Tuesday we went out to the Santa Rita experimental range land to install the sap flow sensors that we made in the lab. It was tedious work, as you have to wrap a small 10 meter wire (without overlaps or gaps) around the mesquite trees (which have thorns). Once the units were on the trees we took the stem diameter and wrapped the units in bubble wrap and tin foil so no bugs or moisture could ruin the sensor. In the end they look like a bunch of tacos in the trees.
Wednesday we went back out to check and see how many of the sensors were working properly. Out of the 15 we put up, only 2 were not working. We will be taking those down next week and replacing them. However, still more may not work because we can't tell if they are getting a reading until it rains, hopefully sometime this week. But hey 2/15 ain't bad.
We also visited the Walnut Gulch site where Melissa had done some of her master's work so the sensors were already on the shrubs. We did pick another species of shurb (tar bush) so we removed 5 sensors from the white thorn acacia and creosote bush. Ultimately we will have 5 on each of the 3 species.
On Friday we will be measuring pre-dawn water potential (i.e. 3am) and putting on the sensors for the tar bush at Walnut Gulch. I'm not looking forward to having my sleep schedule messed up, but in the name of science....
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