MSc student field course Aveiro - Portugal

Last and final update July 19th.

Welcome to our weblog! Here you can read about the events during our stay in the Aveiro region (Portugal), in which we (11 students and several staff members) carry out a hydrological field study. This study is part of the 2-year master's programme of the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences at the VU University Amsterdam. We are staying in Aveiro from June 18th until July 18th. During our stay we will update this page every 2 to 3 days, so you can stay updated about everything that is going on. Participants are Merel, Jasper, Wouter, Cedrick, Marleen, Mark, Hugo, Fabricio, Rita and Jorge.

The great journey (19 June 2005, by Vincent)

The hydrological field work in Portugal is a replacement for the former fieldwork in the Dolomites in Italy. To us as staff members, setting up this 1-month field work meant a great deal of preparation. I should firstly mention that we are extremely lucky to have Teresa Melo of the Univeristy of Aveiro as a local counterpart who has been so great in helping us with all kinds of things. A word of thanks should also go to Michel Groen and other employees of the field work department of the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences in Amsterdam who have taken care of all the equipment.

 

And that brings me to part one of this story, which is about our journey to Portugal and getting our equipment here. We will be doing all kinds of hydrological measurements (discharge in streams, groundwater levels and chemistry, meteorology, soil moisture, sap flow in trees and geophysics) and the amount of equipment we have with us is enormous. In only just fitted our van. In France we were picked out of the queue at the `Peage' to have our van weighed and it turned out we were 350 kg too heavy. Luckily, the police officer was in a good mood and we were allowed to continue our journey.

The ride to Portugal, which started on Thursday June 15th, took us from Amsterdam to Antwerp, Paris, Bordeaux, Bilbao, Salamanca and finally, Aveiro. There was a slight delay in Antwerp and a major one in Paris but for the rest, thinks went smoothly, thanks to EU-financed asphalt. There were stretches of mountain roads when the van was doing only 40 km/h but it pulled through and we reached our destination on Saturday morning, just after eleven o'clock. After meeting with Teresa we unloaded our equipment, picked up Hugo who had arrived the night before and went for lunch. The students who went to the Algarve, just before this field work, all arrived perfectly on time by train and we took them to their appartments, which Teresa had arranged for them. After that we split our ways, giving them a one-day rest before we start on Monday.

The first day (22 June, by Cedrick)

Today was the first day of our field work. We gathered at our big home to have an introductional speech from Vincent. But first the cars had to be rented, so we had a half day off. When the guys came back we were really surprised by the cars. We didn't expect to get Rovers with CD-player and air conditioning. The only things that missed were private drivers.

Back in the house Vincent started his speech and explained some basics about the field work. It must be very nice to do a surface water field work without surface water.



After the theory we went for an excursion to see all the different geologic features in our area. It was kind of hard for the drivers to follow the rest, so we had to stop several times to search for the lost ones. We stopped at several places to look at some hydrological and geological highlights. I won't go into any details because time is running out and my pizza is getting cold. Hope you enjoyed it. Bye!

Installation of the equipment (22 June, by Wouter)

Yesterday we searched for locations to install our measuring equipment. Today was chosen to turn our plans to reality. In the morning the total group including teachers met each other at the appointed place, one of the apartments in praias de Barra.

In the morning with help of a cup of coffee to keep our eyes open the two fieldwork groups decided whether there was a good distribution of the planned equipment locations with respect to the research area. 

After this short consideration the measuring stuff was divided over the groups and the cars. One of the teachers, Vincent, was driving the VU-van and when the separate groups were installing their devices Vincent was driving around to get new stuff for the groups. Most of the time the van was in the first gear climbing the hills with astonishing speeds, at least pedestrian speed.

Different equipment can be distinguished: in the first place the pressure transducers for measuring groundwaterlevels and riverwaterlevels en secondly the raingauges that can be subdivided in totalizers (manual measurement) and tipping buckets (automatic registration).

All the equipment will help us determining the temporal and spatial distribution of riverflow, groundwaterlevels and rainquantities. In combination with applying the rain dance we must be able to measure some river-, rain and groundwater after this day.

Sap flow part I (23 june, by Rita)

We went to Alfusqeira in a small group: Maarten, Fabricio, Wouter, Jorge and me. We followed two PhD students from Wageningen from Larenstein: Merijn and Steven. Near the place of study of Merijn we have met Jacob, a researcher from Aveiro university. Jacob showed us a meteorological station where there is a cup anemometer, a wind vane, a pyranometer and a tipping bucket with a hand bucket for comparison.

After that we went to a pine forest where a work about interception has been done for Merijn and Steven. There we have chosen 4 trees for analysis of sap flow measurements, 2 small and 2 big trees. We have taken measurements of the diameter of the stem of each tree. After that we made 2 holes of about 2 cm depth in order to insert sensors for measuring the temperature difference. This sensor consists of two wires of one is heated. The unheated wire is our reference temperature. From the temperature difference, the sap flow will be calculated. We will come back next week to install the sensors. We brought a piece of  dead wood in order to calibrate our sensors with the nocturnal voltage
response.



We left the pine forest and visited a little river where Jacob measures
its water level. We continued following Jacob by car up until the Alfusqueira river. After that we passed a supermarket to buy batteries and a charger. We came back to the house, waited for Maarten for a couple of hours. When he arrived we received some information about programming the data logger.

After that we worked until 1 o'clock, programming the data logger. When the program was almost finished, Fabricio and Wouter went to an internet cafe to print the program. Fabricio continued to work on the program until 3 o'clock...

Setting up the meteorological tower (June 24, movie by Maarten)

Below is a link to a movie that shows us setting up the meteorology. It is a fast speed movie (6 MB, avi file, requires divX codec).

(Movie is missing.)

Building the tower

PHREEQC course and pig roast (June 30, by Vincent)

It seems we are a little bit behind with our weblog. The students have many things to do, both work and fun-related, so it's up to me to write something about Thursday's events. On that day, Teresa and I taught a short PHREEQC course for university of Aveiro students. There were 5 participants with different backgrounds who were interested in geochemical modelling. The course was intended to give them a basic introduction to the program and the principles behind it. It is also the beginning of a joint VU University Amsterdam/University of Aveiro course on geochemical modelling, as there are plans to develop a web-based course which can be taken by students of both universities.



When we ended at around 5 o'clock, the butcher had just arrived with the pig that was going to be our meal. Teresa and other temporary staff of Aveiro University had organized a barbecue (or better, a traditional pig roast) to which we (including the students) had been invited. The animal, weighing 68 kg, was beheaded with a sharp knife, put on a metal rod and then the fat was cut off which was, together with lemons, put in his belly. It was then roasted on a wood and coal fire for hours and every now and then some meat was cut off, marinated and served with (declicious) bread and salad. Quite a memorable meal I must say and many students, especially Jorge, thought the same.



The evening ended with having some drinks in a bar in Aveiro. Some students couldn't resist and even measured the discharge of the fountain in Aveiro, which, as most water resources in this area by now, has almost dried up.

Hydrology students visit Lisbon during the weekend!!!

From left to right: Merel, Cedrick and Mark



From left to right: Mark, Cedrick, Merel, Hugo, Wouter, Jasper and Fabricio

Geophysics (July 5, by Cedrick)

Today we (Mark, Jasper and Cedrick) planned to do the geophysical measurements in our area. After disaster-yesterday we were very anxious to obtain some nice data today. Yesterday the measurements were spoiled because of the very dry soil. We tried to do some measurements in a forest, us against nature, but it didn’t work out. Even the trees didn’t like the dry soil and started falling down next to us.

So today was revenge-day. Vincent joined us just as yesterday. We started with a VES (vertical electrical sounding) and everything seemed to be all right the first 30 minutes. What happened next isn’t of big importance. Error, stressed students, stressed teacher, re-measuring, error, error, error etc. etc. We decided to go to our “stamkroeg” to have a proper meal. We go there every field day and it’s typical Portuguese. For 5 euros you can eat as much as you want and it doesn’t matter how much you order, the price always is 5 euros. The other guest are screaming and shouting and the tv is at highest volume. But it’s a nice place to be. The people are friendly and try to get you as fat as possible.

In the afternoon we started with the EM-measurements (electromagnetic). We tried to define some different lithological layers and it worked out quite well. Happy!
After a hot and exhausting day we went for a swim in the sea in preparation of some report writing.

Sap flow part II (July 5, by Rita)

In the morning, Fabricio, Jorge, Rita and Wouter went to the Pinus Forest. The work in the forest started around 11 o’clock and the group taken 40 liters of water with them in order to simulate a storm. Two trees were chosen for the simulation: a small one (tree number 2) and a big one (tree number 3). The same trees were chosen before for installation of the sap flow sensors.

Holes were dug in the soil near the trees. Next to the tree number 2, 3 holes were made in the ground: one up, one down and the third one at northeast of the tree. Five liters of water were introduced in the holes 4 times (totalizing 20 liters) alternately, in intervals of 6 min, 16 min and again 16 min, respectively. Only one hole in the soil up to tree number 3 was dug and also a total of 20 liters of water were introduced in the hole in interval of about 10 minutes. Previous data were written down and permitted to observe quite a difference between the sap flow data before and after the storm simulation. Also the tree number 1 had a response for the storm simulation, probably because it is very close to the tree number 2.

The following step was to measure the humidity of the soil in the ground in each hole in which the water was applied and for the natural conditions in the middle of the hill.
The final task was to recognize the grid already done for Merijn and Steven (MSc students from Holland) and adopted for the group. The grid was used for the localization of the trees previously chosen for the sap flow measurements and for the pictures with the fish-eye camera, which were done randomically in order to obtain the overview of the canopy for use in the LAI measurement (estimation). Twenty pictures were taken.

Our precious buckets (July 7, by Maarten)

Portugal remains dry and water now forms a major problem in the Algarve where the tourist season is just beginning. The reservoir/dam that supplies water to the region is nearly empty and water use is severely restricted. Some people in charge propose to solve the water shortage by pumping more groundwater but this could lead to serious problems when salt water is pumped as freshwater aquifers become depleted. Anyway, in the region near Aveiro such problems do not occur yet and the farmers remain confident that there will be enough water in their wells. The extreme drought does pose a fire risk here because the vegetation is extremely dry and smoking outside is already forbidden. In the past 3 weeks we only had 1.7 mm of rain!



Today Vincent and I joined a group of students that wanted to work on the meteorology and do some geophysics in their area to determine the depth of the sands that cover the cretaceous clays. These sands hold most of the fresh water used in agriculture and there are a lot of large, open wells (called noras), in these sands. We made to vertical electrical soundings and also used an electromagnetic instrument to get our answers. It seems that the sandy layer is about 30 m deep and can therefore hold a lot of water. The students also did some soil permeability tests with a ring infiltrometer and we all became hungry, of course. So we had a great lunch (prego na prato) in a nice restaurant.



Vincent and I had been looking around for parts of now derelict noras for our display case at the university and a very friendly farmer gave us some of the rusty buckets that were used 20 years ago for getting water out of these wells. Great stuff that, together with a tile panel (azulejos) showing a nora and some action pictures of our students, will make a great display!

Spring d-day (July 8, by Merel)

On 8 july of the year 2005 it was Spring D-day. Team members: C, Pinky and Merelho(ogmoed). Our mission: retrieve as much data on springs as possible for the municipality of Vagos. Our sources: one car, hydrological equipment (you will not be bothered with that), a map and GPS (for your information, the GPS was not build-in in the car). Conclusions:

• Some springs are harmful for (digital) cameras
• The water in Mesas is wetter than in the rest of the area (see picture, still to come)
• Nitrate contents can be high
• Our Portuguese is very bad
• Our Portuguese isn’t improving
• Hmm hmmm
• The bottom plate of the car can handle everything (this has been verified)
• If you want water, stand in line
• You can’t measure enough springs
• TITRATIONS ARE FUN

Final conclusion: Mission accomplished.

P.S. For the scientific results, read our report...

Beautiful for the wrong reasons (July 8, by Vincent)

Today we had a beautful sunset. The reason for it, unfortunately, is less beautiful: Because of the drought, a forest fire has broken out near Aveiro and a cloud of smoke covers the skies...

Robbed... (July 13, by Merel)

Today it was the last field day of our hydrologic adventure. We expected it to be a quiet day, just taking out the equipment. And so we arrived at our first location...
Our totalizer is gone! This caused a bit of a nasty surprise. Still full of confidence, not aware of the horrifying truth, we walked into the field to retrieve our data from pressure transducer (never mind the terminology, it’s a hydrological measuring device). And there, it wasn’t.

As you can imagine, this was a very nice start of our last day. But we were determined to find it back, so we looked everywhere, leading to another disappointment. But, as always, there was a very helpful farmer, which took us across the whole village to find out who took (or stole) our equipment. The irony was that the last place the guy took us, his own house, contained the previously missing totalizer. This mystery is solved, we’re still hoping that the, far more important and expensive pressure transducer will be refound. So, anyone, if you took our pressure transducer and you read this, please give it back, because we miss it very much.
This took all morning. So much for a short field day...



Next point on the agenda was a water sample from a certain well. Because of the nice overview you have from the ever reliable Ford Transit (contact Vincent for details), we spotted a lake. Or flat area, formerly known as lake. Luckily for us hydrologists, there was a (small) pond in the middle. And of course, we couldn’t resist taking a water sample because: TITRATIONS ARE FUN!!!!!! (see also Spring D-Day). Our mental coach, who had a very busy day by the way, was walking towards the pond. But because of the very moist soil, we sank into it till the border of his shoe. Oego however, managed to reach the pond with dry feet, as did I. It was even fun to jump onto the soil to cause land subsidence as Oego described it. On the way back to the edge of the flat area, formerly known as lake, I suddenly sank into the ground. Not like Vincent just a few centimeters, but up to my knee (see picture). All of a sudden, Vincent wasn’t so worried about his shoe anymore. Luckily there was a well nearby where I could refresh myself. Looking like a lady (hmmmmm), we were ready to have lunch (in Hollande we would call this diner) at our favourite Café (if you are planning to go there, Covao do Lobo, opposite of the church). Stuffed, we decided to say goodbye to ‘the German lady’ (also Covao do Lobo, next to the church). Interesting, as usual.

At every stop where we had to take a pressure transducer out we were afraid it was gone also, but, fortunately, they were all still there.
On the way back we checked once more if the pressure transducer hadn’t suddenly appeared again. It didn’t. As usual, there where some very helpful Portuguese people who also didn’t know where it was. Conclusion of our last field day: #$@* $#&#, but fun.

You might have wondered what Marleni was doing in the meantime? Typing, typing, typing and typing. Lots of fun!!!
Now I have to stop, because there are still some samples waiting. And as we say, here in BarraBarra: TITRATIONS ARE FUN!!!

Presentations and interview (July 14, by Vincent)

Friday, the final day of the field work, included packing the van (for Maarten and Vincent), evacuating and cleaning one of the student appartments and, in the afternoon, the presentation of the results at the university of Aveiro. All students presented a small part of the work they carried out as a group. Both the amount of work and the quality of the presentations was very good and the students managed to impress their audience. Well done!



After the presentations, staff and students gathered for a group picture and talked to the press. That is, a reporter of the university of Aveiro news magazine had gotten word of the collaboration between UA and the VU and wanted to publish a paper on this. Staff and students were interviewed, thus making their debut in the Portuguese media.



Then, to celebrate that all students had passed this course, we had dinner in one of Aveiro's nicest restaurants, O Adriano. Maarten and I would like to thank the students once more for picking up the bill, a very nice gesture which we really appreciated.

The students stayed in Portugal until Monday, enjoying the beach of Barra for the last time while Maarten and Vincent were enjoying the trip home in the ever-reliable, but very slooooowwww Ford Transit. Despite the engine noise and a flat tire we safely made it home with all the equipment. This week, students will finalize their reports and then it is really over. Quite a shame, we really enjoyed it...