Part of our field course is to try to make a water balance of the catchment area. This basically means that we look at how much water gets into our area with rainfall, and balance this against the amounts of water leaving our area through evaporation, groundwater outflow and river outflow. The previous days our attention had been on installation of the rainfall and river discharge stations and now it was time to start with measurements of evaporation. This is done by setting up a micrometeorological station at a conveniently located site near Covao do Lobo where lunch is served first. The image above gives an impression of the site selection and the large role in this process of the mental coach.
When the team of students that will report on the water balance has found an appropriate location the meteorological instruments are mounted on a tower, the tower is erected and the logger is connected to the wire spaghetti and switched on. This usually takes a few hours and the whole contraption should then be running at sunset. This year, again, we lost our piezometer for measuring groundwater level changes as the field had been plowed. So we have to return here soon and install a new one...
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