Back at the VU University...

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...

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.