumetric sampling to gravimetric values.  He brought these samples back to Boulder for analysis several days after sampling.  Clearly, after all this time, we expect the soil moisture to be lower than when the sample was taken, since moisture can evaporate from the sample.  Nevertheless, the values below could be used as a lower bound of the EC-5 values.  (Though the EC-5 itself is expected to have measurement issues due to soil settling.)  Note that for museum, the EC-5 reading was indeed lower than the gravimetric sample, indicating that this sensor had not settled into the soil.

The cores were transported still in the brass ring (which would have helped reduce drying of the core).  In processing these cores, the ring needed to be removed to stay within the mass range of the scale used.  Even so, the airport core was too heavy, so it was split into 2 trays, hence the sums of numbers below.

Date/TimeLocationTare (g)Wet (g)Dry (g)rho (g/cm^3)Moist (%)EC-5 (%)

18 Aug 15:20

"airport" 3-6cm

2.10+2.33

111.14+8.10

88.12+14.26

1.47

25.4

28.1

Part of soil sensor installation; clay
19 Aug 19:00museum 3-6cm2.10115.2194.161.3931.727.1Part of soil sensor installation; clingy clay

tare = c(2.10+2.33, 2.10)

wet = c(111.14+8.10, 115.21) - tare

dry = c(88.12+14.26, 94.16) - tare

vol = c(3)*pi*(5.31/2)^2

moist = 100*(wet-dry)/vol

rho = dry/vol


20Aug17 ~20:15CDT

The barometer was out today from roughly 11:30 until perhaps 19:00ish CDT.    Note this is the 'plastic housing' spare barometer which I believe may be a ptb110 instead of a ptb220.

Steve reported:

the barometer at museum is reporting bad values:

B0 ****.***  38.3\r\n
It was working until 11:30 this morning.  My first thought was heating, but it got to warmer temperatures yesterday.  Datawise, Pcell from the Licors is close enough, though I don't plan on fixing R code to use Pcell in other calculations before tomorrow.ometer at museum is reporting bad values:

However by 20:15 CDT it was giving good values once more: 

B0 945.727 30.6\r\n
B0 945.731 30.6\r\n
B0 945.726 30.6\r\n
B0 945.733 30.6\r\n

So the thought that's it is a temperature problem is a very good guess.  We had a heat index around 95 this afternoon.

21Aug17 ~9CDT

A couple pieces of thin white cardboard were put over the barometer's housing in hopes to keep it cooler.  During the day it appeared to stay up, so that may have helped.



Airport Station setup

18Aug17, Friday, ~15:30CDT   

'Airport' dsm site set up today on ranch land owned by Mike Moritz.  The site is roughly 5miles nne of Ravena off hiway 68:  4106.4992,N,09853.6780,W   The site is on a ridge with some trees to north,east and a deep draw to the west.   There is a large corn field to the south across the road roughly 1/3 mile away.  This location is roughly 20-25miles or more nw from the Stuhr museum.

Sonic Height 3.16m (DOUBLE CHECK ON TEARDOWN).    

boom angles:   91-deg standing west of station looking into CSAT3.   181-deg standing north of station looking at Gill.  Red 'north dot' should be oriented on opposite side of the sensor where bracket mounts into boom.

We put a solar stand to the ene laying flat on the ground and the radiometer is sse with soils nearby.  Electric fence added because cows/calves might visit the site.

To login to site from NCAR network:

ssh -p 31023 daq@eol-rt-data.fl-ext.ucar.edu

ssh daq@isfs2.dyndns.org

20Aug17 ~11:00CDT Museum switched from cell modem to Ubiquity wifi

Gary set up the dsm to report through either cell modem directly to boulder, or through the ubiquity to the Flux2 computer routing through the internet to boulder eol-rt-data.  Both methods work and we initially ran cell overnight, then switched to ubiquity around noon Sunday the 20th.   Gary created a nice script to make the switch easy.   Here's his description.

cd ~daq/isfs/projects/ARTSE/ISFS/scripts
cp config_interfaces config_interfaces.modem
vi config_interfaces.modem

...find the line that says this:
museum    00:80:66:08:94:72 192.168.154.108  eth0
and change the end of the line from eth0 to eth1.
Save the file.

Run it:
./config_interfaces.modem

Then later when you want to switch to the base, run the original script to go back to the wifi/Ubiquity:
./config_interfaces

We then found that doing a reboot worked better than just an ifdown/ifup cycling of eth0/1.

Museum station setup

19Aug17 'Museum' dsm site set up today at Stuhr Museum.   We decided to put in on air with cell modem.  Thanks Gary for instructions on reseting the routing through eth1 instead of ubiquity.  We didn't want to leave base/display/router at the site overnight so this should get data to Boulder interim. 

Sonic Height 3.18m.    Fairly homogeneous field, however well within the footprint there are obstructions: barn/shed to south,  house to wnw and some trees.   These all appear roughly 150-200m away or more.

We have not yet added the boom angles to the cal files.   94-deg standing west of station looking into CSAT3.   181-deg standing north of station looking at Gill.  Red 'north dot' should be oriented on opposite side of the sensor where bracket mounts into boom.

Students and Scott Gunter helped a lot, questions, etc.   radiometer to ese and soil sensor in similar exposure but more to south with mote mounted no higher than the taller tufts of grass.  Solar to ene.