NOW we're talking!

At least 33 degrees, bright blue sky, the sea close by AND it's SUNDAY (= free day)
After 3 weeks of lots of long days in the field and cloudy weather on the last weekend.....yesterday and also today we were and are still able to enjoy the "beach feeling" :)
Just working on our tans, cooling down in the sea, playing a bit of soccer in the sand (Camilo and I won 9: 6 against Hannes and Stefan. Actually the plan was to play until 10:x, but somebody had a delicate problem with his bathers....ask Hannes for the details),

.....NOW we're talking!
We enjoyed the sunset and other spectacular views from a bar at the beach with cold drinks very close by....

greets,
Vanessa

forest fire and soil erosion

Hello from Praia De Barra again!
Last week we left the cool coast behind us to drive deeper inland. On our way we picked up Jacob from the Aveiro Unversity who led us the way into the carboniferous, on winding roads up the mountain hills covered by eucalyptus and pine forests.
To be more precise: Eucalyptus globulus and Pinus pinaster forests which were planted mainly for the paper industry. The natural forest would mainly consist of Quercus suber (cork oak). Jacob told us that since in the last years the frequency and number of forest fires has increased, he was able to get funding for his research on soil erosion after severe forest fires. Togehter with PhD-students he not only monitores the extent of soil transport from the bare and burnt hill slopes but also the re-growth of vegetation.


That day started of very warm; but only shortly after we had started our "guided tour" a cooling thunderstorm built up and gave us quite some millimeters of rainfall.....
Jammer, that this didn't occur in ower own catchments - some people with very little discharge (greetings to Chris ;) ) would have been very delighted indeed. We made the best out of it (see photo) and continued our excursion with some nice fresh "after-thunderstorm" air.
lots of greetings,
Vanessa

Fonta Da Moura

Fonta Da Moura: Stefan is calibrating the EC-meter, Bea is getting everything ready for taking a water sample and Jouke is thinking about if it would be the right time for a cold bath in spring water :)

let's do some ecohydrology!

Most of our study area is covered by pine and eucalyptus trees, which intercept quite a considerable amount of precipitation. To estimate the interception loss, Jouke, Bea, Stefan and I set up 4 throughfall gutters which were made by one of the groups last year (Thanks a lot!) . But the ecohydrology doesn't stop here yet! At another site all the groups installed 4 sapflow devices together. We hope to get an idea on how much pine and eucalyptus trees transpire and if we can link the daily variation to data from the Meteo-Tower

The hard working girl

May I introduce the most hard-working girl of our group: The Meteo-Tower.
Day and night she busily measures a whole bunch of meteorological variables like wind speed, relative humidity, air temperature, incoming solar radiation, etc. always with the ambitious aim of providing enough data to estimate the evapotransipration of the three study areas surrounding her with the help of a nice little Python script.
Nearly two weeks ago, Hannes, Cristina and I built up the Meteo-Tower on a perfect open grass field with the help of Vincent and Michel. It took us a full day - especially connecting all those cables from the measuring devices (alias colored spaghetti) in the right way to the data logger and the calibration of the pressure transducer in the piezometer took quite some time (it was after 5 pm and Vincent's energy storage was running low in contrast to our Meteo-Lady who enjoyed her energy supply from the solar panel.)
BUT....at the end of a long day we managed to leave her alone in the field - hard working, not complaining and enjoyed a very delicious dinner in Maarten's favoured bar.
liebe Gruesse aus Praia De Barra,
Vanessa

Trip to Serra da Estrela

Yesterday we went on our trip to the Serra and you would think that everyone would enjoy a trip to a glacial valley and the highest mountain of continental Portugal. The opposite is true… Only the two of us (Trude en ik) and Sjef (earth and economy bachelor student) joined Vincent, Boris and Michel. After 2.5 hours of driving we arrived in a village in the valley. First we enjoyed a cup of coffee with a local delicacy. We tried to find the road to one of nature’s greatest miracles, the Poco do Inferno. The locals were giving us different directions, so which road to take? Eventually we thought we had found the falls, but later we discovered that we were not there yet… A bit disappointing for a walk that should have been 7 km and turned out to be 18 according to Vincent’s GPS track. And all of this with a hot sun above our head and on a nice slope. By the time we came back in the village everyone’s water and salt balance was far negative. After a nice drink (a lot of water) we continued our trip to Torre, the highest peak. By car this time though. On our way up we had a very nice view into the glacial valley and along the way there were several opportunities for a small snowball fight.
Once we reached the top we enjoyed the great view and some nice ham and cheese. The trip went on following nice mountain roads but for us the time had come to head home. We had a last stopover for a salty diner.
It was a beautiful but exhausting day.
Greetings Trude & Jeska

21 wells and now a Moijto :)

The lighthouse at the beach straight ahead and a cool Moijto straight in front of me.
Bea, Stefan and I are relaxing in the Cafe Farol after a long day in the field. As we started our field work with rain, there was quite a bit to do in the field. Besides setting up tipping buckets and rain gauges, organizing the colorful cable salad of the meteo-tower, punching trees with needles (Sapflow measurements), the very first discharge measurements of 2009 had to be taken - leading us the way to the rating curve.
Already in the first two field trip weeks in the Algarve, we enjoyed the delicious Portuguese food (you have to try the Bacalao!), great vitalizing Bicas (little strong coffee shots) and the pleasant atmosphere of the Portuguese way of life.
Here in Praya De Barra, close to Aveiro, we are continuing with the nice combination of "hydrological system thinking" (Let's think HYDROLOGY! ;) ) and the Portuguese life, food and sun (ok, I have to admit: till now we had more clouds than sun here in Aveiro) BUT.....don't forget....the discharge peak will compensate for that :)
Today we lowered at least 21 times the water happer into pocos and noras (typical Portuguese wells) with the overall aim to set up a network of heads in our study area. A nice little salt method rounded our field day off and we headed back home to call it a day while enjoying cold drinks in Cafe Farol next to the lighthouse.
greets, Vanessa