Establishing the Collar Network

This week we established the 'collar network' that will be used to sample the carbon being emitted from the soil surface every 2 meters for the entire plot. The collars are PVC pipes 10 centimeters in diameter that are pounded 10 centimeters into the ground, leaving about 10 centimeters above the ground which will be important later on when lids will be placed on the collars to allow for gas collection and sampling. The collar placement is represented on the map below by the black dots, totaling in 64 collars (Figure 1). The process of pounding in the collars requires a level and a good hammering arm to make sure the collars are straight and stable in the soil.

Figure 1: Collar placement (black dots) at the Lyon site