We went to the field last Wednesday, to move the FLIR thermo camera from Miriam Johnston, from the Moorcroft Laboratory (https://moorcroftlab.oeb.harvard.edu/people/miriam-johnston). We installed it on the very first days of June, when the grasses were already dead. And when i found a small garter snake in the outhouse toilet (thanks Joe for your field notes…they are awesome: https://nature.berkeley.edu/biometlab/bmetdata/fieldnotes.php?recno=2586 ). I also found once a couple of frogs. And scorpions. Tonzi is full of live.
The previous installation was near the floor tower, and the new one is on the tall one, where the camera is watching the savanna with an angle. The images have less sky pixels (with super cold temperatures) and patches of oaks, grasses and bare soil (the road). The temperatures over each layer vary, also regarding the season. We mounted on 2015 a couple of infrared thermometers (IRT), one looking down to an oak (deciduous, loosing leaves during winter, with maximum vegetation cover over spring, transpiring also in summer and decaying bit by bit over that season), and one looking at the ground (grasses or bare soil on summer). On the first graph you can see the IRTS pointing to the tree (IRT Canopy), and to the ground (IRT Ground).
Joe doing his thing
FLIR camera location
Me doing my thing…
Graph with the IRT temperatures done with Joe’s website
Tonzi savanna