Climatological and hydrological field work

Please follow this link for the course information retrieved from the ETH semester programme.

Dear students of the above mentioned course

We will meet in about one month. Thus, it's time to give you some more information. Please read it carefully. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact me (irene.lehner@env.ethz.ch).

I look forward to an interesting and hopefully sunny week!
Cheers, Irene

Date and Location

11.-13. June 2012: Hydrological research catchment next to Gähwil (SG) - field part, i.e. experiments
14.-15. June 2012: ETH Zürich, CHN L17.1 - data analysis and presentations

Lecturers

Benoît Guillod, Boris Orlowsky, Heidi Mittelbach, Julien Anet, Thierry Corti, and myself. We are all members of the IAC.

Students

Actually, you are 31 students. If there's somebody who decided finally not to join us, please let me know as soon as possible.

Here are the registration numbers of the students that are in (status 15.05.2012):

05-907-001
06-059-497
06-532-089
06-919-096
06-920-169
06-921-332
07-718-919
07-907-595
07-908-254
07-910-458
07-913-411
07-922-313
07-923-170
07-923-238
07-923-261
08-718-132
08-741-910
08-809-667
08-910-937
08-911-083
08-913-451
08-913-477
08-916-876
08-918-328
08-927-899
08-934-937
11-903-176
11-942-299
11-942-752
11-943-073
11-943-495

Credit Points

To grant the 2.5 credit points you have to attend all five days, i.e. field experiments, data analysis and final presentation.

Preliminary Schedule

The following table shows the planned schedule of the week. Be aware that there can always be some slight changes.

Travel

We will meet on 11.06.2012 at 10:22 am at the bus stop "Gähwil, Dorf".
And you will be back in Zürich on Wednesday latest at 7:30 pm.

Accommodation

You will stay from Monday until Wednesday in the Mehrzweckgebäude Silberwis, Sportstrasse 3, 9534 Gähwil SG. We have two dormitories of the civil defense service. Thus, you have to bring along a sleeping bag.

Experiments

You will be split up in six groups of 5-6 persons. There will be six experiments whereof you have to carry out five. Just to give you an idea:

• Discharge: You get to know several methods to determine discharge in the field.
• Radiation: You make measurements at different locations.
• Soil moisture - profile measurements: You drill your own borehole to make measurements and you carry out some groundwater measurements.
• Soil moisture - spatial pattern: You walk around the area to make spatially distributed manual measurements of the uppermost soil layer.
• Balloon sounding: You launch your own weather balloon.
• Other measurements: You get an idea about the process from a scientific idea to the measurements in the field.

Data Analysis

You will be split up in groups of 3-4 persons to analyze one of the following topics and to present your results (about 20' presentations) on Friday to the group.

• Meteorological conditions and boundary layer
• Comparison forest vs grassland
• Radiation (balance)
• Temporal variability of soil moisture and ground water
• Soil moisture, focus on spatial evolution
• Discharge
• Water balance
• Energy balance
• CO2-flux

Scripts

Please download the following scripts and bring a print to the field course. If you have time to have a look at it in advance it would be great!

• Discharge
• Radiation
• Soil Moisture
• Balloon Sounding
• Other Measurements

Food

Breakfast and dinner will be in the restaurant Rössli in Gähwil, next to your accommodation.

Lunch will be in the field and is organized for Tuesday and Wednesday. Please, bring along lunch for Monday. If you have some allergies or special requirements for the food please contact me as soon as possible.

For dinner you have the choice between a meat and a vegetarian meal (sorry, it's only in german). In addition, there will be soup and salad served. Drinks - besides water - have to be paid on your own. Please fill in the doodle as soon as possible.

Costs

Please pay your train/bus ticket on your own and bring on 11.06.2012 CHF 80.- (for food and accommodation) with you.
D-USYS and D-ERDW students should get some of the costs reimbursed later (usually at the beginning of the next semester) as we will get hopefully some money from these two departments.

Equipment

We are outside for three days. Thus, be prepared for rain, sunshine and different temperature regimes!
If you own gumboots, please bring them along (we need them during an experiment). A clipboard could be useful as well. As mentioned above, bring along lunch for Monday, a sleeping bag and CHF 80.-.
For the data analysis at ETH we will need some laptops and it would make my life easier if you can bring along your own. Thus, please let me know by doodle if that's possible for you.