Wednesday, September 1, 2010

More fieldwork...

Yesterday and today we had 36 degrees C. Almost too hot for being in the field but I'm already getting much more used to it. The nights still get quite chilly but its already getting much warmer and summer is at the doorstep. The current game guard accompanying me this week likes my music so we would listen to my crappy cellphone loudspeaker while we in the field watching bubbles from the tension infiltrometer. These measurements can be very tedious so that you have to let it run for up to 5 hours... But there is always lots to do in the meantime and I'm having loads of equipment to play with!
Not much news for now, but a few new pictures!
I changed the settings so now anyone can leave a comment. Maybe now I can also reply to comments....
Hot regards!!!

My supervisor Eddie came to the field with me for one day to check loggers

Game guard enjoys posing....

 busy busy busy

A reminder why you should drive 50 only...
 
Winter drought specialist

3 comments:

  1. Jaaa, Schnuckie has a blog, nice!!
    Late night greetings from Innsbruck. Back from 35°C and here is snow on the mountain tops around!

    Haha, prototype "fieldwork", really sitting in the grass, yeah. That´s what i associate with this term :-)
    Very nice pictures! What are you measuring? Can you explain in easy short words? Water amount per time, stuff swimming in the water or what?

    Not used to the cold yet, your Schnuckie

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  2. who's got a kinky beard, Eddie or me? ;)
    @ Schnuckie. Do you really wanna know what I'm exactly doing? All right.
    I'm measuring saturated and unsaturated conductivity, meaning how well water flows through saturated (full of water) and unsaturated (not full of water) soils. The unsaturated conductivity I can only measure at the surface by providing water to the surface which is kept at an under-pressure. So then the soil basically sucks the water out of your device (bubble watcher, one of the first pictures) under a constant under-pressure. Saturated conductivity you just measure by providing water to the soil in various depths and producing a volume time relation. Once you get a constant flow rate your reading will be
    valid, otherwise you can't exclude the possibility having partly unsaturated soil or other assumptions for that method wouldn't be
    neglectable.
    Aish I'm just back from the field and feel way too dehydrated...
    sitting around... my bum!!!!

    ReplyDelete