Blog

Alex Guenther performed a quick survey of the tree species composition surround the AABC tower.

Using an average of 232 trees around the tower, he found:

At 1315, the emeralds died on low.  Haven't seen this problem in a while.  At 1338 we rebooted and everything came back up.

We had noticed that the tipping bucket mount was somewhat shaky.  I have just secured it by a bit of guying.  The bubble level had been out of the outer ring and now is within the inner ring (though not exactly centered).

For the last 2 days, (since about 0230 6/15), Wetness.pond has been low.  Upon inspection, there was nothing obviously wrong (though some of the plastics on the probe are cracked).  Reseating connectors and cycling power didn't help.  With water on the probe, the signal went from ~0.18V to ~0.0, which of course is the wrong sign.

I've brought the probe back to the base for further evaluation.  We do not appear to have a spare here.

P.S. Steve S. may have noted this elsewhere, but he told me that he opened up this sensor and found no bad connections.  He assumed that the internal circuitry in the the rubber mould died.  I note that the rubber had been deformed by the cable ties used to mount it.  Thus, we might want to be more careful with mounting these, in the future.

Due to some playing around with the webcam web site, 3 images on file are not oriented as previous ones. These are files created today from 9:28 to 9:48.

The camera was adjusted back to the original position. This position has been saved as preset 1.

Weather:  partly cloudy this morning

Summary:  Steve O. made changes to include the mote.a2 Tsoil data in the web plots. Tsoil.b still up since reconnect last yesterday. Wetness still down at pond.

Sonics: ok

TRH, P: ok

Wind Speed & direction: ok

Soil, Rainr: ok, Tsoil.b still looking good

Vmote (rad,a,b):12.2 to 12.7  new battery at tsoil.a not so good even though it was recharged

Radiation, Wetness: wetness at pond bad.

h2o, co2: ok

System (GPS, Vdsm): ok

6/15: 1 big, 3 small ticks

6/15:

Started processing these soils at about 1815 today -- rather late for samples taken about 1100, so might be a bit too dry.

Dry weights taken 21 hours later.

Comparison sensor measurements read by eye from WWW plot.

6/21: 1200

In both cases, should have driven the corer further in (collar was flush, but apparently had compacted) -- use 0-2cm in both cases.  a.soil also still had some litter and b.soil had some roots.  

6/26: 1015

A bit drier than before.  Mike Daniels helped.  I think we got the whole 3cm in the top sample, though the soil may have been compacted in the process.

7/3: 1015/1025

A bit wetter due to some rain last night.  Note that the wetness profile probably isn't uniform, though Qsoils did show an uptick.  b 0-3cm probably was compacted too much (too dense). Scales have been moved into base trailer (from AABC lab).

tare = c(c(7.981,7.940,7.945,7.991),c(7.972,7.940,7.927,7.987),c(7.972,7.939,7.926,7.984),c(7.990,7.945,7.913,7.985))

wet = c(74.357,97.473,90.836,98.365,51.536,102.324,59.973,74.350,116.089,120.337,78.270,103.500,73.581,96.626,105.195,103.252)-tare

dry = c(48.354,72.210,67.464,78.623,29.353,68.270,42.641,55.189,79.391,92.536,59.924,84.423,46.360,69.548,77.396,83.068)-tare

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

moist = 100*(wet-dry)/vol[c(2,2,2,2,1,2,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2)]

rho = dry/vol[c(2,2,2,2,1,2,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2)]

m = array(moist,c(2,2,4))

grav.moist = t(0.5*(m[1,,]+m[2,,]))

grav.comp = t(m[2,,])

ec5 = matrix(c(30,23,27,25,34,21,34,22),ncol=2,byrow=T)

matplot(grav.comp,ec5,xlim=c(0,60),ylim=c(0,60)); abline(0,1,lty=2); abline(-8,1,col=3,lty=2)

Since we've seen evidence of water inside the mote boxes, we have just put peal&seal around the antennas of the tower ground motes (Tsoil.a Tsoil.b Tsoil.a2, rad).

After playing with several options at about 1800, eventually just tried plugging Tsoil.b back in.  It is now working fine!?  We'll have to keep checking it...

16:00 - 17:00:   Steve O. noticed issues with the TP01 at soil B. This problem was in addition to the Tsoil going out today. So we decided to replace the

mote. Unfortunately the spare is being used for soil.a2. An attempt was made to get a mode Steve O. brought with him. He was going to play with it working'

on the chirpsonic software. The attempt failed; however, we did get the Tsoil going again. As noted earlier water was found in the bottom of the mote box. The Tsoil

problem may have been related to the water which has now dried out. We will monitor.

Since we think that one of the ports on Mote 11 is dead, at about 1215 we moved the wetness sensor to Mote 18 that was installed yesterday.  I've added the new mote ID to its configuration.

Well....I <almost> made it.  (My first time high on the tower.)

Was on the tower from 1055-1210 today, cleaning everything from 2m->32m.  As Chris did, I started by putting a drop of water on the wetness sensor (with the exception of the 2m level, which doesn't have one, and the 8m licor that I did just a minute before putting the drop on).  Later, I realized that I could use the drop as a source of water while doing the cleaning!  Note that I pulled out the 8m mote cable in my attempt to raise the boom, so I gave up and did all servicing with the booms in their normal position.  With this, I was only able to reach 4 of the 6 par wand sensors, but they looked pretty clean anyway.

krypton.2m: 105430-105510 (raised signal)

8m: 1106-1123 (was messing around trying to raise PAR boom, but couldn't get it to work right). (licor 1106 -- no effect)

14m: 1125-1131 (krypton 1127 - raised signal)

20m: 1134-1139 (licor 1138 - slight co2 change; PAR 1135-1136 - no effect)

26m: 1143-1146 (licor 1145 - no effect; PAR 1146 -- no effect)

32m: 1149-1151 (licor 1150--1151 - no effect; PAR 1151 - no effect)

can't detect lower PAR cleaning times from data

Overnight, Tsoil.b died.  By playing around at about 1030-1045 today, we've determined that the probe itself is now not working.  (Though we did see some evidence of water in the mote box.)  We'll install a spare later today.

12:00 -12:15:  Due to the loss of a port on the RAD mote, the wetness sensor was moved to a port on the soil.a2 mote. The sensor remained on the darkhorse.