CCZO -- Soil Gas, Soil Moisture, Soil Temperature -- Research area 1 -- (2016-2019)

Zachary Brecheisen, with help from Dan Richter, Will Cook, and others, augered and install 66 soil gas wells at various depths at 15 locations in the Calhoun CZO. Three of these locations are instrumented and continuously monitored, with data recorded every 30 minutes on a Campbell CR1000 datalogger, the rest sampled manually every 3 weeks. Installation occurred in the winter of 2015 through summer 2016. The continuously monitored gas wells target 3 different land use comparisons on flat upland topography. The land uses consist of a reference hardwood forest minimally degraded by human activity, an old-field secondary succession pine forest ~60 years old, and 1 plowed agricultural plot which has been, to the best of our knowledge, continually cultivated since at least the 1930s. The goal of this sampling is to identify anthropogenic biogeochemical signals in the soil profile of cultivated lands and to evaluate their persistence (or lack thereof) in old-field pine forests relative to reference hardwoods.

Methods:

Gasses measured include O2 (Apogee) and CO2 (Vaisala) probes located in soil gas wells at 25, 50, and 150 cm depths. Data are logged on a Campbell CR1000 datalogger every 30 minutes. Daily average values are computed.

Measurements (depths in cm):

Soil CO2: 50, 150 (all plots)

Soil O2: 50, 150 (all plots)

Soil temperature: 0 (soil surface temperature probe), 25 (all plots via TDR probe), 50 (all plots via TDR and apogee O2 probe), 150 (all plots via Apogee O2 probe)

Soil moisture (TDR probe): 25 (all plots), 50 (all plots)

Sites:

R1P1 - pine forest 34.60739,-81.72279

R1C1 - cultivated field 34.61014,-81.72699

R1H1 - hardwood forest 34.60643,-81.72332
Date Range Comments: data collection is ongoing, with data logged every 30 minutes