The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Home again! After 6 weeks in Portugal (where the above photo was captured as we waited for a train from Lisbon to Aveiro) we have happily returned to Amsterdam. Great food, great people, 30 degree days and the occasional plastic hammer filled night will make this a trip to remember.

The rest of the field work went off without a hitch. Our group was very fortunate to have significant rain during the trip (aren't hydrologists odd?), which means that we have great data from our streams and rain gauges. True hydrologists like Maarten and Vincent were terribly excited by the heavy thunderstorms that swept the area. We, on the other hand, were terribly excited about not having to wash the rental cars before we returned them.

Now our attentions focus on the report writing (thanks for the analyses, Borris!) and catching up everything we missed while we were away. It looks like we brought some sun back with us from Portugal, so I am not so sure it will very productive weekend :) Oh well, two weeks is LOTS of time (right????)

Cheers!
Kyle!

Looking for the right spot...

...for meteo ok!
(By Yi, Susana and Josie)

In case you want to know what the right spot for the meteo tower looks like (or feels like), it is strongly recommended to take Ecohydrology and Soil Vegetation and Atmosphere Exchange courses at the VU. Well, to sum it up it has to be a flat and open area. Although Kyle thinks is a mythical place, we found it after a whole day of hard work!!
As if we already knew it was going to be a loooong day, Maarten and Vincent took us for a proper meal.

And as usual, Yi could not resist the meat and rice! (Check the speed)

We had to recover from the huge lunch so we had a walk around town looking for Mr. Presidente of the Junta (town's kind of mayor), AKA Mr. Ramos, for permission to install the torresinha (tower). After checking the pharmacy, the hardware store, and the local bar, we found out that Mr. Ramos already left town before lunch. Oops! We should start earlier!
Then we drove around and around, but of course no one was to be seen outside after lunch: siesta time.
So, after a while, we thought 'why not pick up a random guy near the local bar and let him lead us to the right spot?' ughhhh not! He took us to the middle of the village, even after our extensive explanation in our very best Portuguese (he should sign up for the courses). In the end it was almost impossible to get rid of him, so we do not recommend such a strategy.
Again driving for ever until siesta time was over we finally found a very nice traditional old couple that wanted to help, but they were not the owners of the land. The man thought it was the coolest thing to have a meteo tower on the land, but as usual, the lady showed who wears the pants in the family and decided to ask for permission over the phone with Susana as the translator...giving a Portuguese flare to her Spanish. Everyone was so excited by the sudden luck that Yi and Josie were already setting up the tower! Unfortunately over the phone the torresinha (little tower) sounded like a torresota (big tower), and everything had to go back to the van :(
When we were ready to call it a day...Maarten found a nice potato guy that said "não faz mão, you can put it anywhere you want on my field". YEAH! (17:00 already).
So, with the right spot comes the hard work: building the tower, digging several holes (one for the tower, one for the piezometer), installing all the instruments and plugging the electrical wires into the logger (what a mess!).

Four hours later, with no incoming radiation anymore we were finally ready to go home... but that's another story that ended up in the Carrefour by mistake (oops again, but it was fun!)

Taa-daa!!

(another working day: Susana climbing the tower, Yi checking the cables, Josie making notes)

The Tropical Trip

By Maarten and Jessica
On Friday 16th it was time for a special assignment. Everybody can adjust the field trip to their own preferences. So Vincent (professor) and Maarten K. had the brilliant idea to visit a little sand and grass island in the Ria Boco, close to the ocean. Maarten W. (professor) and Jessica were soon convinced to come along! The title of this log is "the tropical island", but actually, the island looks more like a very small version of Texel… But anyway, we were interested in the possibility of freshening of the groundwater by rainwater. At 8:30 we left from lovely Costa Nova to find a fisherman (or his friend) willing to take us to the island. We found Louis, our German speaking Mister Guide for the day! On the island we started doing some electrical magnetic soundings, which is basically a device to measure the salinity of the water (by the electrical conductance). The results of the measurements were really nice!

Doing the hoola hoop dance!

The next plan was digging a hole! Normally you have an auger to do that, but that would have been too easy for us; we had to do it the old school way. The sand was too loose and we had to use our hands. And that until a depth of 6 meters… Actually, soon we could use a bailer, which was not much better. It was hard work under the burning sun, but what the hack, we were on a lovely tropical island! When we finally managed to complete our hole, we started with the so-called borehole logging. This is almost the same as an electrical magnetic sounding, but with electricity instead of magnetism. In order to use the electricity we had to hammer some electrodes in the ground and lower others in the hole. By the time this was finished it was time for lunch. Unfortunately we expected to be done at lunch time so we didn’t bring any food at all. The earthquakes in our stomachs made the hole almost collapse! We tried to order a pizza but for some strange reason it didn’t work out… We were not done and we had to continue for a few hard hours.
After the borehole logging, we had to begin all over again… We dug out the hole again and installed a piezometer (pipe to measure groundwater levels). In the piezometer we put a diver that measures the salinity of the water. This enables us to monitor the tidal influences. Having done that, we were done for the day! Except Vincent, he had to put on some after sun cream for his lighthouse face… ;-) We called Louis and we got back to Costa Nova with all the equipment. It was just a perfect day!

Rain all night

Our weblog is suffering from technical difficulties due to poor network connections and therefore hasn't been updated for a while. Moreover, the little posts by the students are proof of the fact that they have other, more serious matters on their minds than going to the internet cafe. So, I thought it was my turn to add another post.

There is some very good news, which is worth a post: There has been a lot of rain. Some of it already fell yesterday but most of it came last night when heavy storms passed our area. Our rain gauges recorded between 11 and 29 mm over the past 24 hours. Not bad! Discharge of the streams also increased significantly so there was quite some activity in the streambeds today in order to get discharge measurements for the rating curves. Furthermore, samples could finally be taken to determine the chemical composition of the rainwater. We'll return this year with a very nice dataset with lots of things happening.

During the afternoon we managed to do some EM-34 measurements to establish the geological layering near Tabuaco. The relative humidity must have been almost 100% because we could hardly breathe. Perhaps more thunderstorms are underway.

Besides from all the hard work we are enjoying ourselves still in our spare time. Last Saturday the students organized a barbeque, which went on until 01.00 am or so. We ate a lot of sardines, really good. Sunday we watched the football games, the Netherlands playing against Serbia/Montenegro and Portugal against Angola.


Vincent

A day in the field...

Today Vincent, Sjors, Kyle, Maarten and I went out to install a device to measure the waterlevel, electrical conductivity and temperature of the water in our main river, the Rio Boco. We took the sledgehammer and a piece of tubing to attach the device and hammered it into the river bedrong>强烈推荐
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What came before: Algarve field course

Hello, this is our weblog of the Portugal Hydrology 2006 trip! For starters, we have to warn people reading this stuff in the Netherlands. Since the weather is great and we have a LOT of fun, this might be shocking to you:). The participants are: Yi (China), Susana (Guatemala), Jo (France), Kyle (Canada), Bastiaan, Josie, Sjors, Rob (only Algarve) and us, Jessica and Maarten (Netherlands).

We first got (really) acquainted with each other during the Twente fieldwork. There, we learned how to use a lot of equipment and, especially, how to have fun during fieldwork…

Us with Achille (Italy) and Hylke (Almere, booee), Jochem was there too.


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After having finished that, we flew to Faro, in the south of Portugal (Algarve). There, we started with a one week excursion in the Algarve, with Henk Kooi and ‘Riesjart’ as drill instructors. Again, it was a lot of fun! And we learned some system thinking too, all that in one week! (don’t underestimate the power of system thinking!!). During the excursion we visited some nice spots, like the very impressing beaches and an amazing waterfall, named “the hell”. And indeed, the name says it all, it was a breathtaking jump!

Rob, Sjors and Maarten holding on to his nose. And the girls jumped too!!

After this experience we sat down for a beer and spent some time with the locals. As you can see at the picture, it didn’t take long to fit in.

Doesn’t Kyle look like a typical Portuguese farmer after a hard day of work?!


Henk being the ultimate drill sergeant at a new excursion point: even Riesjart isn’t paying attention…

A very special feature of the excursion was a visit to a salt mine in action. Like real miners/moonwalkers we went down till 230 m. We almost lost a couple of students because the power broke down and the elevator got stuck…(but no worries, everything was under control)
Here, everybody is still a okay…



















Richard and Henk planned our excursion days in such a way that we always ended up on a nice beach! So if the beaches are that interesting, why not a whole day on an island on our only day off.














Working on our tans















This was our cab to the island close to Olhao.

After the first week, we finally got to do some real work ourselves. Divided in groups we explored our areas on mountain bikes. We had to make an inventory of all the water flows in our designated areas. We looked for wells (noras) to measure the water depth and chemistry (i.e. some water stuff…) It was a week full of fun and we all passed! Hatsekiedeee, kat in ‘t bakkie!

To wrap it up, we would like to make a final remark on the first two weeks in Portugal: it’s very interesting to have a cultural diverse group!! For example: Yi finds it very cold here (tsss..) and he sleeps all the time if he doesn’t get enough rice, Maarten is very Dutch and he already found peanut butter here, Susana brings in the Latina spirit (especially on the dance floor..), Kyle is showing how to eat hamburgers, Jessica can already speak some Chinese but no Portuguese, that’s handy…, Sjors is showing how to be a real surf dude, Jo only drinks red wine, sometimes a little too much, Josie being the best uphill cyclist from Limburg, Bastiaan was too busy with the coming world cup, Rob showing his Dutch Pinocchio moves on the dance floor, Richard being the writer of Riesjart on our Portugal football and last but not least Henk, our ‘excellent’ van driver :)!




















A very nice nora makes all of us very happy (or gay)















Yi just ate rice















Rob doesn’t get the system thinking yet
















System thinking in our base camp (if the beer is gone, order a new one: tada we created a system). Beer is 70 cents!!!!!!!!!!

So, this was the summary of the first two weeks. We have only three weeks to go, so see you guys in The Netherlands very soon!!!

Henk, Richard, thank you very much for the two amazing weeks!

Cheers,
Jessica and Maarten

Back in Aveiro

Just like last year, Maarten and I (Vincent) drove a minibus packed with equipment for hydrological measurements to Aveiro. Unlike last year, however, we drove a van that had a powerful engine so that the trip went a bit more smooth. No more sweating and praying while we were going uphill with 30 km/hour in the Pyrenees. This time, the trip was a breeze, except for the awful weather conditions in the Netherlands and Belgium (see photograph).

Upon arrival in Aveiro we both felt as if we hadn't been away. Little has changed here and the year has gone by fast. After checking into the hotel we drove around the fieldwork area to get to know the roads again and to check for water. There is more water in the rivers than last year (see the web log of 2005) but it seems that the levels haven't recovered completely after the extreme drought. The picture below shows the difference: on the left you see the students that installed a piezometer in a dry river bed in 2005 and on the right you see the same river bed this year.



Today we took care of some other logistics (unpacking the van, arranging the rental cars, getting haircuts) and are now awaiting the arrival of the students. We'll take them to their appartments in Barra and then we are going to see the football match between The Netherlands and Italy. After that, it's time for the real thing tomorrow.

Vincent