MSc Hydrology field course Portugal, 2010

Back at the VU University...

2010-07-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

Last week we all returned to The Netherlands. Big change after being together for 5 to 8 weeks! Our students had a weekend off while Vincent, Agnes and I drove 2200 km back from Aveiro to Amsterdam. Agnes enjoyed the trip most as she could close her eyes for a lot of time.

Just like a few years back, we got tire problems in France and had to unload the van on a parking lot to replace the tire. France always gives us bad vibes.

There we were, in the heat of the day, changing a tyre after a very early start of the day...

Now it is data analysis and processing and reporting, and we use the LaTeX typesetting program, which is a first for most of our students. The 8-page paper has to be finished by Wednesday and time is flying.

Getting there...

2010-06-23T15:22:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-06-19T00:56:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-06-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-14T13:13:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-06-13T15:59:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-06-10T13:06:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-06-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

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...

How to spend your Sunday in a useful way...

2010-06-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

Marcello from Coza Nova awaits us with splendid portuguese espresso coffee. It is Sunday, 8:15 h in the morning, and we've just picked up Samuel at his Barra Resort room. We are sitting on the terrace of Marcello's lunchroom looking over the Ria de Aveiro. Samuel had to wake up some of his fellow students, which they did not really appreciate, but we were not sure if they wanted to join in today's mission impossible. Caroline says she will join us a bit later and the rest of the students remain blissfully ignorant of our early morning activities.

We finish the coffee, a few pastel de natas and a kroket, and embark on our mission. It is a beautiful day and portuguese families flock to Barra and Costa Nova to enjoy a nice day at the beach. Our mission is different though. We will take our ugly boat and aim to install a piezometer on the small island in the Ria de Aveiro estuary, down to a depth of 8 m below the surface. Samuel is sure that this can easily be done.

While we see people arriving on the island for leisure, we are bailing sand out of an a PVC casing. At 5 m depth, gravel starts to interfere with our bailing making it hard to continue because the thing gets stuck in the casing all the time. An hour and a lot of sweat later, Samuel is ready to give up his 8 m depth goal...

The students fix minifilters on the piezometer to allow sampling of water at different depths for chemical analysis. Then we put the piezometer/minifilter system in the casing...

This is always the moment of truth: can we get the casing out because. You should realise that there's a lot of friction between the sand and 7 m of casing. This time things prove really hard. The upper casing breaks when we turn the contraption to get it out and we have to break our backs working in the sand. After several worried moments, we decide to use the broken part to try to lift the casing and that works!

We sample some water, see that it is a changing mixture of fresh and salt water with depth. We succeeded, but it has been a long day as we are back on shore only at 18:15 h and feel exhausted. I am really proud of all our hydrology students, their motivation and attitude is great and they hardly ever complain, even under difficult conditions. So we end our Sunday sitting at a terrace in our dirty clothes eating large, well deserved, icecreams. Life's not so bad...

Meteorology and the water balance

2010-06-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

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...

Installation day, now it's getting serious

2010-06-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

Student's all arrived safely at their "beach resort" in Praia de Barra, did their dirty laundry and went on to do some reconnaissance in the Vagos area where they have their five catchments. As their supervisors we went to the garage and prepared 5 instrument kits, for each group equipment including water level sensors, wading suit (too hot to use so remains in back of rental car all the time), boxes, hardware, tipping bucket rain gauges, chemistry kits, pH and EC meters, etc., etc. It was a hot day in that garage but we discovered that we had everything with us. Me "very happy" and compliments to Michel Groen and Frans Backer who again did a great job at the VU University getting everything together!!!

That is all behind us and today we had appointments with all five groups to meet in Montouro - at Café Veneluso, our favourite water hole in the study area - to distribute their instrument sets. There we had coffee, followed by a frantic exchange of stuff from our big van to the small rental cars.

Then went on to do the installation of the discharge measurement stations and (automatic) rainfall stations. You propably never did something crazy like this but it is good to know that this involves:

Selecting a site (often wading through thorny bushes and garbage),

hammering away on a steel pipe with mosquitos attacking you by some of the less fortunate groups that have a catchment that has not been studied before, or where staff gauges had dissapeared upon our return,

Getting the dataloggers in place and programming them,

Happy moments when finished...

And of course some people prefer to do hydrochemistry while sitting on a dirt road near a dead, somewhat smelly snake.

It is late, tomorrow more about the meteorological tower installation and a copulent lunch at Sesta!

Proves of the hard work

2010-05-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

While Maarten and Vincent are doing a lot of work for us, we decided to relaxed for a while at the beach of Barra, still recovering from Henk and Richards booth camp. Although we have participated in a biking experience we really did some work and we have learned a lot. To prove this, we can show you the pictures. Now you can see we really did use the bikes and the titration kit. For those who don't know what a titration kit is: It has been used to do chemical analysis of the groundwater samples we took from the field.

Next to the sweat we also had some blood. Henk has told us he had never seen such a spectacular double salto of a bike (with Noortje). He actually was scared. Luckily Noortje just had some scratches (see picture). Now she gained a lot respect of all daredevil guys.

The last prove is depicted in our final picture. Instead of a nice plant box and swimming pool at a bed and breakfast: hydrologists see here a nora (well) and a reservoir. Try to find it.
Tomorrow the work will start again. We'll keep you updated from Barra beach (our meeting room).

A day of rest, or not...?

2010-05-31T08:24:00.000-07:00

In Barra, some students have taken the time available to do their washing, while others enjoyed their spare time discovering nightlife in Lisbon. The latter practice often is accompanied by too much beer and too little fado. But the journey by train to Aveiro will cure any illness.

Meanwhile, Vincent and Maarten went on to prepare the field course. This involved a lot of thinking while planning, followed by some shopping and frantic rummaging through the instruments in the garage. Finally we transported a big ugly shoe-shaped former soviet flat-bottom fishing boat to the Ria de Aveiro - in a car that would probably be deemed too small by the legal authorities - and practicing rowing to the island. As one of our students is actively rowing in a real Amsterdam Student Rowing Club (named Skoll), we think this activity may please her very much.

Things to do in the weekend...

2010-05-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

While the students had their D-day, staff was driving through France and Spain all Saturday, only to arrive at Hotel Vegallana in the evening. This is a typical Spanish hotel annex bar annex restaurant, which is all about "El Toro". The bull fights were shown on televion, followed - contrastingly - by the European Song Festival. The meal (solomillo - sirloin steak) was excellent as always!!!

Discovered an unused, and unusually elegant, groundwater well in the back garden of a house in Boadillo, just behind the Vegallana Hotel, could not leave without taking a picture, even though it was only 6:50 am.

At 7 am on Sunday we drove off to Portugal. First dumped the contents of our van in the garage that was made available by the University of Aveiro (see picture below). After a good coffee and a pastel de nata, decided to take a look in the fieldwork area and visit one of our favourite places: Restaurante Sesta. Baffled again by the copious amounts of high quality food served there. Then went on to check where our students could place their discharge stations. Everything OK, rivers contained water...

First students will arrive tonight and all housing has been arranged. Amazed again that everything went as planned...

Saterday morning fever

2010-05-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

Today was D-day, which means no sleep, some stress, a couple of beers/ tequila shots and the opportunity to upload pictures as we're bored now with no bikes around. The photos include a nora well (without the donkey) , the staff, some students and the good stuff: food :-)

Enjoy!

Leaving Amsterdam

2010-05-28T14:29:00.001-07:00

Stan Getz is playing his saxophone when we leave Amsterdam. On his smooth jazz and other cool music (Fela Kuti, Madonna, Astrud Gilberto) we have been driving over 800 km today to bring ourselves and our hydrological equipment to our final destination in Aveiro, Portugal. Traffic in Paris is always a nightmare on this journey, but the other part went alright. The car has been loaded yesterday with soil physical and geophysical measurement instruments, water level sensors, meteo instruments, laptops and dataloggers, etc. Always afraid that we forget things... Vincent and I are now staying in a hotel near Chatellerault and will be leaving tomorrow early for Salamanca in Spain. Our students are still in the Algarve - doing a short hydrological field campaign on their own - and will travel to Aveiro by train on Monday.

This Portugal field course was initiated in 1969 so this is the 41st edition of this course, and the 6th time that Vincent and me are running the show. As usual we expect it to be great fun!

Faro, fado, fish, fietsen and soulmates

2010-05-25T15:25:00.000-07:00

If you are reading this blog, you are either family, a friend, a bored hydrologist taking a break or actually really interested in hydrology. It doesn’t matter, the year of 2010 welcomes you to this blog, which will keep you updated on our fieldwork in Portugal!

Getting here in Portugal was a bit of an adventure. We woke up in the middle of the night (some of us just stayed up) to be at the airport around 05:00 when we heard some ash cloud took a u-turn and was keeping us on the ground. Luckily we could leave the next day and we arrived at Faro airport in the afternoon, but not before Margreets bag was stolen in Amsterdam. So much for good luck! We made a pact though and we are now happy to provide Margreet with some cash in exchange for her smile in the coming holiday. ;)

So what have we done so far? Well, we've been swimming in the sea (with the fossils, EC meter did not work anymore). We went to a spring, we played Tarzan and Jane and furthermore we have been celebrating the fish and the famous fado.

So now for the real stuff:
The first week here in Faro consisted of an excursion, which introduced us to the concept of system thinking. This means we drove around the magnificent area of the Algarve (finally we understand retired Dutch people having their second home here) to see different types of wells and springs and we learned how to calculate hydraulic heads and how to connect it to groundwater flow. We also know now how to interpret water quality measurements in relation to geology, geomorphology, vegetation and land use ('go with the flow'). Tibor (former student of hydrology at the VU) also explained about the hydrology in the Campina area, north of Faro. Furthermore we found out that he has met his soulmate here in Portugal when he was here with Vincent (many many years ago). Barry almost met one too (luckily there is still 5 weeks left to find one).

In 2040: Henk and Richard will still be explaining about this region,then Henk will say: “I want to introduce you to Barry. He is a former student of the VU. He met his girlfriend in a local bar 30 years ago. Now he is an underpaid hydrologist.”

After the first week, we are now participating a bikingtour for middle-aged/retired Dutch people. Only 20 km and minimal 9 measurement points a day. As you can read, we are experiencing a lot of fun. We'll see how this will end on saturday, when Richard and Henk will try to crush our minds with system thinking.

We'll keep you updated about our adventures!

xoxo, Caroline and Margreet

The start

2010-05-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

This is the start of a new field campaign season in Portugal. This blog will describe the activities of students and staff in 2010. Happy reading!!!