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March 25, 2021
On the Banana Boat
By Marc Simard
Cedric leads the Channel Team
It was a busy day for our field teams. The Vegetation Team finished parsing vegetation stems and the soil cores:
- They counted 180 stems within 25 x 25cm, that is almost 3000 stems per m2. This data will serve to calibrate productivity models and also as input data for their impact on the flow of water (friction).
- The cores will give, among other things, the bulk density and matter content in soils.
The Channel Team led by Cedric Fichot (Boston U.) tried out their equipment on the ‘Banana Boat’ (that's the name of their boat). The team went to the Wax Lake Outlet (name of river), to sample the first few liters of the 800 liters of water they plan to collect during the campaign.
Josh Harringmeyer holds an IV-looking contraption to sample sediments in the water
The Island Team (Mike Lamb, Gerard Salter, Gen Li and Justin Nghiem) got busy in the field around Wax Lake’s Mike Island and collected several measurements, including:
- Collection of sediment samples to estimate the size distribution of particles in the water as a function of depth.
- Collection of bottom sediments in the river bed.
- They also conducted ADCP transects along the West side of Mike island to measure the flow of water from the channel to the island.
Gen Li protects the sampling equipment
Mike on Mike Island
With conducive weather forecast for the weekend, we are on track for the original plan which is to have all 3 aircraft (UAVSAR, AVIRIS-NG, & AirSWOT) fly on Saturday morning and capture the low tide part of the cycle. Sunday and Monday are backup days.