Reference no: EM133693203 , Length: word count:2000

Sensors and Sensing for Scientists

Field Prac 1: Terrestrial

Aim

The aim of this field practical is to give you practical experience in a field environment using commercial sensor products such as the Campbell data logger, Campbell CR300, Hobbo, iButton and Pycom platforms. You will be measuring light levels, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, soil moisture, photosynthetic radiation across a variety of locations.

Your practical group will be split into three activity streams who will rotate between the following three activities. Within each activity stream, you will divide into smaller groups depending on equipment availability. Your demonstrator will advise each activity stream of the number of students you will perform the activity with. You should be maintain the same group for recovering the vines as deploying the vines.

Activity A: To recover data from the sensor vines previously deployed in the last lab-based practical.

Activity B: This will involve data collection and measurement with a variety of sensors connected to a Campbell data logger

To recover data from a Campbell weather station (humidity, PAR, temp, soil moisture) which has been pre-deployed at a location on campus for some weeks.
To make measurements with a roving Campbell Weather station (PAR, temp, humidity, soil moisture) across different locations on campus.

Activity C: To make measurement of wind speed and direction (cup anemometer, wind vane) at various locations on campus using a portable CR300 data logger

Assessment
You will need to produce and submit one journal quality graph with a succinct description (no more than four lines), for a small subset of the data you have collected. You could choose, for instance, data from one position (sensor) on the vine. Your graph should include two variables e.g., temperature and relative humidity; wind speed and direction.

Recovering data from Vines
When recovering data from the vines, data will be downloaded to dedicated ipads and laptops. The complete data set from the vine will be compiled by staff and made available on LearnJCU.

You will need to download the data from the sensors that your group originally deployed to the vine Hobbo data will be downloaded to ipad
Ibutton will be downloaded to laptop Pycoms will be downloaded to laptop
It is essential that you record the position of the sensor on the vine on the attached template

Roving sensors (Weather station and wind sensor)
There is no prescribed procedure for field work involving the roving weather station and wind sensors. You may choose the locations to make your set of measurements.
For the weather station activity A, we suggest that you consider the creek, open areas with and without vegetation, varying soil types etc. All sensors will be preprogrammed and ready for data collection. You task will be to initialize these and move the sensors around to collect the data.

There is about 1 hour for data collection for any one activity, and it is up to you how long you spend at any one location.

We suggest that you do not stop and start the data loggers. Rather, you should allow them to continually record and come up with a method to delineate when you are at a different site. For instance, covering the PAR sensor on the weather station will cause a zero reading and this can coincide to when you are moving the weather station. Recording the time at locations is essential, especially so for the wind sensor since stopping the wind sensor to demark moving the sensor could coincide with a period of no wind anyway! .

Also, make notes of the site where you are recording the data.

Marotte Current Meter Field Notes

Produce a map of river currents by deploying the current meter at multiple locations along and across the river.
For each location deploy the instrument for several minutes to allow for averaging of data, fill out the log sheets and mark the location on the map.
After the deployments are complete download the data and use excel to find the average speed and direction for each location.
Add the speed and direction to the log sheet and the map.