Hammer time (São João 2008, Porto)

After a long day in the field, it was time for a little party. We heard about a nice one in Porto including hammers, garlic flower-thingies and a big firework. It has something to do with a guy that lived a long time ago, his name is São João. We took a quick shower and a fast-food diner and took the cars to drive to Porto. There we bought some hammers, “just for fun”.


Picture: field equipment of the day


Movie: The warming up

The metro took us to the centre of Porto. We were in a hurry, because the firework would start at 0:00. The metro was crowded, a lot of people with plastic hammers. When we got out of the metro we followed the other hooligans towards the ribeira. There we saw the firework, it was awesome!



Picture: fireworks



Movie: fireworks

Then we went downstairs and had:
- free sardines and free beers from local people;
- beer
- a lot of slapping with the hammers
- sexy time
- more beer
- more slapping with the hammers
- fun





Picture: Students equiped with hammers




The atmosphere was realy good, it was like queensday in Amsterdam, but then without the queen and orange thingies. However, this party has a lot more interaction with other people. At least 1000 people (most of them females) know now about the students from the VU doing their fieldwork in Portugal!


Movie: Serious hammering

At 7 o’clock we went back to “Barra” for some sleep. This party was the best ever!! Hell yeah.


PS - The final scores:

Maarten "Slotty"_________4954 hits
Roos "Anne"____________1576 hits
Sander "Ze German"______1576 hits
Andres "Lost my Thingie"___16 hits (hammer was lost within 5 minutes)
Lodewijk "Lo"___________5387 hits
Rutger "Fuckin' Anarchist"__5923 hits (including 3 policemen)
Reinert "Muscle Viking"____-46 hits (this boy likes to hit himself)
Lisa "Mona"____________5748 hits
Joanna "That's Nice"______801 hits
Ruben "Player"__________1278 hits (was busy with other thingies)
Rob "didn't show up"________0 hits
Harmen "Mind your Step"__5955 hits

Quarta-feira, 18.06.08, 7:45

After a long night, grupo uno (Andres, Harmen, Reinert and Rutger) woke up and started with a good Portuguese breakfast. We noticed that it’s very important to have a good breakfast, because the motto of the group sounds like: “Água mole em pedra dura, tanto roça até que fura”. A good Portuguese breakfast includes milk, chocolate cereals (gives extra power), a lot of coffee, other types of cereals and last but not least morangos (à €1.75/kg).


Picture: breakfast with cereals in the livingroom, breakfast with cereals in the sun

After the calibration of the EC meter, we took our dirty car with a couple of bumps to go to our fieldwork area (for the insiders: west-side). When you take some time in the morning for a good preparation, the more fun you have in the field, and the better the results.


Picture: titration in the field, calibrating the EC meter in the morning

In the field, we had to finish our hydrochemistry. This is a very accurate job, the less bubbles, the better the result. A small air bubble can be enough to ruin your sample and sometimes even your day.


Picture: bubble of air, lunch in Montouro

After the break (as always in Montouro), we decided to install a piezometer, "just for fun”. Maarten and Vincent joined us in the field, with the big blue “DIKS” van. First, we investigated the dipping of the geology in the area. Then we made a hole using the auger and installed the “VU 26” piezometer. It was the first time that a piezometer was installed perpendicular to the dipping of the layers (angle of 7.36°). In the afternoon we went to a pine forest (gândara do pinheiro) for an EM-34 sounding and profile, to be able to estimate the thickness of the aquifer in this area. During the measurements, two very small inhabitants of the forest were curious about what we were doing.


Pictures: “el gatito”

It was very hard to leave in the end, they were so cute!! But as el gatito refused to jump through the hoop, we said goodbye and went home.

Thanks to our mums,

Andres P.
Harmen vd B.
Reinert K.
Rutger B.

Meteo day.

As a part of our fieldwork we built our own meteorological tower, equipped with different measurement devices to record wind speed and direction, temperature, relative humidity, incoming and reflected radiation and soil heat flux.
The main goal of setting up the tower is to calculate actual evaporation for our 3 catchments, one of the main components of the water balance.

With our ‘’meteo team’’: Reinert, Ruben and myself, under Maarten’s supervision, we were busy most of the day connecting devices, installing all the wiring and programming the data logger.

In spite of heat and working all day long, we still had lots of fun and achieved very satisfactory final goal: brand new meteorological tower, ready to work.

Ruben and Reinert working hard on the tower's base, while Maarten is pulling the strings…

Installing a tipping bucket can be so much fun....

…as well as the wiring, which I took care of.

And here is our team complete, pround to present a brand new tower.

Cheers,

Joanna

Today, Maarten Slot and I (Rob Tijsen) went to the local bricolage to buy material for our canopy interception measurement. It was the day after (4-1!) so we needed several bica’s to wake up. We drunk our last at the cafe in Montouro and decided it was time for some good old hydrology action.

We choose a spot near the tipping bucket of group two. Hereby we can use a first-class precipitation measurement for the reference. We installed tree rain cutters in a 1) mixed pine-eucalypti forest, 2) eucalypti forest for the paper industry and 3) under some schrub vegatation. The cutter on the first location is 6 meter long, the other two are 3 meters long. All are 10 cm wide.

Only thing left now is rain! Its forecasted for Sunday (tomorrow) and Monday. We’ll wait, see and keep you updated.

See ya’

Rob

After a Friday in the field we landed in a cafe in Barra. Main reason was naturally to see our team playing against France and to let the Portuguese know that we where there. Pic is in the bar where one of us shows that we go all the way to show our feelings for the team. Afterwards we played the prematch of the coming final on a grass field in Barra. It was hard working with the six or seven of us against the 15 of them, but nevertheless, we won at the end with a golden goal. Hope you all enjoyed the game as much as we did.

Cheers,

Rob

And more from Tabuaço group...

Today we went out with Lisa, Joanna, Sander and Rob to place a piezometer in their area. We met in Montouro for a cup of coffee and then drove to Bustos to find a suitable place for measuring groundwater. We ended up near a large clay pit that is used for the production of ceramics. You cannot call this an undisturbed environment so we looked around a bit and found a more suitable place. Lisa and Joanna started augering away under the inspiring supervision of Vincent, whereas the boys watched the spectacle.

Augering for water...

As there was some Quaternary sand on top of the clay we had to make sure that the filter in the clay layer was closed so we made a mud mixture, of which some landed on the face of Rob for some strange reason.

In the afternoon, we went to Oporto to pick up Michel, who will replace Vincent and we went to Rosario to have a lovely dinner. Carlos, Rosario, Thanks!!! Oh yeah, Netherlands - France 4-1...

Progress in Vagos fieldwork...

Well, have been doing fieldwork for 8 days now and nobody had time to do some blogging, so now I feel it is my turn to show some highlights of what we did. We started of with a one day excursion to get everybody up to date with the local geology and to practice water sampling.

Water sampling at Rio Agueda, a wet affair...
We first went to see some Paleozoic rocks first (schists for the specialists among you) and had a sunny lunch on the banks of the Rio Aqueda. Then we past our favorite Trias excursion point, which was now hidden behind a new building and went into our research area, where our students found contact springs and practiced distinguishing local geology (Cretacious / Tertiary and Quaternary formations). We ended the excursion at the outlet of the Rio Boco catchment, our study area for the next few weeks.

Greetings from Rio Boco...
The next days were spent installing equipment (pluviographs, automatic rainfall recorders, meteorology tower, water level sensors, etc.). For me it is always funny to see the slight confusion that occurs when you have to apply theory to practice. Fieldwork really is an excellent educational tool and fun to do!

Hidden installation of water level logger in Ribeira do Tabuaco...
After the equipment is set up, we get more time for the real work, i.e. installing piezometers for water level and hydrochemistry measurements, measuring soil and ground water storages, and doing special projects. These projects include sampling of a lot of public springs in the area to check the water quality for the city concil of Vagos. Important, because people prefer to drink this water at their meals as they say it tastes much better, aqua boa!!!

Lunch at Montouro, also a great place to watch the soccer games...
Celebrating the installation of a piezometer in a Cretaceous formation with a very strange hydrochemistry...
And now we arrive at today's actions. We went to "The Island" in the Ria de Aveiro estuary with our small, slow and very ugly russian built speed and installed a piezometer with minifilters to study changes in fresh/salt water hydrochemistry with depth. We also did hydraulic conductivity measurements and measured the circumference of the island at high and low tide.

Installation of the minifilter piezometer on the Island...
We call this work, but most people would call it a nice day on the beach...