2nd Mpala-based COSMOS probe now calibrated

Our 2nd COSMOS probe is now operational at our flux tower site located at the Mpala Research Center in central Kenya.

The probe is located within the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE), which is a flat savanna composed of Acacia drepanolobium and grass understory. Soils are black clay vertisols (“black cotton”), which go through significant shrink swelling and cracking. Here’s a link to the real-time probe data, which has already been calibrated:

http://cosmos.hwr.arizona.edu/Probes/StationDat/055/index.php

This probe now gives us a second soil moisture observation within a strongly contrasting soil (our first probe was deployed at the Mpala Flux Tower, which is underlain by sandy soils). It will be extremely interesting to see how these probes respond to rainfall heterogeneity over the coming years. The COSMOS project is run by the University of Arizona, and former Caylor lab member Trenton Franz is a postdoctoral research associate working on probe deployment and calibration.