Field work took place in the mangroves of Tuxpan, at the northernmost coast of Veracruz. We chose to switch locations because the regular inundations of La Mancha lagoon made sap-flow monitoring very challenging.
It took a couple of weeks to get the rhythm right… learning curves!. We drilled a lot!, and broke more drill bits that we would have wanted too.
Eventually, we had a proper field lab running!
The drought was brutal. After three weeks of it, we all agreed we’ve never seen the wetland as dry as this:
The water table was well below 75 cm below the soil surface, and it stayed like that until the next full moon, when spring tides and rain upland managed to bring some water into the dry sediments.
This event gave us a unique opportunity to run localised irrigation experiments
Throughout we had massive support from everyone in INECOL, the TPT team was brilliant, guiding us through the mangroves when we first arrived, letting us use their working space and helping out in every little need!
Kropotkin's Garden 