Measuring plants, soil, water, and more

By Marc Simard

As expected, there were no flights today. However, All Delta-X field teams spend the day in the field and collected great data.

The Vegetation Team worked on Mike Island all day:

Taking measurements on Mike Island

They finished sampling three plots of willows forest along Mike Island’s levee (DBH + height).
They collected root and soil cores to quantify root, organic and mineral content.
They also collected feldspar measurements on both west and east sides Mike Island’s interior. LSU samples those sites every 6 months during Delta-X. Remember it is those measurements that tell us how much sediment was accumulated since October 2019, and will be used to validate our models and short term soil accretion forecasts.

The Water Quality Team worked in the side channels all day:

Cedric takes water profiles with the LISST instrument

They collected data from WLO to the side channel just past site 2568, tracing turbidity on the way back, got profiles with the LISST instrument.
Note there was no problem with water hyacinths blocking the channel where they went.

The Island Team was also on Mike Island with both the airboat and the blue runner.

They performed depth profiles (water sediment characterization) at 5 sites, including 3 at tripods (i.e. continuous turbidity sensors) and 2 others to compare the center of the island to the island boundary and north to south locations.
They also got 50 cm soil cores to characterize grain size distribution and ADCP measurements.

Blue runner boat

Taking depth profiles

Delta-X