Getting there...

It is Wednesday morning and we have agreed to meet in my new office, the terrace of the Coza Nova bakery in Costa Nova, for a coffee, pastel de nata and some discussions about the data. Today is the start of our retraction from the Vagos area. Only three weeks ago we invaded with instruments and a large international group. Now we'll leave, leaving only some staff gauges behind and the and typical "yellow tape" used for marking things. I am visiting three groups today. First is group 5, to follow up on their piezometer installation (coordinates) and check their staff gauge reference for future groups. Mixed feelings of ending this nice joint project but smiles!

Same with Maartje, Julia and Vassiliki, finishing up piezometer installation, removal of rain gauges and data loggers, followed by a few snacks from Coza Nova that I had brought with me.

Then on to group 1, meeting them in our favourite bar in Montouro for a quick coffee. They were in the process of estimating the changes in groundwater storage by remeasuring a number of open wells (noras). But they also had to show me some nice Cretaceous geology, a limestone outcrop near Mamarossa with fossils! Samuel prepared himself for tonight's soccer game. Germany against Ghana, or better on a more personal level - Julia versus Samuel.

Tomorrow the other groups: meteorology and sapflow system removal and some kind of goodbye from the area in Sesta Restaurant in Covao de Lobo.

People who make this all possible...

As field instructors, Vincent, me (Maarten), Henk, Richard - and in other years Boris and Michel - are the faces, together with those of the hydrology students, that appear on the Portugal Field Course blogs. However, there is a team of very dedicated people behind this course that provides support throughout the year. I think that now it is time to acknowledge their important input and thank them on behalf of staff and students alike.

Frans Backer (and Michel Groen) always manage to get all the right equipment ready in time for us to load it into the van. You have seen pictures of this equipment in earlier posts and, believe me, there's a lot of organisation involved to get everything together for our students. We are always afraid to forget some key part when we leave Amsterdam but so far they have always managed to get things complete and in working order. Thanks Frans!!!

We are also very proud and grateful to the mechanical and electronics workshops, who do such a perfect job, not only of maintaining the equipment, but also of developping new tools. An example is the spiral drill, operated by Margreet in the above picture, that allows us to easily sample water at different depths in saturated soils. This is something that you cannot buy anywhere and the results will be used in research publications. Niek van Harlingen, Hans Bakker and co-workers, many thanks from students and staff in Portugal!!!

Ron Lootens and co-workers of the electronics workshop maintain electronic instruments and develop new gadgets for us, such as dedicated dataloggers and other fancy stuff that our students use in the field. Last week, during one of our island measurement sessions, a new idea to measure groundwater levels in minifilters popped up. We contacted Ron and within two days we had the material in Costa Nova to test our ideas. We did this yesterday, as shown in the picture, and it seems to work! Ron, excellent work and many thanks for doing this, and many other things in the past, on such short notice!

We should also not forget the laboratory people. Our students collected 100 water samples (and some soil samples) that are now in the VU laboratory where John Visser analyses them so that the results are there upon our student's return to work with. This is a fast and secure job and we are glad that John is always there for us at this time of the year to make the course a succes. Soil samples will be analysed in Martin Konert's laboratory where Martin is always happy to assist us. Thanks Martin!!!

From the University of Aveiro, Teresa Melo, got us to this excellent area in the first place and helped us setting the course up. Thanks! Jan Jacob Keizer (light green shirt) is so kind to arrange a one-day excursion to his reaserch sites where our students learn about the impact of forest fires on soil, erosion and hydrology. We appreciate this very much. Thanks Jacob!

Many thanks from students and staff in Portugal!

Integration

With the new Dutch political situation in sight, not only Barry is thinking of staying here, but all of us are thinking about emigrating to Portugal. Live in our catchments is fun! We underwent a crash course in integration with local, toothless little (mainly old) people and we are actually able to have a hand/feet/French-Spanish-Portuguese-English mix conversation. Especially now the World Championships have started conversations go something like this: “esta ano Portugal Campione!” “No, Olanda”, “No,Portugal!”, No, esta ano revanche de 2006!’, You want Sardines?” And that’s how you end up in a bar with local drunk old men eating sardines and drinking beer. We found a suitable solution for both sides by wearing orange shirts one day and Portuguese soccer shirts the next day, so everybody is happy.

Although, not all of the local people can appreciate our presence yet.. see the picture to the left...

As Portugal is kind of religious (reed: every house is decorated with saints) we figured we could not pass the opportunity to decorate our car: we bought Saint Cristopher, the saint of the travelers. After the rainy days last week, we needed someone to give the car a little push out of the muddy roads. The rental cars are being well used. Now it is dry for a longer period, we should by Saint Pedro, saint of the rain, so we can practice more for Paris-Dakar and make even better discharge rating curves.

Although communication with locals is an important part of our work, it is not the main reason we’re here. The main goal is to do independent fieldwork. So why are the teachers here? ;) They have already helped a lot of groups with their measurements and giving the students big big icecreams. Too big for the picture. Now you can understand how students get fat during college.

This week the main goal was to collect all chemical samples. Every group has achieved this (no matter what time before the deadline). Also, discharge measurements were done during the rainy days. Many students had the nice company of crabs nibbling their toes while throwing a bucket of salt in the water and measuring the EC. Next to river discharge, through fall (the amount of water that reaches the ground in a certain forest type area) was measured during the rainy season of one week. Further more we had to measure many many many many wells and springs so we can estimate the quantity and quality of the water that is available in our catchments.

Next time we will give you an update of week 3: the main topics will be: Landuse-VES measurements-landuse-coffee-sardines-soccer-EM measurements-landuse-landuse-meteodata-forest fires excursion and Barry. And before we forget: you now have the opportunity to become the proud owner of this beautiful well.

xoxo

More measurements...

Time's moving fast. The samples for chemical analyses have arrived in Amsterdam and our valued colleague John Visser will do the analyses while we are here so that our students can start working with the results as soon as they are back in Holland. Thanks again John!!!

The focus of our measurements has now shifted to geophysics and determination of the permeability of soil, sand aquifers, and even Cretaceous clay.

In the morning we went on such a measurement campaign with Barry, Alexander, Frans and Rick - better known as the BARF group - and if the soil is not too permeable, life's easy.

Then something completey different! We installed the sapflow measurement system with Vicky, Margreet, Peter and Caroline. This allows hydrologists to determine the transpiration of trees, and therefore their water use. It involves drilling small holes in trees, installing sensors in the holes and then connecting these to a datalogger. Fortunately, it does not happen too often, but I made a mistake in programming te datalogger end we could not start the system until today, interrupting the groups geophysics activities... Sorry guys!

Then on to the next two groups, who used the Geonics EM-34 to assess the thickness of the Quaternary sands. This is an en easy and quick method to do so.

and there's always lots attention of the very kind Portuguese, who discuss our strange presence in their fields, and actually do depend on the water resources that we study for their agriculture.

Tomorrow: Excusion day to Colmeal with Jacob Keizer from the University of Aveiro...

Water samples and geophysics

The second week has now passed and water samples have been collected from wells, piezometers, public water points (fontes) rivers and raingauges. These will characterise the hydrochemistry of the Vagos area and have to be sent to the University today so that the analyses are ready when our students return to the Netherlands in 2 weeks.

However, before the samples are shipped with a courier to our lab, we need all data that describes these samples, such as location, pH, EC, alkalinity, nitrate concentration, filter number and other hydrological details that would seem completely useless to other people. Collecting these data in the field is rather easy, but to put them together in a nice table requires quite some organisation within the groups. So there was a lot of frantic computer activity in the Barra resort in the early morning. Two students even went out at 6 am to collect their last samples, what a sacrifice! The image below shows the activity in the Barra Beach Resort's cave room.

Vincent and I then went on to ship these samples, planning to use FEDEX, which would have an office in Aveiro. But no, the office had long gone and FEDEX web site is out of date, bad practice!!! So we shipped elsewhere and samples will be analysed in time.

One of the groups was already out near the village of Rio Tinto playing around with the EM-34 electromagnetic meter that can map geological structures (sand, clay laters) and can tell you how much water can be stored in the soil for many useful things, such as food production. The coils (or hoolahoops as some people call them) are moved over a field and Vasiliki thoroughly enjoyed herself, even eating some Ovos Moles while moving the large coil.

In the meantime Vincent was digging in a pile of mud (better known as Cretaceous clays by our geologist students) from a freshly made well - while answering desperate phone calls from another geophysics teams - and found his first fossilised dynasaur paw imprint, or something like it.

Even after six years of field study, this area keeps surprising us...

Geological excursion Serra de Estrela...

Every year, we organise an excursion to the Serra de Estrela National Park. This is a dream for hard rock geologists, geomorphologists and hydrologists, and a very good learning opportunity for the non-geologists in our field course. However, by this time most students are tired and need a day at the beach to relax, or simply need to collect some more water samples in their catchment so that they can watch the soccer games the next day.

So we took our loaded van, including our borehole drilling equipment and outboard engine, and at 9:00 am, with four students, went on a 1.5 hour drive to reach the park. First stopped at a dam, where the girls decided to swim very briefly in the reservoir water, which was very cold at 14.5 degrees Celsius. Then continued through the granites to the village of Manteigas, where we enjoyed a big lunch.

That's when the real stuff starts. We went up the glacial valley to enjoy the views and stopped at a source (Fonte Martins) to fill our water bottles with exceptionally clean mountain water.

The valley is of exceptional beauty. Made by a glacier moving through the granites during the past ice ages, it is a very straight, classical U-shaped, glacier valley, with morenes, circes and al the other phenomena associated with this geological phenomenom of erosion.

It is also nice to see the granite and its eroded forms in detail so we parked the car and climbed on of the glacier valley slopes, to reach some strangely weathered granite outcrops.

Bought some Serra de Estrala ham at Torre (highest point at about 2000 m above sea level), had coffee, got copious dinner, went to the University of Aveiro garage to get some geophysical equipment and brought the students home. Vincent and me back in our hotel at 23:30 h after a very satisfying day of work/leisure.

Watching the tide roll in

Saturday. Where else to go than to the island? After numerous vain attempts to locate an old piezometer with minifilters, Maarten decided that drilling a new one was our best option. While the students were getting soil samples, we drilled a 5 m hole on the beach. All went smooth until we discovered that our piezometer extensions that we had left behind the week before had mysteriously disappeared. That was a nasty surprise and Maarten went to the garage to get new ones. The nice surprise was that on the way he stopped to buy farturas and cherries. All in all, another great day spent on the island...

Watch this movie and see the tide roll in at 1080 times the actual speed.

More rain...

It rained a lot more last night and this morning. These poor guys planned to do geophysics but had to change their schedule...



In the afternoon the sky cleared so there was an opportunity to do install piezometers. Some people think it is hard, some people do it "with their fingers in their nose".



And this little movie shows another installation. The sand was a bit dry so it took a while. So long that the battery of the camera did not last...



And below some more impressions of the salt dilution discharge measurements and piezometer installations done by the hydrology students...













The field day ended when the piezometer was finally installed, and a groundwater level datalogger - kindly provided by WARECO Ingenieurs - was installed in the tube.

The first rainfall...

The Vagos area in Portugal is perfect for our field course hydrology. It has plenty of wells (groundwater access), a simple but sometimes hidden geology, many different land uses, several rivers that have water at this time of the year, many days with sunshine and always a few days of rainfall. In addition, the Portuguese people are very hospitable.

After a week of sunny weather, we now have a depression passing over Portugal that brings us rain. Rainfall causes changes in the river flow and this means that any schedule that the students have devised for measurements now has to be changed as they have to concentrate in getting the discharge rating curves to capture these changes in runoff caused by the storms and taking river water samples.

It rained last night about 26 mm. All students woke up this morning knowing what to do. Salt dilution discharge measurement method, propeller method, Nautilus method and the float method could all be practiced to get results. We joined the BARF group (Barry, Alexander, Rick and Frans) today. They went to Rua Sambal to measure discharge in the Presa Velha river. They started out with the salt dilution method, but as there was too much flow for their 10 l of salt water.

So they switched to the propeller method to check if this would give different results. As they did not have a rod, some improvisation was needed using a bamboo stick thtat was fortunately present at the site.

Then time to install a new piezometer at the meteorological tower to measure groundwater level changes! Again, the sucking soil did not make life easy.

Tired from all these exciting student activities, Vincent and I decided to visit the island for some fresh-salt water research. We took a rainfall sample and, amazing discovery, we found the spot where the brackish water returns to the surface after passing through the island, just as Vincent's groundwater model predicted!

Workaholic's weekend and progress meetings

For some people in Holland, the weekend starts on Thursday evening. But if you go with the flow in Portugal, there can be no such thing as a day off. Well, maybe on Sunday for some. So what would our students do?

Before continuing it is important to realize that they have been working hard since the first week of May in Twente. Upon their return in Amsterdam, they had a few days to wash their clothes and then they were off to Faro and Tavira to learn system thinking and well surveying. Due to this packed and efficient schedule, their energy levels had been depleted by the time they arrive in Aveiro. There was very little time, one day to be exact, to recover as the equipment needed to be deployed as soon as possible (see previous posts).

On top of that, work plans for the next few weeks had to be made and coordination between the groups was required to plan the use of the available equipment. That meant long evenings, often until midnight, before one could go to bed.

What would you do then during the weekend?

Here is what our students did this Saturday: They didn't stop working. They went back to the field to check if their equipment was properly working. The spent a few more hours to make sure precious dataloggers are properly protected. The staff in the meantime was packing the van in the garage as some of our students had even made bolder plans for Sunday: To install an 8m-well on the Ilha na Ria, the small island we are studying as a side-project.

Installing such a well should not be taken lightly. The weight of the augering equipment and the friction between the soil and the casing and the pebbles that get stuck require brute force to be applied sometimes. The goal of 8 was not reached but we made it to a respectable 7.2 m.



All thanks to great teamwork by Samuel and Caroline, although they did not really get off on the right "foot". To be exact: A little mishap occurred and Samuel's foot ended up in Caroline's eye but all that was soon forgotten. After almost 10 hours on the island we had ice creams in Costa Nova to celebrate the successful installation. These ice creams were so big that they did not fit on any photograph.

Then on Monday, it was time for progress meetings. Using time lapse photography, we made an impression of such a meeting. The movie below is played at 270 times the actual speed.



The plot of this movie is as follows: Staff members arrive right on time but the students are a bit late. Therefore, staff members chat with the owner of the bar and good friend Mario until the students arrive. Students get their coffees. Locals come and go to buy bread in the bar. Clouds pass by. Staff and students discuss previous activities and the work plan for the weeks ahead. In the end, the camera's battery is exhausted so the subsequent work meetings were not captured, but similar scenes would have been shot.



Today it rained and more rain is expected over the next few days. That means the hard work is not over yet...