Sensors

Below is a poster of our monitoring infrastructure.  This system started under the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED), was dramatically expanded with the Keck Foundation HydroWatch Project, and is now part of the Eel River CZO (PDF of poster, 50MB).

Informatics & Cyberinfrastructure

The Eel River CZO adopted a modified version of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc.'s (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS).  We migrated the Observations Data Model (ODM 1.1) to an open source LAMP platform and added methods to record information regarding data quality and events that affect sensors.  Our Berkeley Sensor Database can by accessed using 'guest' login.  It has been in operation since 2008 and has over 300 million records for 700 instruments at a 5 minute timestep.  (PDF of poster, 50MB).

Vadose Zone Monitoring System (VMS)

At Rivendell, where the vadose zone extends to depths greater than 20 m, a vadose zone monitoring system was installed in 2015 with 10 “matrix” sampling ports spaced at 1.5 m intervals in the upper 16 m and 10 “fracture” sampling ports spaced at 1.75 m intervals in the upper 18 m. The VMS is a custom sleeve developed by Ofer Dahan and Sensoil Ltd. that houses samplers and sensors specially designed for complex unsaturated environments.  The VMS sleeve was installed into an inclined borehole, drilled at 55 degrees, and accesses the unsaturated moisture that transits through the weathered and fractured rock above.