Flux Tower Projects

Working with the Pepperwood Foundation, and funded by a grant from the Wildlife Conservation Board, we have been working on a project to better quanitfiy the hydrologic and carbon storage implications of forest management.  This project has had two main components:  Improving and better quantifiying the runoff measurements across the two project locaions, and, installing flux towers at the two locations to directly measure the evapotranspiration at the two sites.  The first two towers were installed at the Pepperwood Foundation's flagship preserve in the mountains of Sonoma county.  These were relatively easy to install, if you consider carrying bags of concrete, along with the towers themselves, for half a mile, relatively easy.   Along with these two towers, we aslo installed weirs on two creeks draining the preserve to better quntify the runoff.  This invovled carrying a whole lot more concrete.  The second phase of this project has proved significantly more challanging.  This is largely due to the fact that the installation is located in the Sierra Nevada mountain range at and elevation of 6500'.  This means a short work season, which was compounded by a fire that swept though the area.  These towers are also much larger, 170' tall, which required hiring a contractor to install the towers.  This came with its own set of challanges.  This second phase of the project is ongoing. I have had a provilage to working on this with the fantastic staff at Pepperwood, along with a series of volunteers, interns, and students who have also contributed.