When planting trees/shrubs at restoration sites we commonly use synthetic weed mats to reduce competition in the immediate vicinity of the plant. These mats are typically black. With summer temperatures routinely climbing into the 80s and 90s, it seems to me that it must get pretty hot under a black geotextile mat. I can't imagine this is helpful to an already drought stressed seedling (this is the northern San Francisco Bay Area). I think the mats are also sold in white, which I assume would reflect more of the light and possibly reduce the surface and soil temperature. I'd like to set some test plots out with black and white mats and measure the temperature and humidity directly under the mat and in the first few inches of the soil. I've looked around for data loggers and I'm finding them pretty expensive. A recent post suggested Thermochron iButtons for a different project. These might work but I contacted the company and it takes 6 months to manufacture them and they are not cheap. This is a pretty applied question and not something that is likely to get a lot of funding. So, I'm looking for cheap data loggers. Any recommendations?
Thanks, Julian
