Once again I am posting photos from the field site in Dubois. The project is about quantifying return flow from flood irrigation. Niels Claes (PhD student, WyCEHG), who’s working on this project, is interested in the subsurface component of the water budget.
At the end of April we were back to the field site in Dubois preparing for the intensive summer field season 2016. The objective this time was to install some monitoring wells.
While we were at the field, a giant snowstorm hit Laramie, but we only got a little bit of snow at the site (as you can see on the pics). The working conditions became a little bit miserable, as the temperatures dropped below 0 degrees Celsius.
My role in this whole experience was to capture on video and pictures the work and to label the sediment samples obtained from the boreholes and from time to time to lift heavy drilling parts. I am fascinated with the area, which is gorgeous beyond description, so I am always happy to help with the filed work there.
My main motivation for spending time on this (even though I am not involved in the project) is that I believe in transparency. I believe that scientist should be more open about their scientific work and not only about the outcomes of a project, but also about the process and how does the “magic” happen. From personal experience, however, I know that it is hard to split your attention and take pictures or video, while performing tasks that need 100% focus. Taking into account that we all have work-life balance to maintain, it can be difficult to allocate extra time for keeping our social media accounts alive (twitter, LinkedIn, google+). That’s why I have decided to help a little with that. I think both the project and the place deserve the time I spend on this mini “outreach project”.
On the next day there was some snow on the field (and our equipment)
And here’s how we started the 3rd day: a herd of Elk welcomed us, and some more snow.
Clarification: We were wearing safety helmets most of the time while working around the geoprobe. These 3 pictures showing Niels and Brad without helmets are taken when the geoprobe was warming up and when we were preparing to start working. No heavy lifting or geoprobe operation were done without a safety helmet and we were wearing steel toe protective shoes all the time. No accidents occurred during this geotechical field work .
Similar posts:
- Pre-irrigation NMR measurements (click: May 2015)
- Spotting wildlife April 8, 2016
- Pre-irrigation NMR measurements April 8-10, 2016
It is nice thanks