In late October, Oscar and visiting student Francisco made a trip down to the Cedar Mesa AmeriFlux site in southeastern Utah. They installed a number of new instruments at the site that will contribute to Oscar’s research on the seasonality of pinyon-juniper woodlands. These included thermistors within the stems of six trees (also instrumented with Tomst dendrometers and East 30 sap flow sensors), an Apogee infrared radiometer, and two Skye 4-channel light sensors for measuring spectral reflectance across a total of 8 visible and near-infrared wavebands.
Francisco later commented, “I enjoyed seeing how the setup at Cedar Mesa combines different instruments to monitor how trees in the pinyon-juniper woodland respond to their environment. Learning how these tools come together to monitor ecosystem health and resilience was inspiring”.
Apart from the science activities, Francisco also got to experience a number of landscapes and landmarks of the Southwest during the trip, including Comb Ridge, the Moki Dugway, and iconic Monument Valley. Sounds like a great time!
