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...