Dan's India Blog

Its all Done

2010-08-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I know it has been quite some time since I have written anything. Maybe sometime is an understatement, and long time is a better way to put it. So, what has happened since the last post…A LOT.

I have finished my thesis, (“The impact of water harvesting on a small watershed in rural India”) turned in all of my paperwork to Clemson, and will graduate next weekend. My thesis consists of three body chapters: 1) Determination of geologic structure in a rural Indian watershed with the use of electromagnetic induction, 2) Development of the water balance for the watershed, and 3) Reevaluation of the water harvesting structure volume balance model to determine the impact of water harvesting. In order to provide a brief summary of the work, the abstract for my thesis follows, and to make it a bit more concise I have bolded the key points:

Reliable sources of fresh water are a finite resource across the world. Many countries, including India, face water scarcity due to temporal and spatial variations in precipitation, surface water pollution, and depletion of groundwater resources. In order to combat against water scarcity, the government, non-governmental organizations, researchers, and individuals have attempted to create solutions to the water scarcity problem. One solution, which has become popular throughout India is the construction of water harvestings structures (WHS), small earthen dams built to capture monsoonal runoff on ephemeral streams. Villagers believe these structures have a positive effect on groundwater levels and water availability throughout the year, although the direct effect on the local watershed is poorly understood. To better understand the impact of these structures, this thesis investigates the local geology, the watershed and surface water balance, and the monsoonal response of a WHS reservoir in a small watershed in Madhya Pradesh, India.

Field work for this study was completed from May 2009 through April 2010. The accomplishments from the work are three fold. First an improved understanding of the local geology was obtained using electromagnetic induction surveys. Second, major components of the hydrologic cycle were monitored to calculate the flows for the overall water balance and the surface water balance. Finally, water levels in a WHS reservoir were monitored to allow for the reevaluation of a volume balance model proposed for management of these structures for artificially recharging groundwater. The main goal of the project is to determine the impact of water harvesting for artificial recharge and increasing water availability within the watershed.

Information gathered during the geological surveys was used to develop the water balance for the watershed. From the water balance it was determined that streamflow out of the watershed is approximately 15% of the total yearly rainfall. The net transfer of surface water to the subsurface is approximately 80% of precipitation or as a flux normalized to the watershed area is 0.59m/year. The yearly change in groundwater storage is positive and wells are able to recover after two months of pumping for irrigation, indicating current groundwater practices are sustainable and not over drawing the local aquifer.

After consideration of the volume balance for the WHS, it was found that from two to six times the maximum reservoir volume (6.5x104m3) is lost as groundwater recharge from the structure. If the structure is assumed to infiltrate 1.3x105m3/year, without the presence of the structure the yearly streamflow would increase by 48% if the volume of water infiltrated was assumed to be discharged as streamflow. In addition to decreasing streamflow, the upstream reservoir provides a surface water body which is present for ten months of the year, helping to decrease water scarcity in the early dry season.

In addition to working on the thesis, we have worked on conducting an irrigation experiment at a field site near Clemson. The goal is still to monitor the electrical conductivity with the EM38 while we apply water to a ring. We are now going to use fertilizer to increase the electrical conductivity of the water, so when the water infiltrates, we get a stronger response with the EM38. The next experiment will happen in the next few weeks.

We also had a visitor come to see us from India. Chiranjit, who has helped with the project for the past few years was able to come over to Clemson for about 2 weeks to help with some experiments, attend a field camp hosted by Clemson, and also collaborate with Dr. Moysey about the happenings of the project. I think he had a great trip for his first time to America, and it was beneficial for him to see how things are done over here. I hope that he has a new appreciation for what it is like trying to live, work, and adapt to a new place while trying to accomplish goals of a fairly rigorous schedule.

Well that is all for now. I will try to get a few more posts up before the start of September.

Initial GEM2 data

2010-06-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

Click the images to get a better view.

Here are some initial results from the GEM2 surveys conducted.

GEM2 data collected across the watershed will be investigated for a given frequency for each of the three surveys. GEM2 data was calibrated with values obtained during the free air calibration, and then the electrical conductivity was found for each reading. By looking at different frequencies over time, it will be possible to determine geologic patterns within the watershed before monsoon, in the early monsoon, and at the late monsoon.

The first frequency to be investigated is 570Hz, the lowest frequency used in all three surveys. Since the frequency is lower, the depth of investigation is greater than the higher frequencies. The data from the GEM2 shows bedrock across the entire watershed generally having the same conductivity and location does not impact the conductivity (Figure 11). The uplands do not have an extensive weathered zone, and basalt outcrops are common, whereas the lower watershed has a weathered zone overlying the basalts. Changes in the surface conductivity due to changes in rock to soils do not impact the conductivity from the uplands to lowlands; therefore, it is determined the bedrock across the watershed is relativity uniform, and deeper than the maximum thickness of the weathered zone in the lower watershed.

The second frequency under investigation is 7050Hz, which will have a shallower depth of penetration than the lower frequencies. Changes in the EC across the watershed are more apparent now when looking from the uplands to the lowlands (west to east) (Figure 12). When looking at the uplands the EC is lower, and then moving towards the northeast the ECl of the watershed increases (Figure 12). The trend is present in all three surveys, and is attributed to having a relatively uniform bedrock across the watershed, specifically in the uplands. In the uplands bedrock outcrops at the surface, and basalts have a lower conductivity than the soils. Then, moving towards the lower part of the watershed, the conductivity increases, attributed to having a weathered and alluvial zone of clayey soils, increasing the conductivity. Furthermore, on the ridges in the lowlands, the conductivity is lower, again expected as the weathered zone thins and the basalts are closer to the surface. Towards the end of the monsoon season, areas in the lower watershed are seen to increase in conductivity, which is expected as the moisture content of the soils increases. Also, an area in the approximate middle of the watershed is seen to have an increase in EC as the monsoon progresses. Overall trends show locations with thin soils, ridges and the uplands, having lower EC and areas where the soils are thicker, valleys and lowlands, having a higher EC.

The last frequency under investigation is 20010 Hz, the highest frequency collected in the field and also the frequency with the lowest depth of investigation. Survey results show low conductivity in the lowlands, and higher conductivity in the lower reaches of the watershed (Figure 13). As the monsoon season progresses, the lower areas of the watershed are seen to increase in EC, whereas the uplands of the watershed generally stay relatively uniform. As the monsoon season progresses, a larger area of the lowlands has a higher conductivity value. The same area in the middle of the watershed is again seen having higher EC as the monsoon season progresses. Overall, as the monsoon progesses, the EC of the watershed increase, most likely caused by the increase in soil moisture as the soil saturate from the increased rainfall.

Surface Water Balance..its a long one

2010-05-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Just a warning, this is kinda long. The first part is a bit of background. The second part is some of the processed data. I hope you enjoy!

Part 1:

A surface water balance for the study watershed is developed to determine the flux of water that is lost from the surface as infiltration. Flows into the watershed are precipitation (P) and surface runoff and cross basin transfer (Qin). Flows out of the watershed are ET, infiltration (I), and surface runoff (Qout)

An important consideration for a surface water balance numerical model is the physical boundaries of the model. The physical boundaries are the topographical highs of the region and are considered as no flow boundaries. Streamflow entering the watershed is 0 as streams are headwater streams and do not cross catchment boundaries. Surface water runoff and cross basin transfer are also set equal to 0, as no surface runoff does not move over topographical highs, and there are no channels or flow paths in which cross basin transfer occurs.

In addition to the physical boundaries of the model, the temporal boundaries play an important role in the development of a numerical model. The duration of the water balance will cover an entire year, with a time step of one month. Long time scales make it possible to assume that the change in storage will be equal to 0. Since any surface water losses that may have occurred during the dry season are replenished and filled back to capacity during the monsoon season, it is assumed between years the change in storage is negligible. The assumption makes it possible to solve for the infiltration during each time step.

With the physical and temporal boundaries of the surface water balance defined it is possible to create an equation which represents the surface water balance.

dvss/dt = P + Qin -[Qout + ET + I]

Where dVss is the change in storage over time, dt. Since the time step is large and the change in storage becomes 0 and surface runoff coming into the watershed is 0, the equation is simplified and rearranged to yield an equation for infiltration.

I=P-[Qout+ET]

It is possible now to look at how infiltration behaves during each month of the year, and how the rate of infiltration changes between the seasons.

Precipitation data is collected from a tipping bucket rain gauge located in the approximate middle of the watershed. Data is collected on a 15 minute time step, and then summed over the entire month to provide the total monthly rainfall (Table 1). Rainfall data is units of millimeters per month, and then converted to a flux of m3/month by multiplying by the total area of the watershed.

ET is estimated using the Thornthwaite method (Thornthwaite, 1948) with average monthly temperature data collected from the weather station (Table 1). The monthly temperature data is used to determine a monthly heat index which is then used to calculate an unadjusted potential ET (PET). Depending upon the latitude of the site (23.7oN), a factor relating to the total amount of sunlight hours during the month is found, and a value for adjusted PET is calculated. Actual ET (AET) is the amount of water available for ET, and is found after determining the difference between the monthly rainfall and adjusted PET and considering the soil type and the change in soil water storage over each month. The rate of AET is then multiplied by the area of the watershed to convert the rate to a flux of water leaving the watershed during each time step.

Due to a malfunction in the weather station during January and February 2010 data for these months was not directly calculated for the watershed. Instead, average temperature and rainfall data from Shajapur, a city approximately 60km to the southeast of the study site is used to replace the missing data. Data was averaged from 1901 to 2002 and obtained from the Indian Water Portal, a public, online application which stores climatic data for India (IWP, 2002).

Stream runoff was calculated on the main stream channel which drains the entire watershed. Stream stage was measured every 15 minutes with the use of a pressure transducer in the stream channel. Stream discharge was calculated at various stages by calculating the cross sectional area of the stream and measuring the velocity of the stream with the use of a pygmy meter. The discharge for given heights was determined, and a rating curve was developed to provide stream discharge for a given stage height (Figure 3). The total monthly discharge was found by converting the stage to discharge with the use of the rating curve equation. Then, the discharge was converted from m3/s to m3/15 minutes, as this is the time step between readings. Then, these discharge values were summed to provide the monthly discharge for the lower stream (Table 1).

With all of the fluxes for the surface water balance known, it is possible to solve the surface water balance equation for infiltration during each month. If infiltration for a given month is negative, then either the flux of AET is higher than the amount of water coming into the watershed if there is no streamflow or a combination of high stream flow and AET remove more water from the watershed than is brought in through precipitation. If infiltration is positive, then more rainfall provides enough water for AET, some of the water is lost through streamflow, and the rest of the water is infiltration.

PART 2:

The month of July is the only month with positive infiltration. July has the highest amount of precipitation coming into the watershed. With the large amount of precipitation and the fact that July is still early in the monsoon season, infiltration is expected to be high as the soils saturate and the aquifer is recharged (Figure 4).

As the monsoon progresses, the soils become saturated, the holding capacity decreases, and as a result runoff increases. Peak runoff occurs in September, and the cause of this high peak is a rainfall event at the end of August and the start of September. All of the rainfall for the month of September fell in the first 6 days of the month, causing a large pulse of storm water. The combination of the intense rain at the end of August and the start of September and the saturated soils in the watershed is the cause of the high peak in the runoff during September. As the rainfall rate declines, runoff also declines, and by the end of October all the streams in the watershed are dry.

AET is higher during the monsoon season, as more water is available in the watershed and then decreases as the temperature decreases during monsoon and post monsoon. When the temperature is very high at the start of the year, the AET is still low due to the lack of water in the watershed. Then, as the temperature remains high, and rainfall begins, more water is available for AET, and AET peaks in July. Temperatures then start to decrease, and AET also starts to decrease reaching the low point in January, when there is little precipitation and temperatures are low. Infiltration only occurs at the start of the monsoon season, when the soils are dry and there is an excess of rainfall. Then, as the monsoon progresses and the soils saturate, runoff increases, and the infiltration begins to decrease.

Infiltration only occurs at the start of the monsoon season, when the soils are dry and there is an excess of rainfall. Then, as the monsoon progresses and the soils saturate, runoff increases, and the infiltration begins to decrease. The flux of infiltration found from the surface water balance can now be compared to the infiltration value found from the groundwater balance.

New data set

2010-05-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

Well hello everyone. Finally, classes are over, and now its time to get down to work and write a thesis. It sounds like a large task, but any large task, broken into many small tasks becomes much more manageable and it will be done before I know it.

On an exciting note, Minakshi has gone back out to the field and we now have a new data set. Everything is looking good out there and the big news is that the WHS is now dry. It went dry on April 21, 2010. I am pretty sure this is a fairly long time for water to be in the structure. I can remember when we were there last year, the bottom of the structure was dry, and there had not been any water in it for a while.

The wells are getting pumped a lot now for irrigation of vegetable crops. About half the wells in the lower part of the watershed are being pumped on a daily or every other day basis to irrigate the crops. The average depth to water in the wells is at 3.2 meters for the wells which have not been pumped, and this is about 0.6 meters lower than it was before. It is interesting to see that the well right below the WHS still has a very low depth to water compared to other wells. It is just another sign that water harvesting in the area has had a large impact on groundwater levels, as this well still has more water in it than the other wells in the watershed.

The other exciting aspect is that we now have data collected for an entire year. The plot to the left shows the temperature for one full year. Again, hot dry summer season, and cool and pleasant winter months. It is hard to believe that we have been there for one year doing work. It is even harder to believe a year ago at this time I was living there and just starting my time there. How I wish I was there again doing the same thing again.

Stay tuned, and I might post up a chapter of my thesis by the end of the week if it gets revised again and ready to go!

EM38 field experiment

2010-04-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone. It is amazing to think that just about a year ago we were heading to India, for my first adventure and to start my time there with field work. We are still planning on going back, but this trip will be delayed until the monsoon season, most likely in July or August. In the mean time I am busy with finishing up my last two classes as well as writing my thesis.

It is always amazing how fast time moves by when you are busy. It seems like a few days ago, we were returning after Christmas break, and there were no leaves on the trees. Now spring is here, the sun stays out till well after 7:30, and shorts and a tee-shirt are seen walking all over campus. It’s a nice change, I just wish it would have been a bit slower.

The project is going very well. We did a field experiment this past week with the EM38 at one of our local field sites. The goal of the experiment was to see if the EM38 could detect infiltration from an irrigation test.

In order to do this, we installed some soil moisture probes to monitor the water content and set the EM38 above the ground while we added 5 gallons of water to a ring made from plastic landscape edging. We let the EM38 and the soil moisture probes record data for about an hour, and the hope was that as water infiltrated, we would see an increase in the soil moisture, and therefore an increase in the electrical conductivity.

As you can see in the graphs, the soil moisture did a very good job at increasing, as would be expected when you add 50 gallons of water to the earth. The response was what we expected. Probes at 5 and 10 cm depth increased almost immediately, a probe at 20 cm increased about 2min after addition of water, the probe at 35 cm increased about 4 minutes after addition of water, and at 50cm the water content increased 16 minutes after the addition of water.

It was very interesting to see the time it took for the water to infiltrate. This is what we were hoping for, and this was what we hoped would be picked up in the EM38 response. Unfortunately, this is not what we saw. We saw a slight increase and then a decrease during the addition of water. I think part of the reason for this was because we were in a sandy soil, which is not highly electrically conductive. Overall, the response was not very noticeable.

We did however map the area before and after the experiment. The goal here was to see a hot spot right in the middle where we had added water. We did see this, which was a really nice outcome, because it means we can detect areas of increased soil moisture with the EM38.

All this relates to the project in India as this year we will be working with the villagers on irrigation practices, trying to improve them, and increase their water use efficiency. From this experiment, and more like to this to come in the future, it should be possible to again monitor their fields for changes in electrical conductivity, relate this to soil moisture, and then help them with their irrigation practices.

WHS water balance model

2010-04-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

Well, life sure has been busy here lately. It does not feel like almost two weeks since the last time I have had a post. A lot has happened since the last update however.

The big project of the past two weeks and this week is setting up a model for the water harvesting structure. The goal is to create a water balance to estimate the flow of water into the structure, the amount of water that will infiltrate from the structure, and the time water lasts in the structure. I am using a model that was created in 2007 and finished in 2010 by Dr. Moysey and one of his former graduate students.

It is a fairly simple water balance, with few user inputs. All I need to put into the model are the starting parameters, the rainfall and evaporation, area of the uplands that drains into the structure, and then the surface area of the structure at a given stage.

The rainfall and evaporation are calculated with the use of the weather station. The area of the uplands is a constant and was found using GIS. The surface area of the WHS is found knowing the bottom elevation of the reservoir and the stage height, so an equation was developed which relates these two items. Lastly, the parameters that govern some of the flows coming into the WHS were calculated and optimized for already, so they are known.

The parameters I am currently using are the parameters from the previous work. The image to the right shows what my real WHS stage is along side of the predicted stage from the model. It can be seen that the two do not relate to each other very well. The structure fills very quickly and then drains very slowly. This is not what we observed in the field, so some work needs to be done on the model.

I can manually change the parameters to get a better fit, and when I do this, the model looks a bit better, but it is still not perfect. My task for this week is to optimize for our data to see if I can not get a better fit of the parameters with data that I collected in the field. It will be interesting to see how well I can get my data to fit to the model after I optimize for the parameters. I think it will work very well, but time will tell.

Also, I have attached a link for a .pdf file of a presentation that I recently gave at the Clemson Hydrogeology symposium last week. The presentation gives a better idea of what has been happening with the water balance model.

http://www.clemsongwb.info/ (Go to the bottom of the page to the pdf called WHS_Presentation_Matz).

Hope all is well for everyone.

Sun and Wind

2010-03-21T07:26:00.000-07:00

New Data

Happy Spring everyone. Well, we got the first set of data back from Minakshi with the new weather station data. The two new pieces of data are being collected, the incoming solar radiation and wind speed. Incoming solar radiation will be high during the day when the sun is shinning and lower at night when it is dark. What the solar radiation will help us determine is the ET for a given day. The graph that shows the incoming solar radiation shows this trend, 0 during the night, and high during the day.

ET (evapotranspiration) is water that is converted from liquid to gas. This is part of the water cycle, and part of the water balance that we are investigating in the watershed, and it is driven by energy. The energy is solar energy from the sun; therefore, knowing the incoming solar radiation is a key to know how much energy is input into the system to drive the water cycle. The more energy put into the system, the more water that can be evaporated.

Wind speed is also an important factor at getting an accurate estimate of ET. If there is no wind there is less ET, and more wind means more ET. A way to think of this is when you are trying to dry your hands. You go put them under “the thingy” that blows air on them, and they dry faster than if you just held them out. The graph shows the wind speed in meters per second.

So, with these two new pieces of information, we can get a better idea of how much ET is occurring in the watershed.

The WHS is almost empty, and the graph shows the drastic decrease in water level in the past month. I am surprised water has lasted this long in the structure, as Minakshi and the villagers had told me that it usually goes dry at the start of the year. I think next time they go to the field, the structure will be empty.

The last bit of information that is water table noteworthy is that the continues to decrease a little bit each month. The farmers are done taking crops, and only a few are pumping wells for a few vegetable crops. The average depth to water is now at 2.6 meters. During the monsoon season the average was near 1 meter. The graph shows the average depth to water. So, looking at the graph it is low in the middle (monsoon season), meaning the water table is close to the surface, and on the ends it is higher, meaning the water table is dropping.

Overall, things are going very well over there. I can not wait to get back to the watershed and see how things look and see how much things have changed. Also, I kinda want to eat some good Indian food, which I have not had for a while now. Happy Spring!!

It’s almost here!!

2010-03-16T08:28:00.001-07:00

Spring time is just around the corner. The weather here in Clemson is starting to get warm, people are seen moving about campus more, the bikers and the runner’s have come out of hibernation from the cold weather we have seen this winter, and most of all the flowers are starting to bloom. It also means that we are getting closer to heading back to India to keep working on the field work.

I was checking some weather data today, and checked the weather over in India…YIKES!! It seems that it is getting warm there again already. Highs up in the 100’s and lows in the high 70’s. Even though it is going to be hot, I am still excited about going back for our next trip of field work.

Well, right now I am working on a water balance for the WHS. We are using a model that was developed a few years ago by Jen Oblinger, who was a Master’s student of Dr. Moysey. She graduated before I arrived at Clemson, and I picked up the project where she left off. I am currently using her model to estimate how long water will last in the WHS and also how much water is lost to seepage.

If you remember, estimating how long water lasts in the WHS and also estimating the amount of recharge is a key part of the project, and knowing this will have very important impacts on farmers. These impacts are things like knowing how long they will have a source of surface water, how much recharge they might be able to get from the structure, and also how many crops they could take in the future.

I am just getting started looking at the model, but when I get it figured out, and estimates made, I will give you all the update.

Enjoy spring!

Photos: 1) Field team eating lunch, 2) Field work with the pump test, 3) Camels

WHS is going dry

2010-03-10T06:47:00.000-08:00

Where does the time go? I think it just passes by, and we are never quite sure what happens to it. I guess the one good thing is that as each week passes, and tasks and assignments get completed, it means that we are making headway, and the progress on the project keeps moving along, and we get closer all the time to our goals.

So, here comes the update: Minakshi was able to go to the field and she installed all of the new instruments we sent her for the weather station. So we now are collecting more data from the weather station which will help us better calculate evapotranspiration. All of the streams are now dry. The second round of crops has been sown, and now some of the farmers are starting to take a third crop, which is primarily vegetables, most likely to sell at market. The wells are not being pumped as often, but as can be seen in the water table elevation map, the wells that are being pumped have a significant impact on the surrounding groundwater levels.

Also, it can be seen that well 13 (the well that really never filled with water, and is not a very productive well) still has very low water levels in it. The average depth to water in the wells that are not being pumped is about 2.6 meters, which is a bit lower than last time the wells were measured, when it was closer to 3 meters as the depth to water.

The WHS still has water, although the amount of water has dropped drastically. It has gone from 2.2 meters to 0.9 meters in just about 3 weeks. The graph shows the water level and the volume of water. It is also possible to see how quickly the volume has started to decrease now that the water level is even less.

As of now, I believe that Sudershan is going to be joining the team here at Clemson. He has been speaking with Dr. Moysey about graduate school, and Clemson is one of his top picks. It will be great to have him back on the team this summer when we return, and also next year in the great state of SC.

Hope everyone has a fantastic start to their March. Stay tuned for new and exciting weather station data.

DATA!!!!

2010-02-05T05:56:00.001-08:00

It is time. The long awaited and much anticipated arrival of new data. Minakshi was able to get everything post on the internet, and I was ecstatic. I finally got a new data set to look at, and it is great. It is amazing to see how hot it can still be in the field, even when it is not summer time. Also, I never thought that I would see temperatures drop below 20oC, but I was proved wrong on that front as well. I can only imagine how cold people must feel with the temperature is 5oC, or about 41oF.

As for the rainfall, this graph shows an excellent example of the distribution of rainfall. Now that the monsoon season is over, it is expected that rainfall for the next 5 months will be less than 10mm. So, from this graph, it is clear to see a lot of rain comes at one time, and then after that it is pretty dry.

The other graph shows the rainfall and the temperature from the start of October through December. This would be the time that I have been back home (although it seems like just last week I was playing cricket with the kids, and making trips to the field with Minakshi and Sudershan). It is interesting to note that the high rainfalls in October and November correspond well with some lower temperatures. This was the same experience I had while I was there. When it rained, the weather outside was much nicer, and a lot cooler. Overall, the trend looks to be if it is getting colder as the winter months progress.

I would post some soil moisture probe data, but we have had some issues with the logger. For some reason the logger is not longer communicating with the computer, so we can not off load the data. Some things boggle my mind. One day everything works fine, and the next day nothing will work at all. We are in the process right now of trying to find out if the logger is dead, batteries are dead, probes are broken, communication ports on the computer are wrong…anything to help us see what is going on.

The streams all have no water in them at this point in time. They have been dry now for about 2 months from what Minakshi has told me in her field notes. So, no more stream flow data either, which is ok.

The WHS is still holding water, but the depth is dropping fairly quickly. I wish we could get more data from the heights, but getting the readings is becoming difficult. The graph shows the volume and the height of the water over time. The volume is calculated by using GIS and the surface volume tool. With this tool, you put in the elevation of the water, and the bottom elevations of the earth. Then it finds the volume, just like finding the area under a curve. Knowing the volume of water in the WHS will help us set up the water balance for the watershed.

Wells: Good thing the farmers have wells, because out of 29 wells 21 of them are being pumped for irrigation at a fairly frequent interval. This is good for the farmers because they are able to take an extra crop, where without the wells, they would not be able to take the crop. On January 27, 2010, the average depth to water was 3.6 meters, compared to October, when it was 0.84 meters. The map shows the distribution of water levels across the watershed. The areas that are red show wells that have been pumped a lot, hence the reason for the large depth to water in those areas.

That’s about it. I hope yall enjoy!!

Nice days going by

2010-01-22T10:47:00.000-08:00

Greetings again. Wow, do I love South Carolina. The weather here is awesome. Not every place is one able to go out in the middle of January and ride a bike in shorts and a short sleeves. Since I just got a new bike about 2 months ago, I decided that I could not pass up these beautiful days and not go out for a ride, even if it was a short ride around campus to watch college kids outside playing. I love it.

The work moves forward little by little each day. I have been working on my thesis some this week, and have made some pictures that I thought I would share with all of you. I have decided that one of my major tasks in school is to make pretty pictures. The great thing about this is most of these pictures have some significance in the larger scheme of things.

I continue to work with the GEM2 data that we collected. We are still trying to figure out exactly how the inversion software works, and what exactly we need to do to have the model run a bit better, and fit our data better. Right now, the model will run, and it fits our input model very well, but it fits the data very poorly. Ideally, we would have a case where it fits the data, and the model very well, but we have not reached that point yet.

I am still waiting for Minakshi to give me a new data set. It has been quite some time now since I have heard from them. One of my biggest fears when I left India is that the frequency trips to the field, and the frequency of having new data sets posted would dramatically decrease. This has happened, just as I suspected it would. I know everyone over there is very busy with their work, but I just wish I could get one day every no

w and then for my work. I do not think the lack of data being posted on the net will hurt the project, as the loggers are still collecting data, but I miss seeing new sets of data and new developments in the field and how it is changing with the seasons.

We are also starting the initial planning stages of an irrigation test with the EM38. This will probably occur sometime in the next few weeks. We are going to take the EM38 outside, let it run and collect data, and irrigate the land around it with a sprinkler system. Hopefully, we will be able to see an increase in the electrical conductivity as the ground becomes wetter. From this, we should be able to watch the infiltration of the water as time passes. It will be an interesting experiment, and I am excited to see how it turns out.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. I am not sure if my weekend will be as fun as it was last week, spending it with some great friends down in Athens, but a hike is in my future, which should be nice!

We made it!!

2010-01-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Photos:Brother and wife in SC, Family hiking in TN, Space Shuttle

Wow. I just looked up at my clock and the wall and it said that it was January 15, 2010. How is it possible that the month is half over already. It seems that 2010 just started a few days ago, and now it is almost the end of the first month. I guess time flies when you are having fun.

I have gotten settled back into Clemson after being in a car, and traveling around the southeast for quite some time now. Christmas was spent in TN with my family, the week before New Years was spent in WV with family, and the second week of the New Year was spent in the happiest place on earth… DISNEY WORLD.

My Mom, Dad, and I packed up the van and headed to FL on Jan 6th. The first stop was the Kennedy Space Center, so even though I might have missed the first day of class, I still had a very educational day. It was really neat to see the rocket that will be launched next out on the pad ready to go. It was also interesting to see how much work goes into preparing a rocket for launch, and also how many mistakes were made back in the early days to “perfect” the rocket system.

After NASA, we made our way over to Disney World. The purpose of the weekend was to race. There were three races: one on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. My parents were in the 5k that was on Friday, my brother and his wife ran the half marathon on Saturday, and somehow I got pressured into running a full marathon (26.2 miles/42KM) on Sunday. It was a great time for everyone, and after running 26 miles, I was a bit tired to say the least. However, we were all very happy with our performances, and glad that we could spend some good quality time together as a family. The only down side of the weekend was the cold weather. It was the coldest race weekend Disney has ever had.

Now it is back to the real world. Classes have started off very well, and I am getting back into working on my thesis, and getting the research work wrapped up. I still have not gotten any new data from Minakshi, so when I do, I will be sure to update you all on the happenings in Salri. Hopefully I will get some new data soon, because I really want to know what the weather is like over there now that it is the winter season.

Happy 2010

2010-01-01T06:52:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone and HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Wow 2010. A new decade, a new start to a new year, and a new beginning yet again. Ringing in Y2K seemed to just happen a few years ago, not 10 years ago. It is amazing how quickly time flies by, and when we look back over ten years of time, how much we have done and accomplished, and also how much things have changed around us.

Christmas break for me so far has been very nice, very relaxing, and somewhat productive. We ordered a new GPS unit, since we left ours in India to be used by Minakshi. I will be picking this unit up early next week and do some mapping with the EM38. Before I left for vacation, I was able to get the EM38 and tried a new calibration technique which seemed to work very well. I think with this new calibration technique, we will be able to get much better results during our surveys, and more consistency between surveys.

I have also been using the inversion program EM1DFM to look at the GEM2 data that was collected throughout the watershed. A reminder as to what we are looking for by using this program: the program inverts the data we have collected and from this it uses the conductivity values that were collected, and the frequencies and then determines the conductivity at different depths. So, at a frequency of 330Hz, for every data point collected, the inversion software uses this point to estimate what the conductivity would be at other depths, and then returns the depths as well as the conductivity of that layer. The goal is to find out the thickness of the unconsolidated zone, and also look at what depth the unconsolidated zone reaches. Overall, this will help us determine the extent of the lower aquifer, and how much water can be stored in the lower aquifer.

One of the last projects I have been working on over break is my thesis. Since I am in graduate school, this is one of my main jobs. The writing process is moving along just fine, and I get a little more written every day. It is always interesting to start writing and watch your ideas change and modify as you start to think more and more about the problem you are tackling.

Hopefully Minakshi has had a chance to get some new data from the field. When I get this data I will b sure to post some new graphs with the temperatures, rainfall, and humidity data. I will also let yall know if the streams are still flowing and how the water in the WHS is holding out.

Happy New Year!

Here comes Santa Clause

2009-12-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

Well hello everyone. I am sorry there has been such a long delay recently in the blog post. I don’t think yall ever got one last week…my apologizes. I hope everyone’s Christmas shopping is complete, and that everyone is winding down for the coming week of holidays. I will be heading to TN to see my grandparents and family, and then to WV to visit with my father’s side of the family. With all of the snow they had up north, I am hoping that sledding will be a possibility. Also, I get to go watch the Wheeling Nailers, a minor league hockey team play, which is one of the highlights of my year.

Things here at Clemson have been winding down for the holidays. I was able to get the EM38 outside in my front yard, and had some pretty good results with it. We have been having a problem with the GPS unit, but if you look at the following graph, the values seem to be very similar to each other, which is what we were hoping for. The color trend seen in each line is very close to the color trend seen in the other lines. Although the average values might be a little bit off, the trends that would be seen in the subsurface match the other surveys. We have changed the way we calibrate the instrument, which makes the calibration much more accurate to what is really present.

The other adventure I had last week was taking down the weather station that we have installed here in Clemson. It was put up last year by a few under graduate students, and I took it down since no one was using the data any more. We will use the rain gauge and the soil probes in January for an irrigation test with the EM38. One exciting thing to remember when taking down a weather station from the outdoors is that spiders love to make their nest in the wires and covers on the instruments. Then when you bring everything indoors to a warm environment, they love to start crawling out to see why it got warmer. Not so fun when they are running around my house!

We are still getting data from India on a fairly regular basis. We have not gotten any recently, but when I do, I will put up some of the graphs from the weather station to show you how much nicer it would be to conduct field work out there right now as opposed to when we were out there before.

Lastly, I have gotten the EM1DFM program to work. We are still working on fine tuning the program, but for an initial start we have some images of what the subsurface might look like. The image to the right shows one of the inversions of the first survey of the GEM2 data. What you can tell from this image is that around 20.42 m below the ground surface there appears to be a change in the conductivity, to a much lower conductivity. This could be the first change in geologic layers that we encounter in the watershed. The other surveys also show a transition at this location as well. Overall, a lot of work remains with the software, but from some initial runs, the results look to be promising.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. Cheers!!

Rain Rain go away

2009-12-08T14:16:00.001-08:00

Wow, it seems that it is raining a lot here in SC. It seems that a few days it is nice, sunny, and warm, and then next two or three days it is cloudy and rainy. Well one thing that is for sure is that people are no longer saying we need the rain like they were last year, so that is one positive of the rain.

I was able to take the EM38 for the past two days to do some tests with the calibration. We are checking to see if we can get the same results from surveys in the same area if the calibration procedure is changed around a little bit. I mapped right out side of my house just as an initial test. It was somewhat exciting as I found a man hole cover right in the middle of our yard that was buried with leaves. Then the next location I went to was over at a field site we are working in near 18 Mile Creek, close to Pendleton, SC. Pendleton is about a 15 minute drive away from Clemson.

As I said the data appears to match fairly well so far. One problem that I ran into was the GPS unit. We left one in India, so I have been working with a new one trying to get it to work. It is coming along, but I think it lost satellite reception a few times as I do not have enough data with the GPS points to put it into GIS maps and then make further maps from that. I think it was a satellite issue, but I have to look into it a bit more.

I am also starting to look at the rates of recharge in the watershed, and the change in the ground water storage. To do this, I first have to define the extent of the lower aquifer. I am assuming that the upper aquifer really does not exist since it is all hard rock, so just in the lower part of the watershed, where all the agricultural fields are located, will be the area that I focus in on.

To define the lower aquifer, I am looking at the GEM2 data that was collected to see where transitions occur between high (soils) and low (rock) conductivity. At these locations, the boundaries of the aquifer will be drawn. From there I will find the area, and then when multiplied by the depth of the weathered zone (soil thickness), I get the total volume of the aquifer. Then I multiply by the porosity, the amount of void spaces in the soil, and then I have the total volume of water that can be stored in the aquifer.

The next step is to look and see how the depths of water is changing in all of the wells, and from that it is possible to determine the recharge for the watershed. Recharge is very important, as it is water that stays in the ground that the farmers can then use for irrigation or drinking throughout later parts in the year.

I have heard from Minakshi and she is doing very well. Staying quite busy from what I can tell. Also, Sudershan is doing just fine. He has taken his GRE and is applying at schools here in the states for graduate school in environmental engineering.

Overall things are moving along very well, and Christmas break will provide a lot of time to get a lot of work done!!

Thanksgiving over :( Research contines:)

2009-12-01T14:02:00.001-08:00

Well, thanksgiving was a fantastic weekend, just as I had hoped. To give you a brief introduction to a Matz family holiday, this is what the thanksgiving weekend is like at my household:
Wake up whenever, drink some tea or coffee, make breakfast, eat breakfast, load the dishwasher, wash dishes, watch some TV, unload the dishwasher (and leave plates out), prepare lunch, eat lunch, load the dishwasher, wash dishes, any afternoon activity seen fit (hiking, running, fishing, swimming, walking, sleeping, TV), unload the dishwasher (and leave plates out), prepare dinner, eat dinner, load the dishwasher, wash dishes, watch TV or football, go to bed. Then repeat the process for the next 3 days. Overall, it was a lot of eating, some exercising, and a lot of time spent with the family. It was great.

On a research note: I got an email from Minakshi today. She received all of the items that were sent to India. I was hoping they would all get there safely. I think there is a rule somewhere that electronics cannot be sent to India, but whether or not this is true I am not sure, but all of the electronics and other items made it there safely and in one piece. She was going to look over all of the user manuals for everything, and I am going to help her with these items to make sure she understands what everything does and how everything works. Then, the net trick will be getting everything successfully installed in the field, and the Dell Axim computer working with the GEM2. If all of these things go as planned, I will be very pleasantly surprised.

On a separate note, we just got the software license for EM1DFM. This acronym stands for electromagnetic (EM), one-dimensional models (1D), frequency-domain observations (F), and magnetic sources and receivers (M). Basically what this means for me is that we are using electromagnetic (the GEM2 and the EM38), and we are going to convert the data into a 1D model, and the way data is collected is from various frequencies being emitted and received from magnetic coils on the instruments. What this program will help us determine is the depth to various layers in the subsurface, such as the depth to basalts, and possibly the depth to groundwater. Overall, this will help us better characterize the properties of the subsurface throughout the watershed.

The hard part about this program is that the data has to be imported into the program in a specific format, which is the tricky part. Therefore, we have to take the data we have collected, and make it into a format that the program can read, and then try to make the process easy so others can use it without too much work or trouble. It will be interesting to see how well this works, and I have a feeling this will take up a lot of my time between now and Christmas.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday. Here are some more photos from India: water buffalo swimming, a few of the kids in the village, the poster after hanging in the village for 2 weeks, a view of the WHS looking upstream.

Gobble Gobble

2009-11-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, even though it might be early. Things at Clemson are still great. It has been cloudy and chilly the past few days, but looks like the sun should shine for Thanksgiving. This is the time of year when everyone is rushing around finishing last minute projects, class work, and then exams. It always amazes me how fast this time of year goes by since everyone is always so busy.

Yesterday all of the new equipment that we had ordered was sent to India, so hopefully it will all arrive there in one piece safely and Minakshi will be able to go and pick it all up and install it in the field. I did my best to make up user manuals for everything I sent over, so hopefully between those, and me talking to her on the phone she can get everything up and running. I have faith that she can do it, she is getting better at learning how to trouble shoot problems that arise in the field. For example, she went to the field last week, and was having a small problem with the flow meter we have been using to measure stream flow. She was able to take it all apart, notice where the problem was at, fix it and then continue to monitor all of the streams. That seems to be one of the best lessons of field work: learning how to fix problems on the spot with limited resources.

While Minakshi was out in the field she also took readings of the depth to water in all of the wells. There is still a lot of water in the wells, even though the farmers have been pumping them to irrigate their second crop. I did find out that the farmers will build small dams out of mud on the streams near their wells. The purpose of this is to stop the flow of water and make a small dam near the wells. These are basically small WHSs to help recharge the wells. I am not sure if they work or not, but I have found farmers don’t do things just because, so it must work somewhat, otherwise they would not do it.

The two photos are the elevation of the water table from the last well monitoring, and then one that occurred before I left at the end of September. The average depth to water in September was 1.47 meters, and the average depth to water in November was 1.51 meters. These are very close, and I am interested to see when the wells actually start to drain, and the water level begins to drop.

This next image shows the height of water in the WHS, as measured by the gauge that was installed on the side of the dam. The WHS filled very close to full pond at the end of July, around the same time the streams started to flow. Then after the last good rains fell in September it filled to the highest amount at 5.6 meters. Then the WHS started to drain, but there was another good rainfall around November 10 that filled the WHS back to full pond. Now, I think there should not be anymore rain, so it will be interesting to see how quickly water drains out of the WHS, and the effect it will have on stream flow at the lower gauge.

One of the last big projects the past few weeks has been working on the rating curves for the streams. Rating curves are what the USGS uses to determine the flow of water at flood stages for various rivers, and the graph shows the height of water versus the amount of water exiting through the stream. The rating curves are found by finding the velocity with the flow meter then multiplying by the area of the stream. The result is the discharge. After doing this a number of times, the rating curve is generated, so for every stream height, the stream discharge can be estimated. The graph to the side shows the start of the rating curve at the bottom of the watershed. The more points we get, the better and more accurate the graph will look.

Well, that’s about it for now, just wanted to give yall a little update on what has been going on with some of the work that is still occurring in India, as well as what we have been working on here at Clemson. One of the next big projects is to start looking at the GEM2 data and inverting the data to find out the depths of various geologic layers in the watershed, as well as start to look for spatial trends throughout the watershed.

Happy thanksgiving!!

New Toys

2009-11-17T05:58:00.000-08:00

Well, India is about to get some new toys sent to them by the end of the week, hopefully. They will be getting a few new items for the weather station, and also a new handheld computer. I am currently finalzing the new user manuals for these instruments since I will not be there personally to install them. So, what are they getting?

Camels in the watershed

Anemometer: This is a device that is used to measure wind speed. It gets mounted to the pole of the weather station, 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) off the ground and then spins in the wind. This will be used to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) from the watershed, by using the Penman equation. ET is a major component of the water balance, and is one of the main ways that water leaves the watershed, and especially the WHS. Think about a pond of water that has a rubber liner in the bottom. The reason the pond goes dry is because of evaporation, and one of the factors that influences the rate of evaporation is the wind speed. If it is windy, there is more evaporation, if there is less wind, less evaporation.

Pyranometer: This device is used to measure incoming solar radiation. The actual meaning of the word can be determined by breaking apart the word: “pyr” meaning fire, and “ano” meaning above the sky. Therefore, it is measuring the fire in the sky, or the sun’s intensity. The sun is the driver of the water cycle on the earth. Without the sun, and the solar radiation (energy) from the sun, there would be no water cycle. The pyranometer helps to measure how much energy is coming to a location from the sun. By knowing this value for each day, we will again be able to get a better estimate of ET from the watershed. Since it takes energy to cause evaporation, we need to know how much energy is coming into the watershed to cause water to evaporate.

Dell Axim: This is a small handheld computer that we are sending over since the Allegro (the other field computer) came back to the states with me when I returned. This will be used with the GEM2 to collect the GPS and the GEM2 data, just like the allegro did. The tricky thing with this will be getting all of the settings right on the computer and getting all the plugs in the right spots. I can remember back to last year when I was trying to figure all of this out, and I remember very well that it was not easy. When there are several different COM ports to choose from, and many other settings that need to be determined, it is not the easiest thing to get up and running, but with the use of the user manual, it should be no problem for FES to get it working.

Things at Clemson are moving along just fine, and it is interesting to see some of the data shed some light on what and how the water shed are behaving. I am working right now on setting up the water balance, and getting some initial estimates of the storage in the watershed. I can’t wait till we have a full year of data to look at. Stay tuned, and next week I will share some initial results and ideas with y’all.

Installation of the WHS gauge

2009-11-10T04:32:00.001-08:00

Greetings all. As I sit here drinking my morning coffee, watching the rain from Ida fall outside, I was just thinking back to my time in India and how fantastic it was. I figured that since nothing “exciting” has happened at Clemson, I would share a story with you from India.

The day started as many other days during the dry season: hot and early. We were heading to the field to map some WHSs with the GEM2. This was the first day that we had embarked out on this venture, and we were hoping that we would be able to map about 10 structures in one day. So, Minakshi, Sudershan, Keneya (the driver), and I were in the car on time at 5:00am to head towards Agar, as there were a few WHS sites in that area. We reached the first structure, and on the way I explained the goal of mapping WHSs to the team.

“The point of this is to get a bunch of different structures mapped to see if there are certain trends in the geology of the structure and the area that make for better or worse structures. So, we will map 30 structures with the GEM, ask questions to the villagers about the structure, such as how long does water last in the structure, what is the water used for in the structure, when was the WHS built, etc.

We reached the first site, still early enough in the morning before the heat was too horrible, and I taught both Sudershan and Minakshi how to use the GEM, that way we could vary the tasks at each site. I could map, Sudershan could take photos, and Minakshi could give the survey, and we could alternate after each one that way one person was not always stuck doing the same thing. I was not exactly a huge team player as I could not give the survey, but they both understood why and therefore picked up my slack.

It worked great for the first one. Sudershan took some notes and some photos, Minakshi was giving the survey, and I was collecting the data: a survey on top of the WHS, one that was perpendicular to the WHS, and one parallel to the structure, about in the middle of the reservoir.

Sudershan and I finished, and we went to Minakshi, who was sitting comfortably in a shady area, so we joined her and sat down as she was talking to the villagers. I started to think to myself, “If we want to map 10 structures, we need to get moving on outta here and go to the next spot.” Obviously this did not happen, and we went to one of the men’s houses for tea and further discussions.

So, after sitting for a while, talking, and relaxing, we moved to a temple (instead of the next structure). The temple was very nice, quiet, and peaceful. We placed some flowers there from the man’s garden who had given us the tea (the flowers are a means of livelihood for the villagers), and the best part for me was filling up our water bottles with COLD water from a local tap and filter. That was great.

Then, we moved on to the next structures in the area,, and by the end of the day, after being hot and tired we finished 9 structures, went home, and then got up early again in the morning to repeat the same process. All in all, mapping 30 structures took 4 days of long, hot, hard work.

SEG at Houston

2009-11-02T16:27:00.000-08:00

Dr. Moysey finally arrived from Greenville, and then he and I went to the Geoscientists without borders meeting in downtown Houston. This was a really great meeting (even though we were a few minutes late). The meeting was for all of the committee members, but also the other projects that have been sponsored by SEG were present.

It was great to hear about the other two projects that are currently being sponsored by GWB. There is a group that is working in Honduras, and another group that is working in Thailand. One of the things that I enjoyed about this was getting to talk to the students that are working on the projects. I was amazed to see how many similar yet very different hardships they experienced and I experienced with my project. It seems that ¼ of the work is actual field work, using geophysics, and implementing the science. ¼ of the work seems to be adjusting to the culture, the food, the people, the way things work in foreign countries, and just general work related to adjusted to a new place. ¼ is devoted to solving problems that always arise doing field work. Since nothing (or very rarely) works right on the first try, trouble shooting is a constant occurrence. And the last ¼ goes to having some fun, sightseeing famous places, and just walking around getting to know the area better. So, after seeing how comparable the other projects were to mine, it was reassuring that the hardships, joyous times, and great data that was collected was also shared by the other teams.

The rest of the conference was also a great learning experience. There were talks every day by various researchers, students, and working professionals on how to better interpret data, how to store data, new advance with geophysics, and a lot of other really great things. One of the talks that I found most interesting is a team that was working in Australia flying a helicopter equipped with electromagnetic instruments (similar to what I am using in theory) over an old army base. The point of this was to look for unexploded weapons, areas of contamination, or areas where undocumented dumps of trash and metals might have gone. Their technique worked very well, and they were able to locate areas that had higher conductivity as opposed to other areas at the site.

Houston was a great place, and it was nice to make it in time for the half marathon that was on Saturday. I just wish that I would have been able to sleep in my bed on Thursday instead of the Houston airport floor since my flight was canceled. But all of the training and running I had done in India had paid off and I had a great race.

Why I love SC

2009-11-01T17:41:00.000-08:00

Well, I have made it to Houston in one piece, and I am waiting for Dr. Moysey to arrive. His flight was delayed, so I figured while I sit in the parking lot, I would write a little blog and let everyone know why I love South Carolina.

Yesterday, after early morning rain showers, the weather cleared off, the clouds burned off, and then sun and blue sky came out. It was a perfect day for what I had planned on doing. With fall here, I decided that I would go to one of my favorite trails in the upstate for a hike. The drive on the way there was beautiful, and it captured everything that SC has to offer: a dog sitting on the porch with wood piles stacked on either side of the porch, road side stands selling apples, local honey, and tomatoes, places selling boiled peanuts out of the back of their pick up trucks, mountains in the distance that are speckled with red, yellow, and green, the smell of autumn’s crisp leaves that almost smell like cinnamon, local people outside always willing to give a wave or say hi, and the list goes on.

I made it to the trail about 11:00, and was sitting at the base of a beautiful waterfall with in an hour looking out to the amazing view to the mountains below. It was great. The water was falling and the breeze was blowing the cooled air, the leaves were rustling in the trees above, and the colors were fantastic. The hike up was nice, not to hot, not to cold but just the right temperature for a walk in the woods. There were amazing views on the hike down, and I had to stop a few times just to sit and look out over the mountains and enjoy the great views.

Once I made it down to the bottom it was time to go and enjoy another one of the many joys of upstate SC…Bar-b-que. This is not the regular bbq that one would find al their local restaurant. This is the place with a white sign with spray painted black letters that read “BBQ”. There is a trailer on the side, and then a smoker out by the road. Two picnic tables make the eating experience fun, because you always get to meet the other locals who know this is the best place for lunch in the upstate. The pork sandwiches are very reasonably priced, and Tim piles the meat high so one sandwich could easily be 2 sandwiches. The homemade BBQ slaw and sauce that goes on the sandwich is amazing, and it is a real treat for a hungry person after they have just finished a great hike. And what makes it even better is meeting some great friends there to enjoy the sandwhich and the great day.

What a great day. Crisp, clean, fresh air, amazing views, great fall smells, beautiful trees, and then great food. Not much can beat that!

Getting ready

2009-10-21T09:18:00.001-07:00

Photos: Village meeting at the start of the year, a few of the farmers in Salri, and few of the kids in Salri

Amazing!! Time flies by just as fast in Clemson as it did in India. It is very hard to believe that I have almost been home for one month. I am not sure where the time goes, but it most go somewhere. I still have not decided if I am glad time passes by so quickly or not, I guess it just means I am always busy working away on this project, or trying to get this small project finished.

So the past week has been a lot more data analysis, and getting all the data sorted out, what we like, what we don’t like, what we need to work on a bit, and what we think we will be able to use. One of the biggest projects was working through the stream flow data. We noticed that every time we would offload the pressure transducer in the stilling well, there would be a change in the values that the stream gauge would then read after we reinstalled the logger. So, every time that we took out the pressure transducer, we had to adjust back to a common value. Not exactly a hard task, but something that required a bit of confidence in the values being changed. Now that the values have been changed, they make much more sense, and they also relate very well to the stream heights we collected while we would do some of the stream gauging. So, the data has been adjusted to the “correct” values.

One of the other big projects for the past few days has been finishing up the poster for the SEG/GWB (The Society of Exploration Geophysicists / Geophysics Without Borders) conference that is in Houston this coming weekend. I am very excited to go, meet people that have been following along the blog, meet people who help provide so much for the project, and have been big supporters of the project. I also can’t wait to talk about the experiences and the research work that I conducted in India. I think it will be a very nice trip, and I am really looking forward to it.

Also in the past week, I was able to enjoy one of America’s favorite past times…football and tailgating. Clemson played Wake Forest last week, and it was fantastic to hang out with my brother, some friends, and enjoy some football, food, and drinks. Nothing like a good American weekend to get back adjusted to the states.

Stay tuned, there is a lot more work being done, and some results should be coming out soon.

A change of gears

2009-10-14T04:53:00.001-07:00

I have made it back to Clemson, have more or less moved into my new apartment, stocked my kitchen with all the necessary food items, gotten all my bags from India unpacked, washed clothes (its amazing what a washer can do to clothes and their color, and how much dirt gets removed from a washer as opposed to my shower floor), gotten all of the data sorted and organized, and now I am ready to sit down and start some serious data analysis.

The project has again entered into a new phase. There is no more field work that I will be doing for quite some time now (unfortunately), and Minakshi will be collecting the data from the instruments for me at a biweekly rate. The only data that I will be getting from her twice a month will be data from the soil moisture probes, weather station, and stream gauges. So, in terms of the data she collects, it will be added into the master files for each monitoring station, and analysis will be done on a regular basis to add in the new data as it is received.

In terms of the EMI data, we have most of that data already collected, and it is now time to start analyzing it more than I did while I was in India. Some of the projects that we will begin to work on will be trying to correlate the EMI data with soil moisture. If you remember the EM38 collects data and then gives the electrical conductivity of the subsurface, about 1.5m below the ground surface. The electrical conductivity is based on soil moisture, clay content, fractures, and salinity. So, the project now is to find out the exact soil moisture in the fields based upon the conductivity data that was collected. Once we know the exact soil moisture, then we can start to make a plan for farmers to help with their irrigation practices. We can do this by knowing the moisture content, and knowing the wilting point of crops (the point at which plants die because they do not have enough water), and tell farmers where and how much they need to irrigate in a particular field.

Also, we need to correct the EMI data for drift caused by temperature changes. What this means is that as the temperature would increase, there would be a little bit of drift in the EC collected by the instrument. We know this happens as one day that I was out in the field, I took the EM38 and let it collect data in a stationary position in the sun. Then when I looked at the data, it started off as a nice smooth line, but as the instrument heated from the sun, the data started to get a little bit of noise (values higher and lower than the real value, so the graph was no longer a straight line). So, we need to correct the data for the temperature to remove the noise, so the whole graph becomes a nice straight line.

Another project that will be completed very soon is making some changes on the poster board. We are going to modify the board for various purposes as we need it. One of the modifications is making the poster board vertical, instead of horizontal. The vertical board will be used in FES’s annual report. Also, we are changing the board to modify the content, so add or remove certain aspects of the board to make it more or less technical, or more informative to a broad audience. I always like working on the poster board, because it presents new challenges on how to fit a lot of material in a limited amount of space.

Overall, things back in Clemson are great. Last weekend I was down in Charleston with my best friends, enjoying the beach, and then this weekend there is a tailgate and a football game. Hopefully Clemson can pull off a win, but we will see what happens!

Home sweet home

2009-10-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I have made it safely back to my house. Everything in India the past few days went just fine, and it is nice to finally be back in the states.

I was in Anand at the head FES office for a few days. There we had a meeting with a lot of the team leaders, Ravi, and Jagdeesh, the CEO of FES. The meeting we had there went very well. I was able to show the presentation we had shown to the villagers, as well as a brief overview of the poster board. For me, it was very rewarding to show everyone the work that we had accomplished over the last five months. One of the biggest comments and suggestions that came out of this meeting was, how do we take what we have done and expand it to a much broader scope. Instead of just helping one village, how do we take the work and the conclusions we have come up with and help many villages. Instead of just helping an area of 2.6 km2, how do we help an area of 10km2 and help more than just one farmer, and one plot of farm land. FES wants to help multiple groups of villages, and I think once we start to get some conclusions, and a solid methodology devolved here at Clemson, it will be much easier to assist other villages and other people. I think for me this will be the most rewarding part of the project.

After Anand, it was time to head back to Bombay. I reached there with no problems. One of the major goals of being in Bombay for a few days was to ship the EM38 home. After calling FedEx multiple times and trying to figure out the best way to ship the EM38 home, I went to the main office to drop it off for shipment. The man I spoke with said that the invoice was too much, and that it would not be possible to ship the EM38 as a gift, but rather commercially. It would not have been possible for me to ship it commercially, as to do this we needed a ton of paperwork, most of which we did not have and could not get. So, after going back to the office to try to drop it off again, the same man told me to change the invoice to show the cost of the EM38 as $300, about $16,700 less than it really is, and then schedule for it to be picked up on Tuesday, the 29th, the day I left.

I did all of this, and the EM38 was picked up from the hotel with no problems. I always thought it should be a very easy and simple task to ship it home; however, one would think after 5 months in India I would have learned that no task is ever as easy as I think it should be, and every task will always take longer than I think it should. But in the end, it was shipped, and it was one less thing to have to try and manage at the airport.

So, now I am back at home, trying to get adjusted to everything in the states. I feel like I have only been gone about 2 weeks. The weather is the same here as when I left, nothing has really changed too much, and everything feels the same. I don’t feel like I have been gone for 5 months, but I guess I have. I am still trying to figure out where the time has gone, and how it could go by so quickly.

I hope all of you have enjoyed the blog. I will continue to post on it about once a week to continue to provide updates on the research, and the progress of life at Clemson. So, stay tuned, and we can start to see some results and conclusions of 5 months of data collection.

More photos

2009-09-26T03:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a new link for photos from Jaipur http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.matz84/Jaipur.

Its the last day in the office, and its nice that things have finally wrapped up. I am heading to Bombay tomorrow, and then the next post will be from home. I hope you have all enjoyed the blog, and there will be plenty more in the future.

The last day in town

2009-09-25T03:13:00.000-07:00

Wow, when things need to get done, the stress levels can rapidly rise. But, things still get done, and all the work that needed to get finished yesterday was (well at least most of them). The morning started as many mornings, but with one small exception. Mike, the boy that lives a few doors down from me wanted me to walk him to school. I agreed that on my last day in town I would walk him to school, so he and I departed and took the 15minute walk to his school. It was nice to spend a little bit of time with him before leaving, as I know he will surely miss me once I am gone. Then, as many other mornings have started, it was time for one last run. It was a good one, and I am glad that I finished out my Ujjain training on a good note.

Sudershan then came over for breakfast, he wanted pancakes one last time, so I cooked some up. They were as good as always, quite tasty. It will be nice to be back at home though where real syrup is available, and Dad makes them for me in the morning instead of me having to make them.

At this point in time the day started to get a bit busier. I had to close my bank account and Sudershan and his father were grateful enough to assist in this task. It took a bit longer than expected, and since I had a lot of things stolen earlier on the trip, they needed some paper work that I did not bring along with me. Thankfully, I was able to give it to Sudershan so he could give it to his father and take it to the bank the following day. From the bank, I headed home to work on packing a bit more.

It has always amazed me how much stuff one can acquire in such a short period of time. I came here with one backpack, and I was leaving with two full bags. I came here with no refrigerator, and now Minakshi has a “new” refrigerator, air cooler, and many other common house hold items that I will not be bring along with me. I think she was very happy to get all of these things, and I was happy that I had someone to give them all to.

From here, it was time for a little relaxation. One last shave, and I decided also that I would get a face massage. The face massage was nice, took a little nap, and just enjoyed. Then the big shock came when I got a mud mask. I looked at the bottle that was used, and the first ingredient was benotite, which is more commonly used for sealing new wells that have just been recently installed, and the second ingredient was papaya, which is what I also had for breakfast. But, it was nice, and I took a little nap, and it was good to forget about all the stresses of the day.

I was able to squeeze in some lunch with two of my friends that I had made over the course of time I spent there. We went to one of the most famous restaurants in Ujjain, Shreeganga, and I had one of my favorites, idly samber. It was awesome to get it one last time, and I know it will be one of the things I wish I could have in about two weeks.

Then, back to home for some packing, then to the office to take care of some last minute works there. By this point in time, I was about ready to sit down, and enjoy the rest of my time and just take it all in. That of course was not the case, and it was very hectic moving everything to Minakshi’s house, trying to get photos with all of my friends, the haircutters, the veggie man, the cobbler, Mike and his family, and get the photos printed. They all got printed, just not all delivered. That will be one of Minakshi’s jobs when she gets home.

Then it was dinner time. You know you are going to be full when you have two dinners in one night. Mike and his family had me over for dinner, which was delicious, and then I went to Bipin's house for supper as well. After two dinners, I was more ready for a nap then trying to get everything loaded into the car and to the station.

Our train left Ujjain at 11:40pm, and we got to the train station about 11:35 (Minakshi was running a bit on the late side). Luckily, the train had not arrived yet, so we had some time at the station for more goodbyes. Now, I am sitting on the train with Minakshi getting ready to get off in Anand for one last meeting at the head office, and one last visit with Ravi.

I will try to post one more blog up tomorrow so, get ready for that!

Last field trip

2009-09-24T04:17:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday was the last day in the field. It was a good day, and it started as many of the other visits to the field. We had planed to leave home at 8:00, I was ready to go, and at 9:15 I walked over to Minakshi’s house to see where the car was. We finally ended up leaving at 9:45, so a bit on the late side, but still acceptable by Indian time.

The last few tasks in the field were of loaded the data from all of the instruments, and mapping the last little part of the watershed with the GEM2. Minakshi took care of offloading the data and I mapped with the GEM. It was nice to get back up into the uplands and walk around there one last time, but it was also not so fun since it was so hot outside. Minakshi had no problems off loading all of the data.

One amazing thing that we have seen in the field, is that the farmer’s have started to pump their wells to irrigate the crops. After pumping the wells for a while, the streams have now gone dry. The weather gauge has no more water, the water at the v-notch was also very low. The flow at the lower gauge was still there, but it was very low and not moving very fast. It is amazing to see that just pumping the wells can drop the water table elevation enough take make the streams stop flowing

Aside from having the last day in the field, I have been having many other lasts: the last run, the last lunch out, the last time to wash clothes, and the list goes on. Things here have been quite crazy recently trying to get everything taken care of, packed, moved and wrapped up to leave tonight. All is well though, and I still can’t believe that I am going home.

The last photo here is of my travel buddy, Mary. This is a cow that I got as a gift from my mother after completeing the Greenville Marathon in 2008. The farmer shown said that he wanted to have it, and keep it as a memory of my time in Salri. I decided that he should have it, and the look on his face was one of pure joy and happiness.

Hanging out with the veggie man

2009-09-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

One of the last little projects that needed to be finished while I was still in India was the calibration of the soil moisture probes. What this means is taking a sample of soil from the field, saturating the sample with water with the probe, installed in the sample, taking readings as the sample saturates, and then once the sample is saturated remove the sample from the water, weigh the sample, and continue to take readings from the probe. The weight of the soil, as well as the moisture content of the soil as read by the probe, and the fact that we can determine the properties of the soil by how much water was taken in will allow us to find out if the probe is giving accurate readings or not. This is useful in the field to make sure the data we are collecting is correct.

One of the major problems with calibrating the probe is trying to find a scale. Most shops are not willing to rent a scale that will be used with water and dirt. So needless to say, I spent the day yesterday at the vegetable man’s shop using his new digital scale that he bought about 3 weeks ago. It was a good day, the probe is being calibrated, and it was fun to see how much work he does every day at his little shop.

The shop is run by the owner (the vegetable man) and his younger brother. The younger brother runs the shop in the morning, opening around 7am, while the owner goes to the market to buy the produce. About 10am the owner returns with a motorcycle full of fresh produce. Then it is time to count all of the limes (this was my job yesterday), sort the veggies, and then build a work of art out of them as they get stacked on the tiers of the shop front. Then, the work of art is destroyed as soon as the first customer comes to the shop since they pick through everything to find the best pieces. Since yesterday was Sunday, most of the people come in the early morning and it was quite busy. It was really exciting to see how fast the owner works, making sure the people are happy with what they are buying. The most interesting part is when the customer “thinks” they are finished getting what they need, they usually buy a few more pieces after the owner asks if they need anything else, and tells them that everything is the best quality and number one.

So all in all it was a good day, hanging out with some friends, and getting the soil probes calibrated. The only down fall of the day is that it is now hot again like it was during the dry season. I don’t know how it happened, but the wonderful weather we had a month ago has turned back into hot and dry.

But on a really good note, Sudershan is back in town, and he and I are getting together tonight!!

Jaipur

2009-09-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

Just a few days ago I spent a little bit of time visiting Jaipur, the pink city. Wow, what a place. It was beautiful, and the naming of the pink city is very appropriate. The old part of the city, enclosed in the city wall, is filled with pink painted buildings, and the wall of the city is also pink. So, the name, “pink city” fits it very well. And in the early morning and the sunset of the evening gives all of the buildings a certain glow and air that is hard to put into words.

When I first arrived, the first stop was to go and visit Amber Fort, about 8km away from the main part of the city. Amber for was beautiful, very similar to many of the other forts I have seen here in India. It has large courtyards, gardens, and many rooms. From here I took the hike up the hill to go and visit Jaigarh fort. This is probably on the top three list of places I have been in India. The view from the top was incredible. You could see for what seemed miles in all directions. The walls of the fort climbing up the hills on the top of the ridge reminded me of the great wall of china. The valley below and also being able to see Jaipur off in the distance was incredible. It was also beautiful inside, large open court yards, and also the world’s largest canon, which to say the least was quite huge.

From Amber I went back into Jaipur, found a hotel and just did some walking around the main shopping street outside of Jaipur. Some people I had meet from the UK suggested that I go and visit the “monkey temple” or the Temple of the Sun God. They suggested that I should go to this place at sunset, to see the sunset over the city. I made it there for the sunset and it was a great view. The sounds of the city still roared on the top of the hill, and it was possible to imagine all of the hustle and bustle of the busy streets below. There were monkeys too, hence the name. On the path up, it is lined with monkeys, just waiting for you to walk by and give them a piece of food. I guess I was lucky as I did not get “harassed” by the monkeys, but one of the girls that suggested that I go visit this place said that they would run up to her and pull at her pants to give them some food.

After the monkey temple, it was time to head back to the hotel, after getting a nice dinner of Thali, the all you can eat plate of Indian food. It was quite good, and a great way to refuel after a long day.

The following day I woke up and headed toward the city palace and the Jantar Mantar. The city palace was much the same as all of the other palaces I had seen. Nothing really stands out at this place. However, if you go on a day when the children are visiting from the school be very prepared. I think all of them said hello and they all tried to shake my hand. I figured it best not to shake hands, beucase I knew as soon as I shook one, I would be shaking over 100, which was not my idea of a great time.

After the city palace, and all of the school children, I went to the Jantra Mantar. WOW. This place was awesome. It is an observatory that was built and it houses the worlds largest sundial, accurate up to 2 seconds. The other instruments in the park area were another small sundial, instruments to measure the anlge of the earth, an instrument to tell which zodiac sign is currently the correct one, and a machine that is used to find the position of the constalations in the night sky. There were also the 12 zodiac signs persent, which the astromnors would use, along with the other instruments to figure out the fortunes and the horoscopes at that time, depending on how everything is lining up.

From here was a brief trip to the Hawa Mahal, or the wind temple. This five story building was quite nice, more so from the street and the back side than the inside. There were beautiful stained glass windows in some of the doors, and from the top it offered a great view of the busy street life below.

Jaipur was a good trip, and it was a bit sad leaving. It was great to see all of the sights, and have one last trip before I head home.

Pictures will be posted soon!!

It’s coming

2009-09-16T22:11:00.001-07:00

Wow, time flies. It seemed like just yesterday I was telling all of my friends that I have made here that I would be leaving in three weeks. Now it is less than two weeks and I will be going home. I cannot believe it. I think this coming week before I start my travels home will be very busy and quite hectic.

We have a lot planned for the next few days. I am going to get one final map of all the fields with the EM38. This data set should prove to be very interesting as we have not really had any rains in the past week or so, and it has also been very hot. It will be interesting to see if the conductivity values have gone down due to the soils starting to dry out and the soil moisture starting to decrease.

Also, today we are heading out to the field to do some stream gauging. We are going to gauge at all three stream gauge locations, and then also at two other locations. The three main spots will be where the gauges are currently located, and the two other spots will be located between the v-notch weir and the lower stream gauge. When we look at these two other locations, we will be able to get a good idea on whether or not the stream is gaining or losing. This means that if the stream is gaining, more discharge would be found in the downstream locations, and if the stream is losing, less water would be discharging from the down stream locations. Losing streams are losing water to the ground water, where as gaining streams have water entering the stream from the groundwater system.

One of the last big projects before I leave is offloading the data from the instruments one more time, relaunching the instruments, and making sure that everything is set and inplace for when I leave. This is one of the easier tasks that need to be accomplished in the next week, but it might be the most important task. When this is done, I will have all of the data in my possession, so when I get back to Clemson we can really start to look at it and give it a good amount of analysis.

All in all, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done but they are all small tasks that will just help pass the days away. I guess on one side it is good we still have work that needs to be done that way I do not get bored, but on the bad side, all of this work means I really do not have any time to relax and enjoy my last few days in town. Again it is hard to believe that in two weeks I will be sleeping in my own bed again

Even though we have alot left to do, I was still able to find some time on Sunday to get out and enjoy the day. I went to the park with Sanjay and his family, Rashid, and Kundan. We had a great time, walking around, going out in the paddle boat, and enjoying some cold drinks. Although it was still hot outside, it was nice to sit in the shade, and enjoy the peacefulness of the park.

Backing Action with Science in Rural Watershed Development

2009-09-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

Before I talk about the poster board I would like to share a brief experience I had this morning while getting ready to go to the office. I had gone for a run this morning (about 7 km), come home, and had some breakfast (left over pancakes). Then, I decided it best to get a shower before I went to work to get off the layer of sweat and salt. Again, it started off as a cold shower, the initial water hitting my body as always took the breath away from me. (I have learned that showering is getting wet as fast as possible and turning off the water. Then, you wash, and then rinse as fast as possible). However, today was a bit different. After washing and turning the water back on, the water started to get warm. It was amazing. I remembered how great hot showers feel, and enjoyed the water for a brief time. Then, I realized hot showers mean the water in the tank on the roof is hot, which means it is hot enough outside to make the water feel warm. So, after a nice hot shower, it was time to go walk to the office in the hot air outside.

So, back to the poster board: The poster board has been finished for now. I think there still might be a few changes that need to be made for a “final” version (if there is a final version), but for now it looks great and it is hanging in the village. I have put a PDF version of the board on the Clemson GWB website so you can download it and look at it (there is a link on the left side), and this is also the link: http://sites.google.com/site/gwbclemson/

When we first got to the village we found two locations to hang the board near where the workshop was going to occur. We hung them up, and before we even had a change to put tape all around it to have it stay in one place, the children were looking at the board, and reading the Hindi that was written on it. They were also reading some of the English phrases. They were pointing at the pictures on the board, and I think they really understood what message the board was trying to convey.

Minakshi then started to explain the board to the children, and there attention as fixed as she explained the water budget and the various fluxes of the water budget. She did a great job explaining the board, and I think the kids really enjoyed looking at the board, and understanding what the board was all about.

It was great to finally see the board hanging on a wall, and it was amazing to see the children so interested in the science aspect of what we have been working on the past five months. The adults in the village also looked over the board, read it, and spent some time figuring out what it said. I think one of the boards will remain near the middle of the village, and the other board will be moved to the school so the kids can learn even more about the science behind what we are doing here in India.

So to give you all a brief recap of what the poster is trying to describe I will explain it as briefly as I can. First, the board is broken into 3 parts, left, middle, and right. Then, it reads like a book. The first part is to explain the water cycle and apply it to the Salri watershed. There are fluxes of water coming into the watershed (rainfall), and fluxes out of the watershed (stream flow, evaporation, groundwater, and personal water use). If we think of the water balance as a bank account, we have flows of money in, flows of money out, and what we save or do not save gives us a balance (either + or –) at the end of the month.

From there we see that the water cycle provides water to us to use in our daily lives. Our live stock need water (about 90L of water per day), humans need water (about 30L of water per day), and we need water for irrigation of our first crop (kharif, usually soy beans and corn), and our second crop (rabi, usually wheat and gram, which are chick peas).

If we make measurements on the watershed, we can better manage our water resources. We can measure rainfall, groundwater levels and the amount of water in the WHS to get an idea of the amount of water that is available in the watershed for our daily use. Also, we can see how long water is lasting in the water shed. We can monitor soil moisture with the EM38 and the soil moisture probes and try to develop better irrigation practices, such as an irrigation schedule that has less days of irrigation, or irrigation in only part of a field instead of the whole field. Lastly, we can measure stream runoff. If we improve our land cover by planting trees, limiting grazing, and working to restore the ecology, we can decrease runoff which is water that is lost from the watershed.

When we look at the past management practices of the Salri watershed, we have seen positive increases in land use. We have seen more land under double crop, more land turned into forest, and less scrub and wastelands in the watershed.

So once we have these measurements and observations we have two decisions. We can plan for a sustainable water budget based of the science we have, or we cannot plan our water budget. If we plan a sustainable water budget, we might see further increases in agricultural land, we might see more water in the WHS longer into the year, and we might see water in the wells further into the dry season. However, if we do not make a plan based on the science and observations we have made our wells might go dry faster, agricultural lands might be lost, and the WHS could go dry faster.

So overall, the water cycle gives us water for our daily lives. If we make a sustainable plan based on science and observations and manage our water resources we can be water rich, and hopefully have water longer into the dry season.

Village workshop

2009-09-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Well with the end of the project nearing and things coming to a close it was time to schedule a workshop in the village. We had the workshop yesterday and there was a very good turn out. The workshop was organized to share the results of some of the work that has been done during the past 5 months. The villagers all arrived; there were a few people from the irrigation department, people from ITC, the major funders of FES, and other that had been invited for the event.

The workshop went very well. Minakshi and I were able to give a presentation about the project, various people spoke, I am not sure about what as it was in Hindi, but Minakshi told me it was all good stuff.

One of the biggest joys I had yesterday was the presentation of the poster board. We finally finished it and got it printed off. We were able to hang it in two locations in the village. We hardly had time to finish taping it to the walls and the children were all at the board looking at the photos and also reading what was written there. It was great to see them look over the board, read what was written there, and they did understand the points the board was trying to make. I was very happy to see that a small poster could be such a big success with the villagers.

Overall, it was a great day. A lot of good things came out of the work that was done. I think the villagers enjoyed seeing the slide show with the data, and I know the kids enjoyed the slide show of the photos and also a brief preview of a Disney movie!!
I will put up some photos on the picassa page tomorrow when I get them from everyone.

100

2009-09-09T02:41:00.001-07:00

Wow, 100. This is the 100th blog post since I started the blog back at the beginning of the year. A lot has happened since then, and I thought that I would just give a brief recap of what has happened in the past 9 months of the project.

Winter and early spring of 2009: This was a very good and hectic time. A lot of work was done for the project. This time was a lot of shopping for equipment, getting equipment to Clemson, making sure everything was working correctly, installing things in the field with the undergrads at Clemson to learn how everything works, and test runs with the EM38 and the GEM2 to learn how those work. We spent a lot of time in the spring planning what needed to be accomplished for the project while I would be in India, what field work will be done when Dr. Moysey would be here with me, and planning for what tasks still needed to be completed before we left Clemson.

The spring flew by, and before we knew it we were on a plane, and it was the start of a new adventure for me, and the start of my master’s research. (Please don’t forget about the self upgrade to business class on our flight from Germany!!)

Late Spring 2009: Wow, what is this place I thought to myself as I stepped outside the doors of the Bombay airport. Before reaching the doors to the airport, we had to get all our luggage through customs, and I was surprised to see how “relatively easy” it was to get them through. Walking out the doors, the hot humid air smacked me in the face, and the smells and sights of the new city after 24 hours of travel where over whelming. We meet Professor Ramakrishnan at IIT, Bombay and were taken to the hostel at the campus. After a good night sleep, it was time to get to work. After meetings with Dr. R, working with the instruments with the students at IIT, trying to get used to a new climate, recover from jet lag, eating new foods, and just getting used to a new place all together we left Bombay and headed north toward Anand. After a few days in Anand with meetings with the head people of FES we again packed up and headed north to move me into my new home for the next 5 months.

We reached the field site the next day after reaching here. 5AM in the morning we left on the first day, and by 1100 that day the sun was at full strength it seemed, and I thought to myself how am I going to live here for the next 5 months. It is ungodly hot here, very few places have AC, and the dust immediately put a layer on anything that is in its way, and I am not sure if I can live in this type of environment.

The first day in the field was a relief when we made it back to the hotel with AC. Then after 2 weeks of going to the field every day, me moving into my house (without AC), and lots of hard work getting done in the field and at the hotel in the evenings, Dr. Moysey was on a plane back to the states, and I was settling into my new surrounds and starting to get used to the place.

Field work continued, initial surveys were taken, instruments were installed and checked and were gotten up and running, and everything seemed to be going along just fine. Minakshi, Sudershan, and I had a great time at the office, in the field, and in the evenings, enjoying life like good friends often do.

Summer 2009: The summer and the monsoon season brought a lot of changes. I was very skeptical if the monsoon really existed or not, as I had not seen any rain in quite some time, and the monsoon was delayed, and then delayed again, and again. The field work continued, and everything seemed to be staying the same without any large changes in soil moisture, temperature, or results from well surveys or mapping with the instruments.

Then finally it started to rain. The weather changed, it got colder, things started to turn green, fields had crops planted in them, streams started to have water flow, the WHS began to fill, and the instruments began to show the same changes that we could observe and feel. Mapping with the EM38 showed the fields had increases in electrical conductivity, a sign of increased soil moisture. Also, mapping with the EM38 has become a huge challenge now that the corn is taller than me, and the soy beans are to my waist. The field work started to wrap up at this time, and the work shifted to looking at the data, and seeing what else needed to be finished before I came home.

The monsoon and summer are now coming to a close along with my time in India. I am now three weeks away from boarding a plane and heading home. If the next three weeks is anything like the past 4.5 months it will be here as if it is just tomorrow. There are mixed emotions with my trip home. I can not wait to see my family and friends back at home. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into a nice slice of Mellow Mushroom pizza and drink a very dark beer. On the other hand, I do not want to leave the field work. I do not want to leave India because there are so many places I still want to visit. I do not want to leave all of the new friends I have made here, and I don’t want to leave my project, when there is so much more work I could do here if I stayed.

All in all, the conclusion of the trip is rapidly approaching. All of the tasks are done, and now it is just preparing for the trip home, and putting a few finishing touches on things here and there. So, after 100 blog posts, this one sums up my time here in a mildly long description of how I thought I could not survive in a place that is so hot and different, to waking up at night cold reaching for my covers when the temperature in my room is still above 75F.

Omkareshwar

2009-09-06T19:04:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday I took a small break from research, field work, and office time and spent the day traveling a few hours by bus to visit Omkareshwar. After leaving my house at 5:30, luckily getting an auto to take me to the bus stand, I found the right bus, and was in Omkareshwar by about 11:00.

Omkareshwar is an island that is shaped like the symbol “Om” in Hindi. The island is home of one of the 12 jyotirlingam. The lingam is the symbol of Lord Shiva. The temple that houses this lingam is called Shri Omkar Mandhata. One of the other 12 locations where these jyotirlingam’s can be found is in Ujjain, at the Mahakal Temple.

The temple visit was visit was very nice, although there were a large number of “holy people” there who saw my white skin as a symbol of vast wealth. They would all offer to give me prayers, and pray for me and my family, and then would say the money was on me. What I have come to find out is, when money is one me they expect somewhere in the Rs 100-500 range, not the 10-50 range I would consider giving them. So after telling many of them, many times that I just wanted to look, and also getting many disappointed looks after a few coins made it into their dish, I visited the whole temple.

It was not my favorite temple. Something about people constantly asking me for money and to give me prayers that takes away from the holiness of the place I felt. Granted, I was there as a tourist, but I can still enjoy the holiness of a sacred place.

I then proceeded to walk around the island for a little while. I found some stairs (about 370 of them) that lead up to another temple on the top of a hill. From this temple I then walked down the path to a point that was the end of the island still up on the hill. It was a great view, and nice to finally see the two rivers that join to make the island. Then, on my way back I meet a few sadhus that were sitting and enjoyed some time talking with them. Sadhus are pilgrims that go from place to place, with not much more than the clothes on their backs, visiting and praying at the various temples.

After walking back down the 370 stairs it was time for a great lunch of Thali (a never ending plate of rice, roti, dhal, vegetable, and soup) and then I headed home. The four hour bus ride home was very nice. The scenery out the window was fantastic and it was nice to have a breeze after walking around in the hot sun for the day. All in all it was a great little day trip, but again, it’s always nice coming back to home.

More rainy days

2009-09-04T04:01:00.000-07:00

I will put this link at the top in case you don’t make it to the bottom. MORE PHOTOS!!!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.matz84/NewFieldPhotos

I am not sure if I have mentioned this or not, but the monsoon season here passes by around mid-June, heading north, and then it comes back heading south. So there are two big sets of rains, one when the monsoon goes north, and one when the monsoon comes south. Right now we are in the midst of the monsoon heading south. We have had a few really good rainy days, at my house as well as out in the field. Just a few nights ago in my rain gauge (a bucket I use to wash clothes that I leave outside), there was about 3 inches of rain water that had fallen in just one night. Overall, the rains have lead to a lot of changes out in the field.

At the weather station installed out in the field (the official one), there was 182mm of rain received in August. 61mm of rain fell from August 1-August 15, 5.5mm fell from August 16-August 24, and from August 24 to August 31, 115mm of rain fell. The majority of this rain fell from August 25-August 29. The graph to the right shows the rainfall, and it is easy to see that after a few big storms with some pretty heavy rainfalls, the totals add up very quickly. Please note that each reading on the graph is a 15 minute period. So, we had a few rainfalls that were more than 10mm of rain in 15 minutes.

With all of this rain, the WHS is full (deepest part of the WHS is 4.65 meters), and there is water exiting the WHS through the spill way. With water coming out of the spillway, the v-notch is working very well, and the water is flowing through the notch. With the water going through the notch, we can now start to calibrate the v-notch to see what the discharge is for various heights of water that gets ponded upstream of the weir.

Also, with all of the water in the streams we have been able to get a lot of stream gauging done. We have gotten two different readings done now, one a few days ago when the streams were flowing, and then yesterday when there was even more water in the streams. I must say, stream gauging is a lot of fun, and it is nice to stand in the fairly cool water and enjoy it and work at the same time.

The last field project the past few days has been mapping the watershed again with the GEM2. This task has to be one of my least favorite tasks. Each time I have mapped the watershed with the GEM2, I am amazed at how well Indians build fences out of prickly bushes, how hard these prickly bushes are to walk through when you are carrying instruments, and how much these bushes like to “attack” clothes and rip them. Not only do they attack clothes, they have been known to steal hats off of my head and poke me in the foot or scratch up my arms and legs fairly well. But at the end of the day, and usually a few days later after I have recovered from walking all around the watershed, I always look back and see how much I really did enjoy it. Walking around the watershed is beautiful, and it is neat to see the herds of cows in the uplands grazing, the crops growing more and more with each passing week, the streams having more and more water, the water buffalo holding true to their name sitting in the WHS, and walking in the grasses that are now up to my waist.

Overall, it has been a very good, few successful days out in the field. We have gotten a lot of work done this past week, and it is a good feeling to see that the projects we laid out at the beginning of my time here are getting accomplished, and the to do list while I am here is now down to just a few last small items.

The past 4.5 months

2009-09-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

So, I thought that today I would share with you a few of the experiences I have had the past few months in India. Consider this more of a list of things that I have seen or experience which make India such a unique and interesting place.

Walking to and from work and around town everyday: cows, people saying hello to me, the occasional monkey eating roti on the side of the road, the monkeys jumping from one house to the other, motorcycles and cars coming very close to each other as they pass, mud puddles and small ponds that need to be walked around, the smell of incense coming from houses, people cooking and watching TV inside their homes, families passing by on a single motorcycle, people pushing carts with vegetables, people pushing carts collecting recyclable materials, people pushing carts with trash from the gutters, kids playing cricket, the vegetable man having a line of people at his shop, people saying hello to me, people offering me tea to find out a little bit about me, more cows in the road ways, sometimes an elephant walking around the market, people trying to rip me off when I buy fruit, ladies swinging very large hammers to work metal, crowds of people eating street snacks at the tower, people selling all sorts of food along the road, the man who takes kids on rides around the tower on the horse, people hanging off the sides of tempos that are moving around town, 3+ people riding on one motorcycle, people carrying very large bags on their heads, people carrying 20L buckets of water on their head, mixing concrete by hand, workers carrying gas tanks on the back of bicycles, bikers carrying grasses for cows on the back of their bike, two people on a motorcycle with a sheet of plywood in the middle of them, the sounds of bells, drums, and singing from the temple.

Things I will miss when I am back at home: the adventure of not knowing what will occur on any given day, street food, cheap grocery shopping, cheap packed lunches and dinners, very friendly people everywhere I go, the scenery of the field, field work in the village, traveling around to new and exciting places, FES staff, tea breaks in the middle of the day, not knowing how long I will have to wait for a car to show up at a given time, the adventure of going to the field with other people who do not have a time schedule, having everyone say hello to me where ever I walk.

Things I will not miss: my bed that is on the floor, not having AC, having windows in my house to keep out the mosquitoes, squatty potties, having to boil water to drink, walking the watershed with the GEM2, wearing jeans everywhere, stares from people when I do not want to talk to anyone, Indian standard time, mud puddles that are fairly impassable, dodging cow dung in the street, instant coffee, washing clothes by hand, having dinner parties that start at 10pm instead of my dinner time of 700pm, having everyone say hello to me where ever I walk, very poor air quality and air pollution, sleeping in a room that is 80+F, taking malaria pills, cold showers.

This is just a short list of what I will be missing when I am back at home. The list could go on forever, I am sure, but I will stop with these.

2009-08-31T23:41:00.001-07:00

Well, the village stay that was planned for the weekend was canceled, and I think it was canceled for very good reasons. Dada, the man I was going to stay with, said that he had a big snake go into his house. He proceeded to inform me that maybe staying with him was not the best idea, and that I should postpone for a few days. I greatly agreed with him, and decided that I could spend a few days doing other things instead of sleeping with snakes.

While we were out at the field, we were finally able to get some stream gauging done. We have had a few good rains the past few days so there was water flowing in the streams and we were able to get the flow meter in and take some stream velocity readings. Hopefully, the next time we go back there will be enough water in the streams that we can do some more, and if not I will have to refer to the float test using a cricket ball to get the velocity of the stream. (We need the stream velocity so we can then multiple the velocity by the cross sectional area of the stream to get the amount of water that is flowing out of the stream in a unit of time. This is important as it will show us one of the out flows of water from the watershed.)

Also, while out in the field I was able to map all three fields with the EM38. The fields are starting to look the same now, and the patterns that are present have been present for the past few weeks now. The following pictures show what the upper agricultural field looked like at the end of July and now at the end of August. The same patterns and trends are present. The values across the field have also increased. The most exciting part of looking at this data is that the areas that were higher in the end of July survey are the same areas that are high at the end of August survey.

The eastern and northern edge of the field has a line across the field that is a high area. The eastern area could be higher as there is a some sort of subsurface drainage path in this area. Also, the areas might have more clays than the rest of the field. If you then look at some of the very first surveys that were done in the field, it is probably a safe assumption that the reason for the higher values has to do with the soils in the area. Since there are slightly higher conductivity values when there was not water present in the fields, the soils or the characteristics of the field are probably the cause for the higher values.

The areas to the southwest that have very low conductivity could be caused by the small earthen wall that is built around the field, and the grasses on that edge of the field. If the water is draining to the northeast (which is the slope of the field) then the water might be stopped by the wall or the grasses before reaching the field.

These are all just ideas why the conductivity might be higher or lower in the different areas. One of the most important ideas from looking at maps like this is that we can use EMI and the EM38 to map a field quickly and look at the trends we see present in the field. This can then help us make suggestions to farmers on irrigation practices. One suggestion for this field might be instead of irrigating the whole field, just irrigate in the south western portion of the field, as it appears that the water is draining to the northeastern portion of the field. This can then help save water, and potentially help with the water scarcity that is faced by the villagers each year.

It has been a lot of fun mapping the fields and looking at the results from the various surveys. It is always interesting to see how the fields have changed, and what changes take place over time. Also, it is interesting to see some of the first surveys we did and then compare them to some of the later surveys. By doing this, it is possible to try to better figure out the cause for some of the trends we are seeing. Overall, it has been fun, and it’s sad that only 1 more month of EM38 mapping in India remains.

Steady water

2009-08-27T19:42:00.001-07:00

After a few days of not being in the field, it is always nice to go back and check on everything to make sure all is still there and that everything is still working correctly. I was back in the field a few days ago to off load all of the data and check on the water levels in the wells. Everything was still there and working, so it was a successful trip.

I took the water level readings in all of the wells again, after it had not been done for few weeks. I was not overly surprised by the result. The average depth to water on August 4 was 1.43 meters. On August 26, the average depth to water was 1.4 meters; therefore, the water table is the same now as it was a few weeks ago. This means that the subsurface aquifer is full, and that the wells have recharged to about the maximum height they will reach. Most of the wells had a very small change in the water level, and the average change between the wells was -0.07 meters. The largest change was 1meter, and this could be due to the location where the well was measured, or if the well was still filling last time we measured it. Overall, it is interesting to see that the water table is not changing much anymore.

Also while in the village, I went and spoke with Dada. (The photo is from the first day we went to the field to meet with Dada.) Dada is kind of like the mayor of the village. He keeps a watchful eye on the project and makes sure when I see him that everything is going okay. He is a very nice man, and it has been nice to talk with him the few times I have. I asked him if it would be okay if I were to stay in the village for a few days. He said that would be just fine, that he would give me tea, milk, water, and food. I think he also said that he would give me a place to sleep as well so that is good.

I am very excited to go and stay in the village for a few nights. It should be a very interesting experience. I can not wait to try the food they prepare, to see how they live each day, hopefully milk a cow and a water buffalo, meet all the people in the village, and also get some field work done all four days I am there. Minakshi will not be staying with me, so I will be there alone, so the language barriers should be interesting to try and overcome. It should be a fun experience, and I am sure upon my return there will be a very big blog post with numerous stories of my adventures in the village.

Back at Home

2009-08-26T23:26:00.001-07:00

Well, I have made it home from Anand, and it is very nice to be back. It’s always nice to return home after a few days of being away. Everything is familiar again, you know the people around you, you know the people you can trust, and everything suddenly has a certain calm about it.

However, one bad thing about returning home after being away for a few days is the lack of food in the house (since you got rid of all of it since you knew it would spoil), the dirty clothes that you left are still dirty, and you have generated more dirty clothes since you have not had a chance to wash any of the ones at home, nor had time while you were away. (Mind you it is not as easy as placing them in the washing machine, my hands are the washing machine, although I think I might send them out for washing. I think the amount of money spent would be well worth it.) The floor is dirtier than you left it because no one has been home to sweep or mop for the past week, and there are a lot of small jobs that need to be taken care of while trying to get settled back into home life. But still, it’s nice to be home again.

The trip to Anand was very good. I was able to get a lot of work done on the poster board, although it did not get printed off. I knew this would be a big project, and it is good to see the final draft get closer and closer. I think the changes that have been made are all great improvements to the original board, and it will be a very big asset for us at Clemson, as well as for FES here in India. With so little space on the board (about 3feet x 5 feet), it is hard to fit in a lot of information, have it all make sense, and still communicate a clear message. Add in the fact that it has to be bilingual, and that makes it even harder to try and fit in all of the information. It has been fun though, and I can’t wait to see the final project. To the right is a SMALL taste of what it looks like, (keep in mind there is still a lot of work to be done).

Also while in Anand I found a bit of time to do some sightseeing. Let’s just say Anand is no Bombay or Delhi, but there are a few things to see. I walked around one day, to explore and found that it is the typical Indian city. People selling things on push carts, small shops catering to very specific items, and lots of cars, people, bikes, rickshaws, and dust. Also, while on my adventures I went to visit Amul dairy. It is one of the largest dairy companies in India, and I was able to get a tour of the factory where they make milk pouches and butter. It was neat to see, just like the factories I have visited at home. Everything is fully automated with just a few people making sure everything is working correctly.

Overall, things are going very well. I am going to be headed to the field very soon to go check on everything to make sure all is well. Just a bit over 1 month left here, it’s hard to believe.

The Stat counter

2009-08-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I am not sure if you have ever noticed before, but there is a counter on the left side of the screen. This shows how many times the main page has been loaded, and if I click on the counter, I can get a number of different statistics about the blog. I can find out how many people visit the blog in one day, how many people are first time visitors, how long people stay to read the blog, how the people found the blog, what part of the world they came from, the website they went to after leaving the blog, and really, just a lot of neat information about who is coming to the read what I post.

One of the most fascinating things that I have just found today is a map showing where visitors are coming from. It is amazing to look at the map and see that people from all over the word are reading and following along with my life. It seems very strange that so many people that I do not know are reading about my daily life.

Overall, the main page has been loaded over 4,000 times. There have been 1,492 first time visitors to come to the blog. Then, out of those people, 926 of them have come back to the blog, and visited it for more than 1 hour. So, it is interesting to see how many people are actually following along. I hope yall are enjoying!!

Finally it’s done!!

2009-08-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, we have finished the v-notch. (I say this now?!?!) It was another exciting day, and I think our work with the v-notch is finally over.

Starting the day lead to another typical day in India. Amazingly the car showed up to my house exactly at 8:30, the time it was supposed to be there. I was ready to go, but was not downstairs yet. The driver honked the horn, and in two minutes he was gone, just like that. So, I carried my stuff down stairs, got some water from home, and sat downstairs and waited for the car to return. After waiting for 30 minutes, I asked Bipin (the team leader) where the car was. It had gone to pick up Sanjay, and left me at home. So the car showed up and we were off for the field at the normal late time of about 9:15.

We made it to the field office, got some concrete and other supplies, and then were off to the field. We got 1 laborer to help carry things and also help us place the concrete. We mixed up the “mud” got the water out of the stream, put the concrete in, and it’s finally done. All in all it took about 1.5 hours. I think this will work much better than the rubber gasket that we had before. And with this, we are still able to remove the face plate if we have to, and now we will not have to worry about placing the gasket back and making sure it is tight. So, overall I think concrete was the way to go from the onset.

After fixing the face plate, I walked around the watershed, checking on the instruments and downloading the data from the instruments. Everything seems to be working just fine, and it is always exciting to get a new set of data to look at and see how much rain we have gotten as well as seeing how much everything has changed in just a few short days.

After the data downloading, I mapped one of the fields we are monitoring with the EM38. I wanted to check to see what sort of changes occurred in the field in 1 weeks time. I was able to map the field two times last week, and then once this week. It will be interesting to see if the field changes a lot or a little in just 1 week.

Overall things are going very well. I am heading to the FES head office for a few days to finish the poster board and give a brief presentation to everyone there about the progress of the project. It should be a good time, and I am excited to see everyone down there. Stay tuned for more updates on the EM38 surveys.

Troubles are still here

2009-08-16T20:56:00.001-07:00

Well before the monsoon, I was talking about the huge water scarcity problem that parts of India are now facing. Now that the monsoon has set in at home, I no longer see the water tankers passing by my house, I no longer see long lines of people at the hand pumps waiting for water, and no one really mentions the water scarcity anymore.

BUT, it is still here, just not so much where I live. For the past three days in the news paper, there have been reports about the drought that is consuming many parts of India. The cause of the drought is El Nino, and it is having a drastic impact on the rainfalls India is experiencing.

Australia and US weather centers have said that the El Nino, caused by warming of the Pacific Ocean is likely to strengthen in the next two months. This means that the projected 87% of rainfall that was projected to be received might be an over estimate, so really India would receive less than 87% of their normal rainfalls. On August 5th, India had received just 75% of the normal rain fall. “So assuming we get 90% normal rains in August and 100% in September, we still would be touching only around 90% for the season,” said D S Pai.

About 161 out of over 600 districts have been declared to be hit by the drought. The major impact this has in on agricultural lands. Many people in India are farmers, so when their crops fail, their livelihoods also fail. With the onset of the drought, the prime minister of India has set up a committee to look at the impact of the drought. There are food reserves here that might be released to help keep the price of food stable. Also, there is talk that sugar might start to be imported.

For the county to be taken out of the drought, the next 45 days of the monsoon season would have to see large amounts of rainfall, which would be going against the meteorological departments predictions. Overall, the rainfall would have to be 30% greater than usually for the remainder of the monsoon season. A B Mazumdar, a weather official said, “This can only happen only in case of unusual rainfall activity.”

I guess things here at home are turning out okay though. The people I have spoken with have said that the rains have been sufficient, and that we are not in a drought. I am keeping my fingers crossed for the people here that the rest of the monsoon season brings good rains, and plenty of water for the people. Otherwise, if we come back next year, the situation might be much worse than it was this year, and that is a scary thought.

A few long days

2009-08-15T22:06:00.001-07:00

Well it has been a few long, interesting, exciting, adventurous, and packed days for the last week. I was in the field on Thursday and Friday, there were festivals on Friday to celebrate the birthday of Krishna, a Hindu god, Saturday is Independence Day, and Monday is the marriage of Shiva, another Hindu god, so therefore another holiday. So, between festivals, work, and home life, it has been very busy.

The field is good, and we are still seeing a lot of changes in what is occurring. The WHS is full of water and is staying at a constant level of about 4.5 meters. There is water flowing into the WHS from the uplands so it stays fairly level all the time.

We are still working on the v-notch, and trying to seal the bottom of it so water does not seep underneath. The water is not flowing quickly underneath, as the flows right below the WHS are primarily base flow, so the flow is not that great, nor that heavy when it is not raining.

The lower stream gauge is very interesting to watch. There is always a good flow of water passing this gauge, which is suggesting that there is a fair amount of groundwater discharge exiting the watershed through the streams. The flows however are still fairly small, so it is hard to get a lot of the stream gauging done with the flow meter. The water is still a bit to shallow to fully submerge the flow meter.

The past two field visits, I was able to map the three fields we are motioning with the EM38. It is a bit more challenging to map the fields now than it was two month ago. Two months ago the challenge was mapping when it was 100F outside. Now the challenge is not stepping on the crops, hoping you don’t step on a small, unknown animal, and trying to follow a straight line when the crops are up to your knees, and the corn is almost up to my chest. However, the fields are starting to show similar patterns between the mapping events, which is a positive thing. With this knowledge, we might be able to suggest to farmers which parts of the field to irrigate, how much they need to irrigate, and how often they need to irrigate.

The work on the poster board is coming along very nicely. We are going to use the poster board as a tool to explain the project to the village we are working in, other villages around the area, and also with other people in the area, such as the district offices, the FES offices and staff, and the heads of the other villages. Overall, the poster board will serve as a way for us to communicate with very few words the purpose of the project, and the importance of watershed development.

Overall, like I said, it has been a very bust past few days. Sorry there are not pictures today. I will try to get some up on the next post.

Indian Head Wiggle

2009-08-11T06:58:00.001-07:00

I am currently on the train on the way to visit the Taj Mahal and Agra for a few days. The reason I am sharing this is because at the same time, I am also reading a book entitled “Shantaram”, written by Gregory David Roberts. It is the true story of a man who escapes from prison in Australia and flees to India.

His accounts of India are very well written, and I would highly encourage anyone to find this book and read it to get another perspective of what India is like. I just wanted to share a brief experience I just had on the train that is documented perfectly in the book…the Indian head wiggle.

Indians shake their heads in so many different ways. One says thank you, one says your welcome, no, yes, it’s okay, please come in, any brief expression can be told in a simple wiggle of the head. In the book, the author is on the train and recalls his experience with the Indian head wiggle. He says that he wanted to try it, give the head a little wiggle to hello. He would do this, and the peoples response was a huge smile, and a head wiggle back.

As Mr. Roberts says in his book, “A stranger joined our group in the carriage. When our eyes met for the first time, I gave the little wiggle of my head, and a smile. The result was astounding. The man beamed a smile at me so huge that it was half the brilliance of Prabaker’s [Mr. Robert’s Indian Guide] own, and set to such energetic head waggling in returen that I was, at, first a little alarmed.”

I just had a very similar experience. A man on the train was looking at me, I gave a little wiggle, and with a certain pleasure and slight a slight astonishment, he gave me a smile and a little wiggle back. It is really amazing how many different ways people can say hello.

Another head wiggle… I am sitting in an upper berth with a bit more head room than mine has, so I am in the wrong seat. The man whose seat I am in just came to get his water. I looked at him and he gave me a “wiggle” saying that it is fine you are in my seat. No problem, keep working.

After some practice of my own, I to have become fairly good at the head wiggle, and most people seem happy that I can “speak” their language. One of the things I have learned that is very different culturally here than at home in America is the frequency people say thank you. I was taught to always say thank you, and say it very often to everyone here. They are always very surprised by this, and usually say not to thank them. On the other hand, a simple head wiggle to a shop owner, or a friend who might have just given me a lift is the way they say thank you here, and it is very common to see the “thank you wiggle”.

So, try to give the head a little wiggle, and see what type of response you get.

And just in case you were wondeirng, goats also ride in buses!!

EM38 mapping in the lysimeter field

2009-08-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

The following three maps show the conductivity values between the agricultural maps located very near the lysimeter. The water table in this region, as determined by two wells approximately less than 100 meters away is less than 1meter below the ground surface. Also, the lysimeter (which is now used as a monitoring well) had water in it at a depth of 0.3meters from the top of the casing. In addition, this field is located downstream of the WHS by about 500m which would mean additional groundwater, and higher groundwater elevations might be caused due to the closeness of the WHS. Therefore, the water table in this area is very close to the ground surface.

One interesting observation is the very small change, and negative change in conductivity right in the middle of the field. This area is denoted by the red circle. The area might have lower conductivity due to water draining towards the northeastern part of the field, or also that this area is a high spot in the field, therefore making the water flow out of this area. When looking at this area on the July 4th map, it is possible to see that only a very small portion has very low conductivity. This area appears to be the only spot in the field that has had a significant drop in conductivity values. Some smaller areas around the southern edge of the field have decreased conductivity, but on average, the majority of the field has increased in conductivity.

Overall, the mapping that occurred on July 28th shows much higher values than the previous mapping event. On average the conductivity values on the 28th are 20mS/m millisemens/meter) through the middle of the field, and then to then moving to the northeastern part of the field. Along this path, there is an area of very high conductivity, located about in the middle of the field. This could be an area where the water table has ponded, due to the very small gradient in this field. Also, while walking in the field I noticed that this area appeared to be wetter at the surface than the surrounding areas.

It is very interesting to see how the field has changed in just one month’s time. The field has gone from having different areas with high conductivity to the same area having a much lower conductivity. In addition, in the map from July 28th, it appears that there is a specific drainage path moving through the field. It will be interesting to see if this same pattern appears again when the field is next mapped. Also, since the water table is much higher in this region now as opposed to the previous mapping event, it would be expected that the conductivity values would be much higher. It is good that we are seeing this result, as it is showing and telling us that the soils are wetter than they were at the beginning of the monsoon season.

As I said, I can’t wait to see what the next set of data collected will look like. One of the aspects of this project that I have greatly enjoyed is the way things change so quickly, and how much fun it is to guess at the possible outcomes of the changes. It is fun, and like a game, to think how the soil moisture will change over time, or to see if the same patterns will emerge when mapping with the GEM2 or the EM38. And when my guess are right, I am pleasantly surprised, and also quite happy. When my predictions are wrong (which is most of the time), I just simply tell myself it is science, and nothing is set in stone!!

Greetings from Agra

2009-08-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Agra. I have taken a few days to come and visit one of the seven wonders of the modern world. The Taj Mahal. As I am writing this right now I am sitting on my hostel’s rooftop, watching the sun rise higher in the sky, and also watching the Taj become a bit more majestic with each passing minute. I visited the Taj two days ago, and as soon as I walked in the only thought I had was, “Wow, this is amazing.” Walking in the gate you are not able to see the Taj yet, but once you walk through the main gate inside the area, it looks fantastic. It sits elevated off the ground on a platform, so if you look at it correctly it looks as if it is it is raised off the ground, floating, with just sky in the background.

Walking around the Taj is also amazing. There are inlaid stones all around the structure, and each stone was individually carved, and placed in the marble, without any sort of glue. When you take a little pen light and put it on each individual stone, the one stone lights up and almost glows. There are marble screens that are maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet high that are all carved out of a single piece of marble. The tombs are all single pieces of marble, and are huge. Again, it is amazing to see such a large piece of marble, beautifully carved. The grounds around the tomb have lush green grass and trees which offer some shade, and a bit of relief from the sun.

Another exciting part of the visit was the number of different people that were there. It was not just Indians, or Americans, but people from all over the world. It was almost like being at a meeting for the UN. There were people from Japan, China, American, Australia, France, Spanish speaking countries, Germany, India, and other places where people were speaking languages that I did not understand or sound familiar. It was neat to see so many people, flocking to see the same thing that I had come to see.

For me it is hard to explain how to describe it, each unique feature, the beauty of the whole thing, the way it shines during the day, and almost glows at night. I think if you want a good feel for what it looks like, you just need to see if yourself. Some things are better experienced in person, and I think this is one of those things.

Another exciting place that I was able to visit was Fatehpur, a fort about 35km away from Agra. This for was built for King Akbar, who sounded like he was a very smart man. The fort was beautiful, with many different palaces, rooms, courtyards, and banquet halls. Akbar had three wives. One was Christian, one Muslim, and one Hindu. The most impressive part about this fort was that each building mixed the three religions, having architecture unique to that religion, as well as having the symbols of that religion present in the living quarters of the wife. For example, in the Muslim’s wives house, there were swastikas, a symbol for Hindu’s. Akbar was accepting of all the religions, and I told my guide that I think the world would be a much happier place right now if everyone believed and had that outlook.

All in all Agra is an amazing place. It has been a great visit, but I am ready to head back to home. It is always nice to get away, but it is also nice to go home.

Soil Moisture Probes

2009-08-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

The monsoon has started and we are well into at this point in time. The temperature is cooler, the sun does not come out from the clouds except for brief intervals, and everything is a lush green. The crops have been sown, and little green plants of soyabeans and corn can be seen in almost every inch of available space on the road to the field.

Now that the monsoon has started, it is time to start looking at the changes that have occurred in the watershed. One change is the temperature of the soils at two different depths 16cm and 45cm.

The graph to the right shows the data from the temperature probes installed in the field for the months of June and July. Two probes are installed, one (the red line) is installed at a depth of 45 cm, and the other (the blue line) is installed at a depth of 16 cm. A brief look at the data shows some very interesting trends.

When looking the probe located 16cm below the ground surface, it can be seen that the daily fluctuation of temperatures are present. The lowest temperature is not reached at midnight, but it is reached around 9:00AM. The highest temperature for the soils is reached about 7:00PM. From these observations, it can be assumed that it takes about 10 hours for the soils to heat to the highest temperature and then 14 hours for the soil to cool to the lowest temperature. Even during rainfall events there is still a variation in the temperatures as the temperature of the atmosphere changes.

For the 16cm probe, the daily fluctuations in temperature for the first part of June are around 2.5oC, and then at the end of July the daily fluctuations are around 0.5oC. The smaller changes in the temperature of the soil can be attributed to the fact that there is more moisture in the soils. With the water present, it helps keep the soils at a relatively constant temperature since water has a very high ability to regulate the temperature and help the temperature stay constant.

The probe located at 45cm does not show any noticeable trends of temperature change with the atmospheric temperature. The more noticeable trend in the data from the deeper probe, in the first part of June the temperature is about 2oC less than the upper probe. Then, as the upper probe increases in temperature, the lower probe also starts to increase, still keeping the 2oC space between the two probes.

The onset of the first rainfall at the end of June cools the soils by about 1-2oC. The upper probe cools more than the lower probe, most likely because as the water cools the soils, the temperature of the water will increase. As the water temperature increases, it loses its ability to take in more heat; therefore, the deeper soils would not cool as much.

When the rains started in July, the two probes are almost at the same temperature. Then as the rains progress in July the deeper probe again start to be at a higher average temperature than the shallower probe. Again this is most likely due to the fact that as the water infiltrates into the ground, it is not able to cool the soils as much as it has cooled the upper soils more than the lower soils.

Overall, it is interesting to see how the soils have reacted to the monsoon rains. Now that it has into rained in about 10days, it will be interesting to see how the soils respond. I am excited to see if the upper probe remains at a lower temperature, or if the upper probe rises above the average temperature of the lower probe. If I had to take a guess, I would think that upper probe would go to a higher temperature than the lower probe, as the graph is starting to show that trend.

Still working on it

2009-08-02T20:06:00.000-07:00

The weir face plate. It is almost done. I would say that it is 90% complete at this point in time. The last thing that we have to do is figure out the best way to seal up some small gaps between the concrete, rubber gasket, and the metal plate. (If you have any suggestions, please mention them as they would be much appreciated).

So I left off on Friday when we had gone to the field to pick up the generator. As a reminder, the generator did not work so we brought it home with us, and we were going to rent one on Saturday. The initial plan (or the plan I was told) was that I would get picked up from my house between 10-11am (I got picked up at 10:30), we would go to the office and pick up Sanjay, drop off the broken generator, rent a generator and then go to the field. So, I figured we would be leaving for the field around 12:00 or so. I come to find out about 2:30, that we were going to wait for our generator to be fixed, and then go; however our generator would have taken a while to get fixed so then we arranged for one to be rented. So we ended up leaving for the field at about 3:30 and getting to the field between 5:30-6:00.

We then had to carry a 43kg metal plate and a generator about 800m to the location of the weir. I still have a nice sore spot on my head from carrying the metal plate along with Danesh. We finally got everything out to the site and then it was time to get into the stream and actually attached the face plate. Naturally, things never work as well as you hope and it took a bit of digging around the edges of the stream and moving around the face plate to get it in a location where it fit properly. Then it was time to crank up the generator and drill the holes.

Remember that we got to the field to start it was about 6:00. So after getting everything to the site and moving things around, at this point in time it was DARK. So we were done for the day.

We decided that we would go back on Sunday, get two workers from the village, and then finish the work. We wanted to leave at 5:00 since two of the people that would be helping us had obligations at 10:00. We left home at 7:40, got to the field about 9:30 and finally finished the work about 1:00.

So after many days of work and departing much later than what I had planned, the v-notch was finally bolted into the concrete. It was a fun few days, a bit frustrating at times, but all in all I was glad to see that we had finally installed the weir.

On a separate note, yesterday was friendship day, so Happy Friendship Day everyone!!

Still working on the weir

2009-07-31T18:34:00.000-07:00

Although I have said before that every day in India is an adventure, some things never amaze me. Some things I have become quite accustom to. These items would include people being at least anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes late for things, people saying hello to me as I walk down the street, people riding the motorcycle or tempo next to me while I am running, children in the neighborhood saying, “Hi Dan”, and things taking a bit longer than I think they should.

A perfect example of this is the face plate for the weir. What I thought would be a simple 1-2 day project, has rapidly turned into a week long affair. We started on Wednesday, going to the shop to find the metal face plate. After explaining to the owner (who has been extremely helpful, very useful, interesting in what we were doing) what we wanted to do, he said that he would have the outline of the weir done by the evening, then he would cut it, and we could pick it up in the morning.

We went Thursday morning to go and look at the face plate. It had not been cut, nor was it ready to be picked up. We then discussed what we would do with the face plate, how we would attach it to the concrete structure, and how it would be built and put together. So, we left the shop again to return back today, Friday.

This morning we again reached the shop. The face plate was cut, but the braces were not yet cut or welded on. So Sanjay, the owner, and I went to another shop to get the gasket to put between the metal and the concrete to prevent leaking. This was an easy task. We went to the store, got the gasket, had a cup of tea, and then returned back to the metal shop. Then, Sanjay and I went to the old part of the city to pick up the bolts. This took a bit longer than expected as we had to find the shop to get the bolts. Needless to say the shop was “not on the beaten path.” We finally found the shop, got the bolts, and returned back to the office for a bit, and arranged for the car to pick us up at 1:00. I was picked up from my house at 2:00.

We then left for the field at 3:00 after picking up the face plate, weighg it (43kg, so about 80+lbs), paying for the rest of the work that had been done, and a few other minor tasks. We reached the field office at 4:30 to pick up the generator to power the drill to drill the holes to put the bolts into the concrete to attach the weir face plate too. When we got to the field office to try the generator, it did not work. (Are you surprised by this??) So, right now it is 6:30, the generator just left in the car to go to the electrician’s shop, three other people left on a motor cycle to go to the shop as well, and I am waiting at the field office for them to return. One good thing about all of this is I get to relax, get some work done, and enjoy the beautiful weather on the porch, watching the parrots fly in and out of the tree.

Time flies when you are having fun

2009-07-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Wow. Sorry for the long delay in the posts. Things have gotten very busy here the past few days. It is hard for me to believe that I have been here for 3 months. It seems as if the midway point of my stay here was here and gone in about 2 seconds. Before I was thinking about what things need to be installed in the field, and how we are going to get all of the instruments installed, working correctly, making sure we are capturing the important data that we need for the study. Now it has been a total shift in gears. I am thinking what data we have, what analysis we can do on the data, what the data means, how the streams are flowing, how much water is leaving the WHS as seepage losses, how the wells have responded to the rains, and how the whole area around me has changed. I believe that the project has moved from the implementation stage to the analysis and conclusion stage, and it has done this in what seems to be a blink of an eye.

So, with all of that said, what are we doing? The big project this week has been building and installing the face plate for the v-notch weir. I was out in the field yesterday to take some measurements of the concrete structure to see what size the weir should be. Today we went to a metal shop and told the owner what we wanted done and what type of metal sheet we wanted cut. To my surprise it was very easy to find a metal shop, have the owner understand what we wanted, and we are picking up the v-notch weir tomorrow. And on an even better note, the cost was Rs 500, or about 10 dollars for a sheet of metal that is cut, with braces welded on the back side, and ready to go. Tomorrow we will go to the field and work on installing the v-notch and placing bolts and a seal around the perimeter of the face plate to attach it to the concrete and also ensure that water does not seep around the edges.

Also, we have started working on the poster board to explain the project to the villagers and other people in the watershed area. We are trying to make the poster board like a story. The story will be something like this:
Chapter 1: what is the water cycle, what are the pieces of the water cycle, how do we quantify the water cycle.
Chapter 2: What is the current water situation in the area, how much water is used for irrigation, livestock, human use, and what is the current land distribution in the area in terms of agricultural area, forests, single crop land, double crop land, and wastelands.
Chapter 3: Conclusion, Since we now have all the information about the water cycle we can make a plan which can lead to sustainable water uses which should improve lives…OR… we can move in a direction to use water freely and as we wish, which might mean unsustainable uses which could lead to hardships for everyone in the village.
Overall, the poster board will be a way to present some of the initial results of the project as well as raise community awareness about sustainable water use issues.

So overall, as I said things have been very busy, but a good busy. I am really enjoying all the work, and staying busy in this way is fine with me!!

My Hindi Teacher, Mike

Water Table is rising

2009-07-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

Another great day out in the field yesterday (July 25), and thankfully this day was much drier and nicer than the last time we went out. However, on an interesting note, when we were walking around the watershed on July 21 (the last time we were in the field), we received 11mm (about 0.5 inches) of rain in a 15 minute period of time. That is a lot of rain, and it is no wonder we got as wet as we did walking around, off loading the data from all of the instruments.

And, since we have had so much rain, all of the wells in the watershed are almost full. There is one well left that has not received much recharge yet. I think this well was poorly placed on the side of a hill, not near any streams, or close to the seepage area that water would be running to from any of the WHSs. So, if we exclude this well, all of the wells have gotten recharged, and the amount of water in the wells is amazing as compared to when we first got here, three months ago.

I would like to share with you all some of the data that we have gotten from the well moniroting, and just how quickly the wells do recharge. The two graphs to the right show box plots of the depth to water for the wells. What these graphs are showing are the average value (red bar in the middle), the two blue lines that make the top and bottom of the box are the 75% and 25% data value, respectively, and the lines above and below the box are the extreme value. The one box plot with the + sign at the very top shows that this value is an outlier, and may not be representative of the data set as a whole. The well monitoring that was done on July 25th had an outlier, and this is the well I mentioned has not recharged yet.

From these two graphs, it is possible to see that the average depth to water has decreased from 3.8m to 1.6m. Also, from the box plots it is seen that the range of values for the depth to water on July 16th is much larger, ranging from 1.5m to 6.0m. On July 25th the range was from 0m to 7.2m, although the 7.2m is not really representing the data as well as the other wells. On July 25th the next largest value was at 2.8m. From these graphs it is clear to see that the water table has increased a great deal with all of the rainfall we have received so far in July (about 305mm, or 12 inches).

The other image to the right shows the water table elevation from July 25. Keeping in mind that the average depth to water in the wells is about 1.6m, the elevations shown on the map are very close to the actual elevation of the ground surface.

Also, the WHS is full of water now. With the WHS full, the stream right below the WHS is now flowing constantly with a steady flow. The well right below the WHS is also overflowing with water. This is a sign that water is moving from the WHS into the subsurface and coming out as discharge after it moves under the dam. The key now is to try and quantify the volume of water leaving the WHS as seepage, and the volume of water that is actually going to the groundwater system that might be recharge for the larger, deeper aquifer.

Overall, it is very exciting to see this much water in the field. I never thought I would see the day when the streams would be flowing with clear water that looks good for swimming!!

Stream Profiles

2009-07-24T00:46:00.000-07:00

I have finally gotten around to start looking at the cross sectional areas of the streams. About two weeks ago, Sanjay and Minakshi took out the transit and used it to find the height of the stream bottom. The transit is what construction workers use, it has a staff gauge and a scope mounted on a tripod that is used to read the gauge some distance away. What they did was took the gauge, and then moved the gauge across the bottom of the stream in10cm increments. At each location a height on the scale was read off, and then from that height, we can determine the cross sectional area of the stream.

The importance of the cross sectional area is that once we know the area of the stream at all heights, we can then have an easy way to look at a table and see that at a height, say 0.5m, the cross sectional area is say 1.2 meters squared. Then, when we are in the field we can find the velocity of the stream at various heights. We can look at the stream when it is at various heights, find the velocity, and multiply the velocity and the area to get the discharge (a volume).

Once we know the discharge at many heights, we can create what is known as the rating curve. The rating curve is a graph which shows on the x-axis the height of the stream, and on the y-axis shows the discharge. The discharge is found from knowing the area at different heights (from the transit and the calculations we have done), multiplying the area at a certain height by the velocity at the same height, and the result is the discharge.

With the discharge we can then know how much water is being lost from the streams, and this will give us the volume of water that is exiting the stream. This volume of water is a key part of the water balance, and tells us one key part of water that is exiting the watershed.

Now that the streams are flowing, it is time to start taking out the flow meter and getting the velocity at different heights so we can start to make the rating curve.

Lots-O-Rain

2009-07-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

Well, from yesterdays blog post, I am sure that you are wondering how a WHS can fill with 2.6m of water, and also, how the streams can start flowing so quickly. Well, I think the graph to the right will explain all of this. In the past five and a half days, about 120mm of rain (4.7in) has fallen. Prior to this 74mm (3in) of rain had fallen for the month of July, and for the month of June the rainfall total was 39mm (1.5in) [total=113mm/4.5in]. So, in an almost 6 day period of time, more rain has fallen in the watershed than the previous 1.5 months.

From everything I have read about the monsoon season, the rainfall that the watershed has received in the past week confirms everything I have seen. The intensity of the rainfall, the way it all comes in just a few days, how rapidly the water becomes runoff, and how important it is to trap this water was confirmed in my mind. Without WHS, all of this water would flow right past the people, and then in a few short months, there would again be no water, except the small amount that had gone to recharge the groundwater.

One interesting thing that I noticed was that the stream directly down gradient of the main WHS did not have any water flowing in it. I want to guess this is because the WHS has trapped all of the water that would have otherwise been lost as runoff. There is also a smaller WHS on a different stream, and the stream down gradient of this WHS has water flowing in it. My assumption for this is because the other WHS is much smaller than the main WHS. I want to assume that this structure is full, and water is exiting via the spillway.

Again, it is amazing how much water can fall in such a short period of time, and how all of this water suddenly becomes runoff. I am still amazed at what I was able to see yesterday, and I think that was one of the best days I have had in the field thus far. It will be exciting to get the data again on Saturday when we return to see what other changes have occurred in the watershed.

Pictures are worth a thousand words

2009-07-21T08:59:00.001-07:00

Please go to the following links for the days blog update. I think it will be a bit more exciting than me writing a page on what happened today.

I will just say that it was wet and muddy!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.matz84/OldAndNewField#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY1HPKIELbM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0QXr-DjObA

Badlaav 2009: Be the Change

2009-07-20T01:03:00.001-07:00

The past few days I attended a conference called Badlaav 2009: Be the Change, hosted by the Indian Youth Climate Network. The goal of the meeting was to raise awareness in India’s youth about climate change, water issues, agricultural issues, ways to change current climate problems, and help youth start organizations and movements in their cities to prevent climate change.

The conference was fantastic and there were some great speakers that came to share some of their experiences and expertise with the attendees. One of my favorite speakers was a local farmer. He talked about how climate issues have impacted his life, and also farmers all over India. Due to the impact of climate change, the change in water resources, the distribution of rainfall, the drought that India has faced, farmers’ lives are now much harder than they used to be. Because of this farmers are going into debt as they have to pay for the same items as before, seeds, fertilizer, farming equipment, etc, without adequate funds coming in from what they are producing and selling. This has lead to farmer suicide, and the speaker touched on this note. He said that because of this debt, he has known farmers that have committed suicide, because they are not able to cope with the debt that have incurred. It is terrible to think that people in India are committing suicide because of farm debts, but it is a common problem throughout all of India. Some people might say that one way to deal with farmer suicide is to try to work on slowing down climate change.

Another interesting talk I went to listen to was about rooftop agriculture. The speaker started off by asking, “What do cities give to villages?” His response was dirty polluted rivers, garbage in the streams, waste water that is unfit for irrigation or drinking, and also polluted groundwater. Then he asked what do villages give the cities, and the response from my perspective was almost everything. It is in the villages, much like the one we work in, where India’s food comes from. These villages grow their cash crops, work and toil all day long, and these are the people that are feeding the Indian population. So, what can we do in cities to sustain ourselves. His response was start to have our own gardens on our roof tops. He gave his own rooftop garden as an example. He has grown some leafy vegetables and some squash and has had great success with his rooftop garden. He loves working in his garden, and loved the food he was able to get out of his garden. He gave this as just one example of what people in the cities can do to help make ones own life sustainable.

The last aspect that was very beneficial for me was talking with some of the participants and organizers of the conference about the project I am working on. I was able to share experiences I have had and the people I have meet with others from all over India. It was very interesting to see how many people are facing the same issues that I am facing in my work, and the issues that other villagers are facing all over India.

Overall, it was a great conference, and I am glad that I was able to attend. It was good to see so many young people come together with a common goal, and try to figure out the best way to solve the problems of today, and create solutions for tomorrow.

Back at it

2009-07-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

I do not know if I would say today was a great day in the field or not. A lot of work got done, and all of the instruments are working correctly, so from that perspective it was a fantastic day. It is starting to rain, so we are beginning to see some changes, the villagers have sown their crops and little green plants are sprouting up everywhere, and there is now grass on what used to be barren land.

However, now that it has started to rain, the weather has changed from hot and dry, to hot and humid. The weather when the sun does not come out is very pleasant but, when the sun does come out, it is horrible. At 1030 when the weather station was offloaded, the temperature was 30C or 80F, and the humidity was 80%. So, needless to say it felt a bit like a sauna when I was walking around the watershed with the GEM2.

We left home today at 0640, and on the way there it poured rain. I was thinking to myself, “Great, we are going to get to the field, it will be pouring rain, we will not be able to do anything, and this will have been a waste of a trip.” Fortunately for us, it stopped raining by the time we reached the field, and we were able to get all of our work done.

Minakshi had many projects today. She offloaded data from the soil moisture probes, visited the weather station, and also monitored the water levels in the wells. I cannot wait to start looking at all of the data she has collected. Now is the time when we should start to see some major changes in the watershed.

With the rain that we have gotten the past few weeks (44mm/>2in) everything should start to show some sort of major change. The soils are now getting wet and staying wet, water is starting to puddle everywhere, and the WHS looks like it will have water very soon

I had the task of mapping the watershed with the GEM2 again. Luckily, I was able to walk close to the same areas as before as the GPS unit that we are using records every path we walk. Because of this, I was able to follow the same path as the first time I mapped the watershed. This is important because now we will be able to see how the area has changed, and see if the same trends are present now that were present before. I was able to map the northern part of the watershed, from the WHS up to the uplands, and then back down again.

So, overall it was a great day in the field but just too hot. A lot of work got done, a lot of data has been collected, and it is now time again to start looking at the data, and comparing it to what we had before. Stay tuned for the results.

Aunt Anne and Uncle Dave's Questions

2009-07-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

Minakshi mapping in the WHS with the EM38.

Hello, great to hear from y’all. I will do the best to answer your questions, although I am not completely sure about some of the answers.

1) Are we the first ones to conduct these watershed experiments?

My response to this would be yes and no. Yes, because what we are doing is unique in that we are using electromagnetic induction (EMI) throughout the watershed. I am not sure how many other studies have been conducted on a watershed scale with the use of EMI. As I have mentioned, we are using EMI as a way to look for variability in soil moisture and soil types in agricultural fields, as well as looking for trends and patterns that we see throughout the watershed.

Furthermore, we have installed a lot of instruments in the field to try and quantify how much water is coming into the watershed and how much water is leaving the watershed. In this aspect, I do not think our project is unique. A lot of watershed studies have been done in India, and a lot of studies have been done on trying to quantify the impact water harvesting structures have on groundwater levels. Although various methods try to quantify this impact, the basis is the same, creating a mass balance: see what comes in, what goes out, and then find the change in storage.
Different methods have been used to look at the mass balance. We are using a simple water balance, and in this case, I do not think it is unique. Some people have tried to look at a mass balance of Chlorine in the water. They do this by looking at the concentrations they see in the surface water and the ground water. Others, villagers, quantify the impact by how much water they get in their wells and how long the water lasts in the reservoir.

So overall, yes we are unique in that we are using EMI. No, we are not unique in that a lot of people have tried to look at and study the impact of water harvesting in watersheds

2) Why are we working in the area we are in?

The area we are working in has been a project site for the non-governmental organization (NGO), Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) for a number of years now. FES organized the construction of the WHS in the village, has been working with villagers on watershed management, teaching villagers various ways to increase the recharge to groundwater in their watershed, and helping the villagers understand more of the science behind water resources. FES has project areas all over India, and this site was selected as a good location in terms of the geology of the area, and I think just overall contacts that were familiar with this area. The area is a good area to work in though I have found. The villagers are very accommodating, willing to let us come and go as we please through their fields, can arrange for wells to be pumped if we need them pumped, will dig holes for us, help us install instruments, and are just very kind and caring people. The only thing they really look at us for is helping them solve the water scarcity problem they face each year.

3) How long do we have to collect data before we can plan out a course of action?

I wish the answer to this question was immediately. Unfortunately, the answer is probably closer to one year. The project we are currently working on will last for one year, and then possibly and hopefully go into a second year. This means the whole project would be wrapping up at the end of 2010. In terms of actually planning a course of action, we have to wait at least until the end of the monsoon season to see how much water is actually received in the watershed. Without knowing how much water is available for use, we cannot make any suggestions on how much water can be used for irrigation, livestock, or personal consumption. Also, we do not have enough information right now on how the wells respond during and after the monsoon, how long it takes the wells to fill up all the way, how long it takes the reservoir to fill and drain, how much water is leaving the streams, etc. Once we know all of these parameters, the basic pieces of the water budget, then we will be able to make suggestions on how water should be distributed throughout the year.

Thank you for the questions. I hope this answer clears things up for you a bit, and if it doesn’t please let me know. I will be more than happy to answer more questions about the wor

Working on the geodatabase

2009-07-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

Sunset at home. It was amazing!!

While Sudershan was here, one of his main projects was working on the creation of a geodatabase. The geodatabase will serve as a way for all of the data we have collected to be stored and accessed in an easy manner through GIS. Geodatabases have been set up for each instrument, and we are now fine tuning the way each geodatabase is set up.

One advantage with the geodatabase is that we can link together some of the data based on a common field. An example of this would be linking the weather station data to the soil moisture probe data. Initially, this link would have been difficult, but now within GIS, we are able to link the two tables together based on a common field. The common field that we are using to link the data is based on time. So, instead of having to look at the data from the two instruments separately, we are now able to look at the data side by side, in the same table.

Another advantage of the geodatabase is the fact that if a user is able to download and access the geodatabase, all of the data they need is contained in one, relatively small “container”. For example, when we map an agricultural field with the EM38, we collect one set of data. From this data we have to go into a separate program, developed by Geonics (the people who make the EM38), and process the data in their software. Then, the data has to be exported to excel. The next steps occur within GIS. In GIS the data is added, the XY coordinate location of where the mapping actually occurred is displayed, the data is saved with the correct spatial information, and lastly the data is interpolated in the area specific to where the mapping occurred. All of this is a fair amount of work, but with the geodatabase, all of this work is eliminated. The only step required by the user is to open the geodatabase within GIS, add the specific layer files to a map in GIS, and all of the data and information is right there, ready for use.

The same is true with all of the other instruments. When opening a map for the GEM2, all of the data for that map is contained in one geodatabase, and is easily added to the map. The weather station data, that has been collected since the instrument was installed, can be added as a table to the map, and then the specific location of the weather station can be added. The weather station data can then be linked to the stream gauge data, and so forth.

The geodatabase will be very helpful in the future, as when accessed it takes out the time consuming preprocessing of the data. Once the geodatabase is opened, and the data added into GIS, it is ready to go.

The key thing to remember about the geodatabase, is that the brains behind the whole initial set up was due to Sudershan, so thank you Sudershan!!

Tempo? The next question asked by Augie

2009-07-10T02:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the man behind all the questions, my cousin, Augie.

So, what exactly is a Tempo? This was the next questions posed by my cousin. Tempos are very common here where I live. They are pretty much the main way for public transport in the city. They have three wheels, two in the back and one in the front. The capacity is about 12 people, although alot of people seem to cram into them at times. There are two benches in the back, and sometimes people hang off the back. The cost to ride in one from my house to the train station is Rs5, so about 10 cents. They are a pretty easy and cheap way to get around town.

Each tempo has its own number, just like a bus system would have. So the #9 tempo goes close to my house, to the bus stand, train station, and then to the temples in town. The #3 and #6 go by the market, to the tower and then head towards Sudershans house. I am not sure how many different numbers there are, but I have seen 16. I have put up a few photos so you know what they look like.

FYI/08/09

2009-07-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a very big day for the world. As one of my friends just pointed out to me, at 12:34 and 56 seconds on July 8, 2009, an amazing thing occurred:

12:34:56 07/08/09

I thought that was pretty neat and that I should share it with everyone.

Thanks Todd for the help!!

Back to the field

2009-07-08T03:22:00.001-07:00

Well, Sudershan has left Clemson, he has left FES, and he has headed back to school. Last night was his last night in town, so he, Minakshi, and I went out for a fantastic dinner. It was good to see him one last time before he left for his 36 hours of travel back to school. I am sad to see him go, he was a huge help on the project and a great friend. I will miss him a lot, and I look forward to seeing him again sometime this fall.

The trio that used to go to the field is now the Duo. Minakshi and I went to the field this morning to do some mapping with the EM38 as well as with the GEM2. Minakshi used the EM38 in the bottom of the WHS to look at the variability in the soils. The first mapping she did was parallel to the WHS. Then, she wanted to take another run over the same area, only this time walking perpendicular to the WHS. From these two maps, in the same area we will be able to see if the maps created are the same, or if the maps are different. It will be very interesting to see what the final result is, and I am hoping both maps look the same.

I mapped with the GEM2 in the lower part of the watershed with the GEM2. I was able to walk close to the same lines that were mapped at the beginning of the study. After we map the entire watershed again with the GEM2, the same we did pre-monsoon, we can compare the maps to see if any changes are present in the maps. It will also give us a chance to see if the same patterns and trends that emerged in the initial maps are still present in the second set of maps that we generate. If the same trends and patterns are still present, or more pronounced this time, we might be able to conclude that these are indeed fractures, and these areas might be potential locations for new wells to be dug.

All in all it was a great day in the field, and a lot of good work was accomplished today. One of the biggest goals of the day was to have Minakshi use the EM38 by herself, and now her next project is to take care of all the data, from start to finish. This will ensure the future of the project once I leave.

The last goal that was accomplished today was the impressive “monkey” skills that Minakshi possess. We never knew she had so much talent!!

Questions from my cousin Augie

2009-07-06T20:41:00.000-07:00

I recently received an email from my cousin, and he was asking about my daily life in India along with a few other questions. I figured these would be good not only to share the answers with him, but with everyone. So his questions were, “How is it in India? Are you having fun? Can you tell me a little bit about your daily activities in India? What is the main mode of transportation in India? How does your equipment work?”

So, how is it in India? This is a pretty broad and open ended question, but the simple answer is it is very good. Everyone is very friendly; everyone wants to talk to me all the time. It does not matter if I am running, walking down the street, eating a meal, people will come and interrupt like it is not big deal at all and that I do not care if they interrupt what I am trying to do. The only down side here is the weather during the day is a bit warm. Other than that, India is very good. There is a rich, unique culture, and I enjoy seeing and experiencing this culture every day.

Am I having fun? Of course I am having fun. I am having a blast. I do not know too many people that get to travel to a foreign country for 5 months, do research on something they are passionate about, sight see new places, learn about a new culture, try to learn a new language, try new foods, and experience something new every day. Every day when I wake up, I know I am going to see something and experience something unique, so for me, that is a lot of fun.

What are my daily activities? Well let’s see, this is kind of a hard question so I will break it into two parts. Days we go to the field: I get up and we usually leave around 6am. We get to the field, after stopping for breakfast of rice and tea about 2-2.5 hours later. We then do our work in the field and come back home. We try to get home in the early afternoon, but sometimes we get home anywhere from 1-5pm that day. Once we get home, I shower, clean up a little bit, and start to look at the data we have just collected. I write field notes for the day to document what activities we did in the field, and also work on the weekly report to note what we did for a particular day. After cleaning up and getting some work done, I make supper or go out to eat, read a little bit, and then go to bed.
Days we do not go to the field I either get up in the morning and go for a run or sleep in. Days I sleep in I work out in the afternoons after work. I make breakfast at home, usually just a bowl of oatmeal and cereal, or sometimes eggs or pancakes. Then, I get some work done at home, and get ready to go to the office around 10. Once at the office we work on our projects for the day or the week, have lunch anywhere form 1230-230. I usually leave the office around 400 to come home. Once at home I will either take a little nap, read, finish my work for the day, go to the market if I have to grocery shop. For dinner, I will either make supper or go to the market and have supper there. I really like to go to the market for dinner as I can get some really good street food for really cheap. Things like potato cakes with bean chili on top, pizza, fried noodles, eggs, chili chicken, fresh Indian food, so just all sorts of good stuff. Also, usually when I go to the market for dinner I have some ice cream for dessert!!

The main mode of transportation? Most people in the bigger cities like Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta will take bus as the main mode of transportation. Here where I live the main way to move is by bicycle, motorcycle, tempos (small three wheeled buses that hold about 12 people), walking, and then car. I usually move by walking or tempos. Buses are most common though. To move a large distance it is either by bus or by train. I prefer train if it is going to be over a 3 hour journey.

How does our equipment work? That is a bit more than I want to get into right now, but if you go to the following link, http://sites.google.com/site/gwbclemson/, at the bottom of the page there is a word document you can open up and it tells all about the instruments, how they work and what they do.

Hope you find this interesting and informative. This is my life, everyday!!

Fourth of July

2009-07-05T19:52:00.000-07:00

America: Fireworks, cookouts, parades, family, friends, sunshine, beach volleyball, hot dogs, hamburgers, beer
India: Field work, friends, varieties of food

Well, the fourth of July was not the typical day like I would have at home, but it was still a great day. We went to the field, and got A LOT of work done that has been put off for quite some time now. We were finally able to calibrate the WHS gauge the proper way. Sanjay, Minakshi, and the painter went there first thing in the morning along with the transit and the gauge to calibrate the scale that we had built about 1.5 months ago now. Now the gauge is painted, easily readable, and the scale will provide a way for us to monitor how the water level is the WHS is changing over time.

Sudershan enjoyed his last day by mapping two fields with the EM38. He mapped the field near the lysimeter and also mapped the field near the soil moisture probes. Thankfully, we were able to get this done now, since the farmers have started to sow their fields. With them starting to plant crops, it is going to be very hard for the next few weeks to get into the fields, as we do not want to trample the villagers livelihood. Once we look at the data we have collected from these fields, it will be very interesting and useful to see how the soils have changed now that it has started to rain and the soil moisture has started to increase.

I had the job of going around to the different wells and collecting the water levels in the wells. I visited about half of the wells, and it will be interesting with this to see if the water levels have started to increase at all in the wells. Again we will be able to compare what we had before the monsoon, and what we see now that it has started to rain.

The last job of the day was finding the cross sectional area of all of the streams at the locations of the stream gauges. Again, Sanjay and Minakshi used the transit to do this, and moved the staff gauge along the bottom of the stream in 10cm increments. Since we will now have the cross sectional areas of the stream, once the streams start to flow, we will be able to find the velocity of the stream with a current meter. When the area and the velocity are multiplied together, the result will be the discharge. Then we can make a graph showing the discharge for a certain height, the rating curve, and will then always be able to tell what the discharge of the stream is for a particular height.

After the field work, it was time to come home, clean up and get ready for the PARTY. I had about 10 people over to my house for supper. The first group came at 7, we ate and then they left. The next group came about 9, we ate, and then more came about 10 and we ate. Then everyone left, and Rashid, a guy that works with FES and lives below me, stayed for a while and we just sat out on the porch and talked till about 2am. So it was a good night, lots of food, sharing and just relaxing enjoying the day. I was glad that I was able to share a little bit of my American culture on the fourth of July with them.

Oh PS we saw a cobra out in the field today too. It was probably about 1.5m long. We were sure to keep our fair distance.

Stuck in the mud

2009-07-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Well, as most of you know by now the monsoon season has started, the weather has changed from hot to now pretty hot and humid, and also the ground is starting to become wet. What most of you probably do not know is that right after it rains, the soils here become a very sticky clay, and stick to almost anything. If you try to walk through the clays right after it has rained, you will rapidly pick up so much mud on the bottom of your shoes that it is necessary to stop and try to remove the mud, so you can begin to walk again. Not only does the clay stick to shoes, but also to scooter tires.

About 3:30pm yesterday, after the rains, I received a call from Sudershan. I figured he was telling me he was going to be late coming back from lunch since it was still sprinkling a little bit outside. I was wrong. He was about 150m from my house, in the field, stuck in the mud. I walked out to him, and had to stop 2-3 times to get the mud off the bottom of my shoes. When I reached his scooter, the back tire had picked up so much mud that it had gotten stuck. The mud was crammed between the back fender and the back tire, so the tire would not move.

We scrapped away at the mud for about 10 minutes, started the scooter, still no movement. More mud removal and then we tried again and it worked. So we left the scooter running and started to walk along with it. Nope, this did not work, the tire got stuck again. So we scrapped more mud away for about 5 minutes, and started to walk it without it running. Nope, stuck again. More mud removal. Started walking and finally we made it to a gravel road so we could push it to pavement.

So, the lesson learned here is don’t ride you scooter in the clays after it has rained, or you will get stuck. We spent about 45 minutes trying to get him out of the mud, but as I told him, it was a very nice break from the day and quite refreshing to get outside right after the rain. And as he said, “I am glad I am not the only one stuck out here,” As there was someone else who was also stuck in the mud.

Answer about Agriculture

2009-07-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

On a post a few weeks ago, Ms. Jacobs had posed this question, “Is there any concern that the soil will "wear out" with a third crop? Are the crops always the same or are amendments added? What is the soil like?” The question was in response to an idea that Dr. Ramakrishnan had about monitoring the soil moisture and possibly finding a way to keep the soil moisture high so farmers would be able to take a third crop instead of just two. The goal of a third crop would be increased income.

This is a very good question, and as a matter of fact, I read an article in the news paper last week that partially addressed this question.

The article was published in the Hindustan Times Live Indore, on Sunday June 21, 2009, and is entitled, “Rain delay worries soya farmers.” The author, Manoj Ahuja, mentions that the delay in the monsoon hitting M.P this year might negatively affect soybean farmers. Since the ideal time to sow the crop is June 15 thru June 30 to receive the maximum yield, the area must receive adequate rainfall to saturate the soils (4 inches). If the crop is sown before the soil moisture is high enough, the crops might die, or the yield could be very low. Although the crops can still be sown in July, as mentioned the best time is in mid to late June or very early July.

Thankfully, we have gotten rain, and I have been able to see the farmers starting to plant their first crop, the Kharif crop, in their fields. Also, while driving to the field this week, when looking in the fields we could see little green sprout sticking out of the ground. In the watershed, the farmers had started to plant their soybean crop in the fields.

So, to get back to the original questions, usually farmers currently take two crops. The first crop is soybeans, grown as a cash crop. The second crop that is taken is usually gram or wheat. The fields do have fertilizer added to them, either as chemical fertilizer or manure.

The soybean crop is purely rain fed agriculture, and the second crop receives irrigation, about 3-4 times on an interval of fifteen days.

The soils here are very clay rich, and also very rich in nutrients. The soil color is black, and when wet sticks to shoes and boots very well. The concern with a third crop is that the nutrients in the soils would run out, or three crops in the same field in the same season would not be possible. Dr. Ramakrishnan had brought these issues to light, and said, “If we decide that we want farmers to try for a third crop, we need to consult with an agricultural engineer to see what type of crops would be best, and what precautions need to be taken to ensure the soils are still fruitful.” In the long run, three crops in the same field in the same year would be hard on the soils, and precautions would have to be taken if this practice were undertaken.

Thank you for the question, and I hope this clears up the issue for you. If not let me know and I will do a little more research into it.

Lastly, who said that expensive insturments and cases only had one use...don't worry, all the important stuff was safe on my bed!!

Bhopal

2009-07-01T04:12:00.000-07:00

BUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!! After a very rough night sleep, it was time to get up and head to the train station for the train that left at 7:45. I got to the train station, boarded and was on my way to go and pay a visit to the capital of M.P., Bhopal. I reached Bhopal around 1100 and was afraid that it would be a day of sightseeing in the pouring rain. While on the train, it had started to rain buckets outside, but thankfully once we reached the station, the rain had turned to a very light drizzle, and then was over for the rest of the day.

The first major stop of the day was at the Taj-ul Masjid, one of the largest mosque’s in Asia. It is about 2km walk from the train station, so along the way I was able to see plenty of the city, the life, a market with people selling bananas and mangos, temples, and mosques. It was a nice walk, and it was a relief to see the pond on the side of the Taj-ul Masjid. I can see why it is the largest mosque in Asia. It had two huge spires, which could be seen from any high point in the city, and also had three large domes on top. Inside, there was a small fountain in a court yard like area, and then the inside of the mosque was open with about 7 different isle ways, all about four columns deep. It was a quite impressive structure, and I am glad that I was able to go there for a visit. I talked to one guy while I was taking a rest on the steps. Just a simple conversation, but it is still nice to have some contact with other people when traveling around on your own.

The next major stop after here was LUNCH. I had worked up a bit of an appetite after a light breakfast of a samosa (basically a big hash brown with a pie dough outside). I hired an auto to take me to the Chowk area, a place with narrow streets, shopping, and places to eat. I asked him to take me to a place there where I could get chicken tiki masala. One of my good friends, Trevor, at home traveled to India and raved about this when he got home, so I figured I best try it. I was taken to a small, hole in the wall place and waited about 45 minutes for lunch. When it came out it looked great. Half a chicken, not chopped, fried, or oily at all, but rather it was boiled, and it was sitting on top of the tiki masala, which is like a sauce they use here. I got two roti along with it, and it was very good. The chicken was great, and it was awesome to see white meat again, instead of meat chopped up with bones and fat and skin.

After lunch, I walked around the chowk area, window shopped at all the small shops, and eventually made my way to the Shaukat Mahal and Sadar Manzil, a place area located right outside the chowk. I had no idea what I was looking at while I was there, and it wasn’t until today I figured out that is what I was actually looking at. It had a very unique architectural style to it, nothing to distinctly British or Indian. The travel book says that it is post renaissance and gothic styles combined in one so… a neat building to see.

Now it was time for a hotel room and some supper. I got the hotel without too many troubles, and then hit the street to find supper. There it was, a street stall, lots of people at it, and hot food coming out of the wok. What was it you ask? Chicken Chow Mein, or for those who don’t know Chinese food, fried noodles with chicken. I got a big ole’ bowl, and it really hit the spot. I then headed back to the hotel after a few cookies, and hit the hay to prepare for another day of sightseeing.

Got up the next morning after a great night sleep, to my relief, and the first stop was the Brila temple. It was an auto ride away, and after the auto struggled to go up the road because of the steep hills, we reached to top at the temple. WOW, it was beautiful. Situated on the top of the hill, with a great view of the city, the temple was in the perfect location. Inside was wonderful too. All around there were plaques with sayings about how to live a good life and satisfy “God” in all our actions, and what “God” really is and what he knows. It was my favorite temple so far, I think because it was on a hill and had a great view.

From here, I made it to the Van Vihar National Park. I was unsure if I wanted to go inside, due to the fact the park is a one-way road that is 5km long. I was not sure if I wanted to walk 10km today, but decided that I would walk to see the tigers then turn around and come back. I went inside, and surprise, I could rent a bike for Rs. 10. I was so happy. I got to ride a bike and see the whole park. I was able to see the white bears, one tiger, a leopard, turtles, snakes, birds, and some alligators. It was nice to see nature, no pollution, ride a bike, see the upper lake, which Bhopal is a bit famous for, and relax and enjoy the nice day. I made it out of the park with no problems then headed to the New Market.

Nothing to exciting in the New Market, just more shops, food stalls, and the common Indian clothes, crafts, and other miscellaneous items.

One last stop before heading home was the Union Carbide factory. In 1984 there was a large gas leak that left many dead, and also many injured and sick from the gas leak. There is a wall around the area where the plant used to be, and all on the wall are images and writings about the “atrocities” committed by DOW chemical and Union Carbide. It was quite interesting to see and I am really glad that I went.

That was the trip to Bhopal, hopped the train back home, and made it back safe and sound to my bed to prepare for the following day in the field.

Be sure to check out the photo page for more photos from the trip!!

Well Monitoring Program

2009-06-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

There are about 30 wells in the watershed we are working in. Some of the wells have water, some of the wells do not have any water; however, on average the depth to water is about 3-5 meters. We have started a well monitoring program with one of the villagers, Santu so he can monitor the water levels in the wells for us. We are trying to have him monitor the wells every two weeks, and from this we will be able to monitor how the water levels in the wells are changing. By knowing the water levels in the wells, we will then be able to generate maps of the water table across the watershed, see how the water table is changing over time, and show the elevation of the water table.

The following two maps show the first two well monitoring events that have occurred. The first one on May 22, 2009 shows the water elevation from sea level. The green marks are the wells that have water, and the red marks are the wells that do not have any water. From images like this, we can then compare how the water level is changing over time.

The other map shows the water levels from June 11, 2009. If we compare the values of the water table, it is clear to see that the water table elevation has decreased. One of the wells that had water at the time of the first survey, no longer has water at the time of the second survey.

One other goal of the well monitoring program is to get an idea of the recharge to groundwater that is occurring in the watershed. By recording the changes in the water table, and looking at the changes over time, it will be possible to determine how much water is recharging the groundwater as opposed to running off in the streams. Determining the recharge is very important, because water that is recharged to the groundwater might be available for future use. If the water is in the ground, it might be possible for farmers to extract this water through the wells in the dry season. Also, knowing how much water goes to groundwater will allow us to help the farmers manage how much water they can take from the ground at a sustainable rate. Hopefully, the rains this year are good, providing lots of recharge to the groundwater. Once it does start to rain, and the wells start to fill, be sure to look at the initial maps we have made of the water table to the maps of the water table during the monsoon. It will be interesting to see how close the water is to the ground surface.

EM38

2009-06-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

The EM38 is a geophysical instrument that measures the electrical conductivity of the subsurface. The EM38 has two coil spacings, one at 0.5m and one at 1.0m. The frequency of the EM is around 15000Hz. So, what all of this means is that the depth of investigation for the EM38 is shallow, right below the ground surface. The two coil spacings provide two different depths of investigation as well. The coil spacing at 0.5m provides readings at a depth near 0.7m, and the 1m coil spacing provides readings about 1.5m below the ground surface.

As I have mentioned before, the electrical conductivity of the ground is based upon the moisture content of the soils, clay content of the soils, soil salinity, and also fractures present in the subsurface. An increase in any one or all of these parameters will lead to an increase in the electrical conductivity of the subsurface.

We are using the EM38 to look at agricultural fields, to try and characterize what is happening in the fields, before, during, and after the monsoon season. It is possible to map the field on a close grid, and then look for areas of increased conductivity. We can then find these areas, and try to determine if the increased conductivity is due to increased moisture content, or if it is possibly due to the presence of clays.

By walking the field on a close grid, it is possible to interpolate the data. This means that we take the data from where we actually walked and collected data, and make a good guess as to the value of the conductivity in the areas we did not walk. The map to the right shows the path we walked by the dotted line. Each dot represents a sample that was collected. Each sample collected contains the latitude, longitude, and the conductivity measured from the 0.5m and the 1m coil spacing. Since we know the value at each point, interpolation gives the value in between the points. After the interpolation, we get the overall map, with different colors showing the variability in the conductivity of the subsurface.

The same map shows a field that was being irrigated with crops in the middle and on the north and south side barren soils that were not being irrigated. It is possible to see that in the middle of the map, the conductivity values are higher (brown in color), than on the north and south side (blue and white in color). The reason we see this pattern is most likely due to the increased soil moisture of the field with crops. Since the farmer was applying water to the field, the soil moisture would increase; therefore, we would expect to see higher conductivity values, which is what we were able to observe after mapping the field.

This map shows another agricultural field that is located downstream of the WHS and also very close to the location of the lysimeter. In the northwestern part of the area mapped, it is possible to see higher conductivity values (white and pink colors), and the edges of the field have much lower conductivity values (green). Although we are not entirely sure why the conductivity is higher in this particular part of the field, my initial guess would be increased clay content in this area. The field is barren, there are no crops, and it has not been irrigated, so it is interesting to see higher conductivity values in that particular area. What we will be able to do with this map is compare this pre-monsoon map, with another map after it has started to rain and see how the conductivity values change. It will be interesting to see if the same pattern emerges or not. So keep following along, and we will see what happens!!

Weather Station

2009-06-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

First, I apoligize for the quality of the graphs. If you click on the actual image, you can get a closer, better view.

It’s hot here in India. The temperature everyday is somewhere close to 100+ and the lows are in the mid 80’s. For me, hot is hot, cold is cold. I walk outside and think to myself, “Wow, today is really hot”, or “Oh, it’s not so bad today”. After it rains, and rain in any amount 0.5mm to 5mm, I think to myself, “It is going to be humid tomorrow, and not so pleasant outside.” I think of the weather in terms of how it directly impacts my life. Whether it is hot or cold, humid or dry, the weather for me is how it makes me feel.

The weather station takes a different approach to the weather. It does not care if it is hot or cold, humid or not. All it cares about is that it has something to read, record, and a place to store the data. The weather station has been installed in the field for a little over 1 month now, and after a few glitches it is working very well, collecting data about the temperature, barometric pressure, rainfall, and relative humidity every 15 minutes. The following graphs will give you an idea of the weather patterns we have had before the monsoon season.

As I mentioned, it is hot. These graphs show the temperature every day since we have been here. There are a few gaps in the data, and that is when we were still trying to figure out the best way to download the data from the weather station.

One interesting observation that can be made is when the temperature and the rainfall data are plotted on the same graph. If you notice on the temperature data, there are some low periods, the temperature stays low for a while and then the temperature starts to increase again. I noticed this trend, and wondered if it was because of rain fall.

This graph shows the rainfall and the temperature on the same graph. It is possible to notice here that when it rains, the temperature decreases and these “squiggles” in the temperature are present. It is more apparent in late May than the rainfall that was recorded in early May. It will be interesting to see what the temperature looks like now that we have had some large significant rainfall events.

The weather station just keeps working hard all the time, recording and logging information that is crucial for us to determine the water balance of the watershed. Since we will have the amount of rainfall, we know how much water is coming into the watershed. With the temperature data, we will be able to use some equations to figure out the evaporation, water leaving the watershed. Also, with the barometric pressure, a comparison can be made with the pressure of the water column recorded by the pressure transducers in the stream gauges. From this comparison we can find the height of water in the stream, and then we will be able to determine the discharge of the stream, also telling us how much water is leaving the watershed. With all of these parameters known, we will have a very good estimate of the water balance for the watershed.

It Rained!!

2009-06-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

WOW!! It does actually rain here. I was amazed. Two days ago we had a rain shower in the evening. It was not very long, but it was a pretty heavy rain. Yesterday, it was hot and humid due to the rain we received the night before. There were very few clouds, the sun was shining and not a very strong breeze, so needless to say the weather was somewhat miserable yesterday. I went to bed last night with clear skies, the stars twinkling and a crescent moon above my terrace.

BOOM!!! One large crack of thunder and I was awake. I looked at my watch and it was about 1230. More lightening and more thunder for about 1 hour, and a very hard rain to accompany all of the lights and sounds. I looked out my window, and also took a quick peed around the porch. The water was ponded outside my porch, running off all around to the drains. Not only was the water running off the porch, but it was also running inside my apartment. I began to hear a dripping sound, and sure enough, there was water dripping from the ceiling onto the floor. I placed a bucket under one of the drips, and by this morning have about 2L in the bottom of the bucket.

Also, while I was looking outside, I saw my neighbor collecting water from his gutters in buckets. He was filling all of the buckets to store the water. I was somewhat surprised to see this, but I guess in this time, you can’t be too sure when water will come again. Sudershan also told me that in his apartment complex just this year they have started a roof water harvesting program. The water from the roof drains into the well that provides water for their apartment complex. Again, water makes the world go round, so I guess whatever it takes to keep it is a necessity of life.

I think this might be the monsoon season, finally reaching us. I hope that the rain this year are better than last year, and if they are not, the people living in this area are going to have a hard time in one year’s time.

We've made progress

2009-06-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

Two months ago at this time, I was frantically running around Clemson, trying to finish term projects, make sure that we had all of the instruments we needed for India and that they were working properly, ensuring that I was getting the most out of my bike before I left it for 6 months, and trying to spend time with family and friends. Now I have been in India for almost two months, and it seems like just yesterday I was enjoying pizza with friends at Mellow Mushroom or a pitcher of Yungeling at TD’s. So after spending two months in India for research, what have we accomplished?

The following provides a very brief list of some of the accomplishments in the past two months. Following blog posts will show some of the data that we have collected thus far and also a little bit about what the data actually means and how we will use the data.

1) We have successfully installed all of the instruments in the field. We have installed the weather station, lysimeter, three stilling wells, soil moisture probes, staff gauge on the upstream side of the WHS, and a concrete structure of the v-notch weir. The instruments are all working and collecting data properly.

2) We have collected baseline data from three agricultural fields with the EM38 and also conducted a survey of the watershed with the GEM2. Also, we have monitored the water levels in the wells and recorded the elevation of the water.

3) All of the data collected thus far is being complied into a GIS structure, which will be easily transferable to other GIS users.

Not only has successful field work occurred, but research and field work also provide an excellent time for learning. Mistakes have been made in the field, problems have arisen, but solutions have been found for the problems.
1) Some of the weather station data is missing, due to having a problem with the HOBO shuttle that we use to offload the weather station. A few times when we off loaded the weather station we hit the wrong button, so a few days worth of data are missing.
2) One of the soil moisture probes in the lysimeter was not logging data correctly. We think that is was a problem with the port the probe was plugged into, and after changing the plug from port 4 to port 5 it is now recording data.
3) On a personal note, I have learned and reinforced the idea that patience is a key factor for successful team work. There are certain barriers that need to be overcome, language barriers, cultural difference, and a different way of life. Learning to “go with the flow” and be patient, I have been able to successfully communicate what goals need to be accomplished and how those goals need to be accomplished. I have learned that repeating the same thing in a variety of different ways is the best way to make sure someone understands.

Overall, a lot has been accomplished in the past two months. A lot of work still remains to be done, but we are off to a great start. None of this work would have been possible if it weren’t for all of the assistance provided to me by Sudershan, Minakshi, and the rest of the FES team. Without their hard work, and constant effort on the project, none of this would have been possible. I hope the next two months are more successful than the past two months, and I am confident that the research from this point will only get better.

Trouble here at home

2009-06-22T23:11:00.001-07:00

Monsoon season…I have heard so much about this time period in India ever since I was planning on coming over. The amounts of rainfall that are received, how pleasant the weather is when it starts to rain, and just everything about the monsoon season. However, I have not seen the monsoon season, and since it is now delayed for so many days, I am starting to wonder if the monsoon even exists. I can say that I have seen a change in the weather here the past few days though. It has been cloudy the past couple of days, the temperatures have not been as high, and we did have a nice small rain shower last night. So maybe the monsoon is on its way.

BUT, the TROUBLE is the city is almost out of water. As Sudershan mentioned in his blog post, there are only a few days of water supply left for the city. The last water supply to the new part of the city will be tomorrow, June 24. The old part of the city will receive its last supply on June 25. After this, if there is any water left it will be distributed on July 1. This is serious!! Water is required for life, more so than food. Without water, people cannot survive, so I hope the monsoon is not a fictional thing that I have been hearing about but is a real event. I guess we will wait and see what happens. I am hoping for the best.

For those of us who run

2009-06-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

Please be forewarned that this post has absolutely nothing to do with research, but just some personal observations I would like to share with you all.

Running. For me running has been a part of my life since I was a small child. Playing soccer as a 4 year old and continuing soccer through 8th grade (thanks mom for always driving me around for practice), I was always on the run. After my soccer career ended, I was on the football team at my high school. You might ask what position I played, and my response to that would be about all of them, but primarily I played right bench. During my junior year, I decided that I would use football as a way to stay in shape (and out of trouble) for track.

I then started to run track in 7th grade and continued track through college at Furman. I ran the 400m hurdles in college and focused on relay sprints and hurdles in high school. I thought that anyone who would run more than 2 miles at one time was absolutely crazy, and could not understand why anyone would want to do that.

After Furman, I became a distance runner. I started to run a bit more on each run, and then in 2008, I decided that I would run a marathon (after some convincing from my sister-in-law, and brother). I completed the marathon, loved it and have been running distance ever since. The picture is from the marathon, at mile 5, so I still looked okay; however, miles 25 I don't think I looked so great.

One of the best things about running is it requires virtually nothing. You could, if you wanted, run naked, however some shoes and clothes are nice to have. You can run anywhere, India, China, Europe, USA, Guatemala etc. I have always enjoyed running abroad just for the great experience of seeing new things at a different pace.

So, for those of us who run, no matter how fast, how long, or how short, I feel there is a special link between all of us. For me, to see a runner I feel that we immediately have something in common. Running provides a chance for the mind to be free of all the stresses of the day, allows the body to become fit, and for me provides a chance to see the world at a different speed.

I went for a run this morning, and it was great. Not every run is good, but today was a good run. Some people waved, some passerby’s said hello, and I saw one other person running near my house. My mind was free from the day, there was nothing to focus on except placing one foot in front of the other. At the end of the run, I was not tired but refreshed, ready to go, and prepared for the adventures of another week. So, for those of us who run, be glad that we can run and enjoy every one, even if it isn’t the best.

Successful hot days

2009-06-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

We have had another few great days out in the field. Dr. Ramakrishnan was able to take about 10 soil samples in various places around the watershed. Sanjay, Dr. Ramakrishnan, a worker and his son, and I walked around to various locations in the watershed and took the samples. We took one profile (different depths) at two of the wells in the lower part of the water shed, one bulk sample near the lysimeter, and also one more sample in the upper part of the watershed. The samples were all collected in one day, which meant the following day; all of us could help with the resistivity survey.

Dr. Chandra was able to conduct a few surveys with the resistivity meter. Resistivity is related what we are doing with the electrical conductivity by an inverse relationship; therefore, the higher the resistivity, the lower the conductivity and vice-a-versa. Two profiles were taken on the second day in the field, and then on the second day two more profiles and one sounding were taken. Profiling requires moving the whole setup and is slightly more time consuming, whereas sounding the main station stays in the same location, and just the electrodes are moved. With sounding you get an idea of the geology at one place, where with profiling you get an idea of the geology across an area.

After three days of hard field work, and the fact the professors were leaving today to head back to Bombay, we took a day off and went to visit some sites around Ujjain. We visited three different temples, Mahakal, Bhartrihari temple which is more of a cave, and the last temple (one of my favorites) was the temple for Kala bhairava. The Prasad (a gift given to the god which gets distributed among everyone) is alcohol, so I gave a small offering of some local Ujjain booze to the god, and amazingly, he drank it. The key point here is that there is no hole at the mouth of the god, the liquor just disappears. Also, scientific studies have been done to see what happens to the liquid, and there have been no conclusive results. After the temples it was time for lunch and then a good rest before they had to leave to go back to Bombay.

Overall, their trip was very good and I think a lot of collaboration will occur between IITB, Clemson, and FES. Now, for me it is back to the real world of doing work, getting caught up on work, and planning for what we will do once it starts to rain, which hopefully will be soon.

Familiar Faces

2009-06-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

First off I would like to thank Sudershan for his blog post. If you have any comments on that blog, please post them so he can read them. He and I would greatly appreciate any response to that post. And for the record, he did that blog on his own accord, I did not ask him to write one. So thank you Sudershan, for the “insider” look to the water problem here.

Secondly, I have bought some new clothes!!

Now back to my posts…sorry.

June 18, 2009: Today Dr. Ramkrishnan and Dr. Chandra arrived to go visit the field with me. Dr. Ramkirshnan is the professor that Dr. Moysey and I first meet when we arrived in Bomay, and we have been collaborating with him on a project dealing with soil moisture and trying to link that with satellite data. The overall goal is to find areas with increased soil moisture with satellite data to allow farmers to take a third crop in the summer season. The reason for a third crop is primarly increased income.

So they arrived at the train station about 7:15am. Prior to this I had a very pleasant run on the road near my house, a brief shower, small breakfast, and then to the train station to meet them. We got them checked into the hotel, and then headed to the field to give them a brief tour of what has occurred here so far.

We walked around the main part of the watershed, looked at all of the instruments that have been installed, showed them the WHS, and just gave them a brief introduction to the area. Tomorrow the real work will begin. Dr. Ramkrishnan will be taking some soil samples from the wells and also the stream channels. The purpose of the soil samples is to determine the porosity, permeability, specific yield, and specific retention. All of these have to do with how water interacts with the soil, how much water the soil can hold, and how water moves in the soil.

Dr. Chandra on the other hand is interested in the geology of the area, and with him we will be conducting a resistivity survey. I do not know the specifics of resistivity, but I can tell you that there are 4 electrodes that get put in the ground, and they give an idea about the subsurface geology, much like them GEM2 and the EM38 do.

Overall we had a great day in the field, and I am very excited to see what will come of the next few days. And on a GREAT note, we saw about 5 herds of camels today, carrying people, kids, baby goats, children going to the bathroom, clothes, tents, etc

On an even better note, my camera still works after taking a small bath in the well!! (Photo is right before the small bath.)

"Burning Issue - Water"

2009-06-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

[Dan, "This blog post is from Sudershan...he gets all the credit for this...here is the link to his blog...http://gsudershan.blogspot.com/"]

Here comes a reason i.e. prevailing water scarcity in Malwa Region that inspires me to write my very first blog. I must say in the very beginning that, bear with my writings as I am not a good writer. This blog has been posted to let people know how hard is this summer for the Malwa Region to find water (now for those who do not know, I must tell that the region includes the Madhya Pradesh districts of Dewas, Dhar, Indore, Jhabua, Mandsaur, Neemuch, Rajgarh, Ratlam, Shajapur ,Ujjain , and the Rajasthan districts of Jhalawar and parts of Banswara and Chittorgarh), and the possible reasons behind it. The region, earlier known for ‘Dag-Dag Roti, Pag-Pag Neer’ [Dan “An area for roti, the bread, and water, at every step along the way”] is struggling hard to fulfill the daily requirements of the residents.

I will tell you some examples that will depict the seriousness of the problem:
· The interval between consecutive water supply is now increased to 7 days i.e. if you are not in the city the day the water is supplied, then do not come for another week J. The day is now celebrated as the ‘WATER DAY’ in the city J.
· The water is being supplied through tankers to the city and now the tanker drivers are like GOD to the residents. They come at whatever time they want or better to say when they get water because they sometimes bring the water from a distance of 35 – 40 km.
· Last time when I was finished with the water task it was 3 A.M. You wil
· l be shocked to know that there have been murder cases also, the reason being water. The quibbles and disagreements are the things that you find everywhere.
· And the list is endless….
So, coming back to the issue, The water scarcity in the Malwa region is an exigent issue and the possible reasons are the erratic pattern of rainfall in the last 5-10 years (this can be associated with the global climate change to some extent , and the unlimited exploitation of ground water. I am not going to make a list and convert this blog in an essay J but these were the two important reasons to be mentioned.

However, I would like to add a very important reason to the list i.e. Lack of awareness and Negligence by the Local Administration.

Despite knowing the fact that there was very little rainfall in the year 2008 and the dams and the local reservoirs will not serve till the next rain, the local administration did not take any step to provide the water supply to the residents of the city. Earlier the water was supplied on daily basis, but in 2008 it was supplied alternate days which is now increased to an interval of a whopping 7 days. It is very easy to calculate how long the water will last in the Gambhir Dam, but at the inchoate stage, it was not taken care of.

Also once the water crisis started to accrue, the applications of boring wells and deep wells proliferated, and all the applications were approved without thinking it’s awful effect on the Water Table.

As an information, I would like to share that the proposal for bringing the water to Ujjain from a distance of 24 km form Amlavada Bika Dam has been approved and now that dam is also at verge of drying. It is facing channel cutting and it is believed that it can only provide water for 3 -4 water supplies to the city.

The only good thing that happened in the city is the Roof Water Harvesting and the awareness aroused by this water inadequacy.

Now the only hope for us is the Monsoon, which is again delayed by 7 more days and is expected to hit the region by 24th June.

So why is there water scarcity?

2009-06-15T21:09:00.001-07:00

So I have shared with you all some of the effects of the water scarcity that the Malwa region has faced in this past year, but I do not believe that I have told you why the scarcity exists. I read an article this morning in the magazine “Down to Earth” in the February 1-15, 2009 issue entitled “Malwa is thirsty: Indore under water emergency.” The article written by Aparna Pallavi mentions a few of the reasons for the water scarcity, and I would like to share some of those reasons with you.

One of the main reasons for the water scarcity that has been faced this year is because of the vert poor monsoon season last year. The average rainfall in the area is around 1,092 mm of rain, and last year they received 517 mm or rain. Because of the low rainfall some of the water tanks in the region have gone dry, many of the rivers are now trickles of wastewater, and the reservoirs and dams also have very low levels.

Another problem leading to the scarcity of water in the region has been the local supply of water coming into the region. Ujjain usually gets its water from the Gambhir reservoir, but this has gone dry. Ujjain now plans to take water from the Amla Vida Dam, which is 24km away from the city; however, the city government might face resistance from farmers around the dam who use that water for irrigation.

Indore is facing a similar problem. In the wealthy neighborhoods and the “posh colonies” water supply comes on alternating days for 1 hour at each location. In the poorer areas water comes from tankers and the article mentions that fights over the water supply are common.

Another reason for the water scarcity in the region is the decrease in the water table. Since many people need access to water, bore wells (deep wells) have been drilled in many locations. Once people start pumping the groundwater at an unsustainable rate, the water table drops and it is unable to recover. Some areas have seen groundwater levels decrease between 122 m to 244 m when in the 1970’s, the groundwater levels were around 12m.

When all of these issues are combined, and then also coupled with some local corruption, it is clear to see why water scarcity is such a big issue here, and why it is a common topic of discussion. I hope for the people living in this area the rains this year are good. If they are not good, the comment has been, “We will have to migrate.”

Ujjain

2009-06-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

Visit this site to see the photos of the day!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.matz84/OldUjjain

Yesterday I decided would be a personal day, and I would take some time to travel to Ujjain and give the historical city a visit. Before I set off, I had made the decision to let the day pass without a worry, and go where I want, see what I want, and just go with the flow. Going with the flow I have found is the best approach for India.

So I started the day by arriving near the bus stand. I had to walk to the bank to deposit some money, and on the way to the bank I got stopped by a man sitting on top of a small temple. He said hello, asked me where I was from, etc. I then told him I speak “torah torah hindi” (a little, a little hindi). He was very impressed by this, and next thing I know I am sitting next to him, chatting it up and enjoying a glass of tea. The man’s name is Nielsh, and he owns a cycle shop and also a cycle garage. After the tea, I left him, and continued on my way to the bank. I was not too sure where the bank was, so I asked two guys, who then proceeded to show me where the bank was located. I walked with them, and they are both in school at university.

After the bank, I was heading for Mahakal temple. Before I reached this place, I got side tracked to Gopal Temple, another temple that I did want to visit so it worked out okay. Before I went inside I was stopped by the mango man, to take some photos and talk with him. He shared a piece of mango, and it was delicious, sweet, and juicy. Then I went into the temple. While inside, I met two brothers who go to school in Bombay. They are both engineering students, and they were kind enough to treat me to another glass of tea. Their names were Avinash and Sandip. They were 18 and 19, and were just starting off in school.

I then progressed to make it to Mahakal temple. I took a few photos along the way, some kids, a guy making bed posts, two guys who own an ironing shop, and just people living their lives. I could see Mahakal temple off in the distance and finally reached there after about a 30 minute walk.

Mahakal temple was very big, and beautiful. The most interesting part was waiting in line for about 20 minutes to walk under ground and see Shiva. The line was okay to start, and then once we reached the stairs leading to the room with Shiva, some pushing started to occur. People where moving quickly, pushing once inside the small room, and I kinda felt like a cow being herded around the room. Needless to say there was not much time to look and really “soak it in”. The rest of the temple was very nice. There were many smaller temples and lots of things to see.

I then left Mahakal and decided that I wanted to walk through one of the neighborhoods nearby. I was not too sure what to expect, but I just kept an open mind and made my way through the narrow streets. One man stopped me and asked me to take his photo. Then a whole family stopped me. This is where things got exciting. I was talking with them and then they feed me lunch. Dal, which is a type of lentil dish, and dalhi, a type of cooked bread to eat with the dal. It was very good, and they were so nice to feed me. I talked with the for a bit longer, told them I would come back and visit sometime, and then made my way out of the neighborhood and headed for Harsiddhi Temple.

After my visit to Harsiddhi temple I was going to start making my way home, but got side tracked again. This time it was a group of guys sitting having some tea, and again I was treated to another glass of tea. These guys did not speak English, but I think the one guy owns cows. They were a pretty funny bunch, and I had a good time talking to them, even though we didn’t quite get each other.

The last stop of the day was making my way back home. It was a great day of sightseeing and making friends. It was pretty easy to get around, and there was always someone right there to give a cup of tea, or point me in the right direction.

Good Ole’ Home Cooking

2009-06-12T20:41:00.000-07:00

First, flying monkeys, a common expereince in India. This one is moving from the tree above the mango stand since the owner of the mangos didn't want him in the tree, I think because the monkey might steal some mangos.

Sometimes a home cooked meal tastes better than anything else around. If I were to make pasta at my house, it would be so much better and tastier if mother made it with the exact same ingredients that I used. I am not sure what it is, but mothers have a way of making food taste so much better, maybe it is the love the put into it, since they are preparing it for guests or for their own family.

I was able to go over to over to Sudershan’s house a few days ago for supper. I am not sure of the Indian names of the food that we had, but all was very good. I believe the main “bread” dish that we had was puri, which a fried, puffed bread. With that we had potatoes, lady fingers (orka, which were much better here than in the restaurants we usually have them), a dish with garbanzo beans/chic peas and potato, then a curd/yogurt dish, and probably my favorite, a mango shake (made with mango and milk). The mango shake tasted like Mazza, a cold drink served here which is a mango juice, except it was so much better, it was thick and smooth and cool, and really delicious. For dessert we had some sweets with cashews in it. All in all it was a fantastic meal, and it was so nice to meet Sudershan’s parents. I greatly appreciated the hospitality, and as I mentioned before, sometimes home cooked meals just hit the spot.

One interesting thing I learned while at their house was, you guessed it, the water scarcity that they face. A tanker comes once a week to their house to fill their well, as well as provide them with buckets of water. They live in a multistory apartment building, and there is no elevator, so sometimes they have to carry 5 gallon buckets of water up 3-4 flights of stairs back to their house. To get the water, Sudershan has to get in a line, wait his turn, fill his buckets, and then take them up one flight of stairs to his room. I guess last week there was a bit of verbal fighting going on between the residents about the water supply and who’s turn it was in the line.

The running water they used to have in their house is no longer there as the well has gone dry, and he said that this is the worst it has been in a number of years. The well outside, although unable to provide running water to the apartment can still provide about 5 buckets of water per day to each household. Again, water scarcity is a real issue here that people face every single day. For the people living in the area, water is not a luxury, they are not able to waste water by forgetting to turn off the tap. Water is a serious issue, and each drop is precious.

Lastly, Dan playing around and Sudershan working hard!!

Change of Plans

2009-06-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

First off, this is a picture of my new pet. She does not yet have a name, so any suggestions for names, please let me know. Any comments would be greatly appreciated!!

One thing that I have learned from all of my travels around the world, is be very patient with people, and be very flexible in plans. India is a perfect example of when planning is something that is not set in stone, but more set in gel. Plans here always change, and they can change in the matter of a few days, but also they change in the matter of a few minutes. To explain what I mean more clearly, let me use an example, starting yesterday, and going through today.

Plan A) Sudershan and I would return to the field today (Wednesday) to finish mapping the WHS with the GEM2. I am then informed that we need to set up a bank account so I can start to receive my money while I am here. So we go to the bank and find out I have to register at the police office and also get verification from the police office.

Plan B) Stay at home on Wednesday and take care of the bank account, registering at the police station, and all paper work involved in the process. So plan A is canceled.

Plan C) Minakshi receives a phone call around 830pm saying that there is a meeting with the federation (the big wigs of all the villages near our village) that I must attend tomorrow. So plan B is now canceled.

Plan D) Go to the meeting with the federation on Wednesday, go to the bank on Thursday, and go to the field on Friday.

Plan E) Erase all previous plans. The meeting with the federation has been canceled, so now Plan B is back in affect. At this point in time it is about 9:30pm, and I go to bed.

Wednesday:
Plan B) Go to the bank and the police station.

We were supposed to go to the police station in the morning. It is now 3:45pm and we still have not left to go to the police station. We did however go to the bank, and they told us we need to first go to the police station to get the verification form, which is no surprise because that is what they told us yesterday.

So…all in all, I still have no bank account, still have not been registered at the police station, and still do not have the police verification. I figure by the end of the week all of these projects will be completed and everything will be in order. As I have mentioned before, there is a different time here, things get done when the absolutely have to get done. So for now, I am still waiting…

Water Scarcity 2

2009-06-08T02:05:00.001-07:00

About two weeks ago I put up a post about water scarcity, and how it impacts peoples’ lives. I would like to follow up on the previous blog post, with how water scarcity has impacted my life here at home.

I am in a very fortunate situation. I have a deep well attached to my house, which fortunately still has water in it. I am able to take a shower after a long day in the field, wash clothes from the tap water, wash dishes, brush teeth, and carry on like I did in the states. I do not have to worry about turning on the tap and not having water come out.

Although I have water in my house, I am very aware that the water here is scarce. While taking a shower, I get wet and turn the water off. I then wash and turn the water back on to rinse off. Showers are now short and quick, and often times the water is not all that warm (but cold showers usually feel pretty good after the heat all day). When washing dishes after cooking, I try to minimize the amount of water I use by wetting the dishes, washing them, and then giving them a quick rinse. Clothes get washed to the point of being cleaner than they were when I took them off. There is no washing machine, and I wash my clothes in my shower with the water running from the tap into a bucket. In the bucket I was the clothes with soap, and then rinse them on the shower floor with water from the tap. I probably use about 3-5 gallons of water to wash a few shirts and some underwear.

As I mentioned I am very lucky. Meenakshi on the other hand is not so lucky. She has to collect water every four days. She has about 15, 5 gallon jugs of water full of water that she collects. Also, she has a large drum, about 40 gallons to store water, and another drum about 30 gallons for water storage. To wash her clothes she has to use a small bucket to get water from the larger barrels. To shower, she uses a bucket and a small bucket to dump the water on herself. She does not have the “luxury” of a real shower everyday like I have at my house.

Every day I see people lined up at the hand pump for water, and they are always behind the water truck when they roll through the streets. People are always carrying water, on bikes or on their heads. Water issues are very present, and it is hard for a day to pass when they are not in the forefront of every one’s mind.

Pashmina

2009-06-05T23:31:00.001-07:00

The last day of sightseeing in Delhi, and I decided that it was a day to “shop my brains out” and “stuff our bellies full of street food”. Karthak, my friend, and I went to Dali Haat, a market with goods from all over India, and also snacks from all over India as well. The first stop was for some food, which was a puffed rice chili type dish. Then some shopping, then some Momos, which are like Chinese dumplings or pot stickers in the states. Then some more shopping, and then food from Rajasthan. We had a tapioca dish with potatoes and curried potatoes with bread. Then, some more shopping.

So after all of this shopping, I did not end up buying too many things, just some small gifts for friends and family. The big buy of the day was some scarves for friends. While bargaining with the man, and talking to him a bit, we were able to get a good price and also a lot of information. He sells scarves and shawls, and the finest ones that he sells are made of Pashmina. Pashmina is a very fine type of wool from the chin of mountain goats. It is then spun into a shawl (6 months time), which then sells for about INR 6000, or $120. He told us that he has been Chicago to sell these shawls, and was able to sell them there for about $3,500 EACH. I was amazed that people would pay that much, but they do and they are crazy for them I guess. They are very fine cloth, and very warm. They are soft, and the whole scarf can be pulled through a small ring. They also soften and become more valuable with age.

So after speaking with the man for a while, we left and decided it was time to escape the heat, so we headed into the National Museum for a quick look around. I was very lucky to only pay INR 1 since I am a student. If I did not have my student ID it would have been INR 300, and for Karthak only INR 10. There is “a little” price discrimination here, and the price for foreigners is MUCH higher than for Indians. I don’t think it is fair, but then again, I didn’t make the rules.

The last stop of the day was at Humyuan Tomb, one of the world heritage sites. Karthak, Sreepria (his girlfriend), and I had a very nice walk around the park area and visiting the tomb. It was nice to just relax and spend some good time with the both of them.

Last items of the day were making and eating supper and then catching the night train back home. Dinner was amazing, we had homemade pesto with spaghetti, and spaghetti with a red sauce, garlic bread, and watermelon juice. It was delicious, and a great way to end a good rest with a best friend.

Auto Driver

2009-06-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

Again another great day of sightseeing in Delhi. The morning started off with a trip to Purana Qila, an old fort in the city. It was beautiful to see. There was a big wall around the outside, a temple and other structures on the inside, nicely manicured lawns all around the grounds, and just a pretty quite place to visit. The only problem was it as hot, just like every other day so far in India.

From Purana Qila, I made my way to the lotus temple, a Dahlia temple that is constructed in the shape of a lotus flower. WOW. This was a great sight to see. Driving up to the place in the auto was amazing, you could see this pretty white structure sticking out in the air, the shape of the flower very apparent and present. Inside of the temple it was nice and cool, due to the 9 ponds of water around the structure that provide a type of natural AC for the temple. It was calm and peaceful inside, and it was nice to just sit inside and have a nice rest.

From there, the day got a bit more interesting. I had wanted to walk to the Viskcon temple, about 800m away, and ended up hiring an auto driver for the rest of the day. He said that he would drive me there for free. For FREE, I am thinking this is to good to be true. So he drives me there after stopping at a state emporium. He drops me at the temple, I walk around and then he ends up driving me all over Delhi for the rest of the day, taking me to various sites around twon and telling me about himself and Delhi and the places we visited. The cost of having him drive me for the day was INR 300, so about $6.

The auto driver’s name was Amagoh. He is 56 and has been married for 32 years. He has two daughters, one who is 28 and married with a child, and the other one is around 24 I think and she is getting married. He has been driving an auto for 30 years, and is working one more year and then retiring to his native home in the east of India. He seemed to be pretty well off for himself, and I was not able to tell if he has always driven an auto, or if he had some other job at some point in time.

After having a little lunch, we then went to Gandhi’s house, where he was assassinated. It was a very nice museum that paid a great deal of respect to his life and the work that he did for India. There was a path in the back yard of the house that showed where he walked before he was shot, and ended at his tomb.

From Gandhi’s house we then went to a Shik temple. Shikism is one of the many religions in India, and Shik men are the one that wear the turbines, do not cut their hair, do not cut their beards, wear blue underwear, and wear a silver bracelet. The temple was beautiful, made of white marble with gold on the top of the roof. The inside had pillars and men singing. There were people sitting on the floor in prayer.

Then two more stops for the day, at a little market and back at my friends house. I told my friend that I hired an auto, and also told him that the auto driver took me to about 5 of the emporiums, like the first one he took me to in the morning. My friend then said that the auto driver gets a commission from the store, for showing me the place, even if I do not buy anything. So, it then made sense that he would drive me all around town, drop me in state emporiums, and also gave me the free ride first thing in the morning. All in all it was a great day, and I got to see a lot of Delhi.

New Delhi

2009-06-03T19:44:00.001-07:00

Currently I am in New Delhi visiting one of my best friends from undergrad. Karthak, my friend, has been living in Delhi for the past two years and has set up an NGO, non-governmental organization, called India Youth Climate Network. The focus of his NGO is to get youth of India, people around my age (24), involved in climate change issue and start to help people realize the importance of climate change issues.

I arrived in Delhi on the morning of the 3rd. To get the ticket here, I was wait listed and then got a confirmed RAC ticket. RAC means that it is confirmed upon cancelation. This also means that when I got on the train, I had a lower berth, shared by two other people, so there was the potential that all three of us would be sharing the same seat all night. Fortunately, after about 3 hours a few people did not get on the train at other stations, so I then had my own berth, and the other people also had their own berth as well.

Yesterday was a day of sightseeing. I was able to go to a few markets. One was called the SN market which had a lot of womens clothes and some veggies. Another market was Janpath, a Tibetan market, and the last stop of the day was Old Delhi. I went to Chioli Chock, which is a cloth market hidden in very narrow alley ways and passages that you could get lost in for hours if you tried hard enough.

Old Delhi was definitely my favorite part of the day. There were people selling street food, people walking all over the place, people selling all sorts of cloth, clothes, shoes, medicine, and electronics. It was what I have been expecting India to be like, and finally I have seen it. The small alley ways were crowed, and had power lines in tangles that you would not believe. There were bike rickshaws moving people and goods down the narrow streets, and motorcycles with families passing by as well.

Today, we are going to the Indian gate and another market. It should be another good day of sightseeing, and I am excited to try more street food and snacks.

Wrong Directions and Flat Tires

2009-06-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was another day out in the field. I will provide you with short recap of the field work, and then explain the type of day that we had.

The field work included: mapping some fields with the EM38, offloading the weather station, lysimeter, and soil moisture probe data, and also collecting data with one of the soil moisture probes and the ProCheck in one of the agricultural fields.

Now for the interesting parts of the day: We had the same driver that we had two days ago (the one that was 45 minutes late). I was assuming that he would be late again, but he was right on time, 5:00. We then had to go to the office to pick up a few things for later in the day and also pick up Sudershan from his home. So we were leaving home for the field at 530. We then took a “small” detour heading toward Tarana, Minakshi’s work site, instead of heading to our watershed. So after driving on some Indian back roads for about 1 hour, we finally made it back to the main road that heads toward our watershed. The only problem was that instead of catching the road out of town, we caught the road in town. So, we ended up leaving home at 6:45, instead of the planned 5:00. We then had the usual stop for tea and breakfast, and made it to the field again by 8:00, much like we did the previous day.

Then we completed all of the field work, went to town for lunch (1:30) and proceeded to go to Tarana so Minakshi could hold a meeting with the villagers. We arrived in Tarana around 4:30. When we pulled into the village, our car had a flat tire (not so good). Fortunately, we were able to change the tire, and I am thinking to myself, I hope we do not get another flat on the way home, or else we are in big trouble.

We then had the village meeting around 5:30 and it was over by about 6:30. We had some traditional Indian snacks, samosa (a fried pastry with a potato filling) and sweets and then headed for home.

One of the guys, Sam, who rode with us from our watershed, rode on a motorcycle to the town that he would be staying in for the next few days. So they pulled off, and then we pulled off as well. About 45 minutes down the road we get a phone call that Sam and the motorcycle driver had gotten a flat tire. So we had to turn around, drive back 15 minutes to pick up Sam, and then drive back to the town he would be staying in for the evening. I should mention now two problems about the car ride from Tarana to the town. 1) we did not have any water, not such a good thing, and 2) Minakshi put a very small tear in her shirt in the car by snagging it on the white board we were carrying with us. Not such a big deal, but the shirt was brand new.

So we reached the town where Sam was staying and went to a shop to buy about 5 bottles of water, one for everyone; however, they had one bottle of water, so we shared it among all of us. Then we also bought a bottle of “Thumbs Up” (coke). I was given the bottle, so I proceeded to open the bottle. Yep you guessed it, the bottle exploded all over my lap and hands. Everyone got a good laugh out of that.

Finally, we were able to drop off Sam, get some water from where he was staying and then head for home. We made it home, no more flat tires or detours. We reached home at 1030 that evening. Needless to say it was a very long day, and I was much relieved when I laid down on my bed and fell asleep.

Hot and Humid

2009-05-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Well, another good day in the field today, and a good day of rest in the office working on analyzing some of the data yesterday. There are mixed feelings about going to the field and going to the office. Going to the field requires getting up at 445am and leaving home at 500am and getting back anywhere from 1200-400. Going to the office means getting up at 730 or 800, going for a good morning jog, having a nice breakfast, reading the paper, and then going to the office, doing some work, taking lunch, maybe an afternoon nap, some more work, then home when I find convenient. So again, mixed blessings going to the field and going to the office. I think I prefer the field, there is a simple plan every day, we get our work done, and then we are home for rest. And going to the field greatly increases our changes of seeing UUTS (camels) along the road, as today coming home we saw 3 herds.

So we were in the field today with the EM38. We got a late start today, 700 compared to the usual 500. We had planned on leaving at 600. The driver showed up about 645, so after picking up Sudershan, and stopping for breakfast like we do every day we made it to the field by 800. Today was hot and humid. They had gotten some moderate rains yesterday so that made the weather a bit more humid than usual.

We were able to map 2 agricultural fields with the EM38 on a line spacing of about 1.5m. The areas that were covered were one field in the upland area of the watershed, and one field in the lower parts of the watershed. The upland area was approximately 150mx30m and the lowland area was about 35mx35m. Along with the EM38 data, we collected data from the soil moisture probes at a spacing of 3m. We collected the surface moisture content, conductivity, and the surface temperature. We have one more field to map and then we will have a pretty good base line data set (before monsoon). So things have wrapped up for the first part of the project. We have the baseline data, now we are just waiting for some rainfall.

105+

2009-05-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well another day of mapping WHSs. It was a good day, short day out in the field we were home by 1:30. I think that was a great relief to everyone because the past few days have been fairly long and hot. We are headed back out again tomorrow to finish up the last of the villages and only about 7 more WHSs.

We have not had a chance to really look at the data yet, just putting it on the computer and waiting to start the analysis on all of it. We have a good data set building up, and I think that we should be able to see some interesting results about the geology around the area, and places that have good or bad WHSs. I am really excited to put all the GPS points into a single map and see the size of the region we have covered. I will be sure to post it up on the blog as soon as it is created.

The highlight of the day was meeting one of the men in the village. We were sitting talking with some of the villagers and this man walked up and sat down on one of the cots behind everyone. He just sat there quietly, did not say a word, smoked his pipe, and just let the world pass by without a care. One of the ladies that we were talking with said that he was the oldest man in the village. At that point I glanced back at him. His skin had been hardened, winkled, and dried, and his face looked old and tired; but, his eyes looked young and vibrant still. So I thought to myself that he is probably in his late 70’s or in his 80’s. I asked the lady how old he was, and her response was incredible. She said that he is about 105, but probably older. They were really not sure how old he was, but he is well over 100 from what I could gather. I was amazed, and it is always nice to see people that old. We left after saying hello to him and sharing our respect to him. It was really great to meet someone that old.

WHS Screening

2009-05-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

Times flies when you are having fun and staying busy. It seems like just yesterday we were in Indore, relaxing and enjoying a little bit of AC. Back to the real world I guess.

The past few days, and the coming two days, we have been out in the field at various places around our watershed. We are conducting a screening of WHSs in the area (larger area than our study area) to look for characteristics that might suggest a good spot for a future WHS to be built. We are using the GEM2 and collecting three lines of data at each WHS. Three lines of data means that we are walking across the top of the dam, walking up the reservoir in the upstream direction, and taking one more line parallel to the WHS in the reservoir. We are also talking to the villagers around the WHS to see how long water lasts in the reservoir and what purpose the water serves the village that is captured in the WHS. Answers vary depending on the village and the size of the WHS. Some have water in them all year round, as a few that we saw today, some have water until December or January. The use of water is usually for recharging the downstream wells, water for livestock, human use, and irrigation.

What we will do with the data collected from the GEM is look for patterns. If a WHS has water in it all year round, and the data from the GEM has a certain characteristic, then we can conclude that the area is suitable for a WHS. We can then use this information to take the GEM to potential WHS sites, map the area, and compare it to the database we are currently creating to see if the site is good or bad for building a WHS.

The work has gone very well so far, and we have covered 17 structures so far. Tomorrow we are planning on 5 to 8 more, and then finishing up on Saturday for a hopeful total of 30+.

The exciting part of this project is we get to visit new places and see new things. The other day driving home we saw two herd of UUTS (camels). Today we saw some peacocks running around in the fields, and stopped in a small town for some snacks, watermelon, mangos, and some veggies.

Bedroom Temps

2009-05-26T01:25:00.000-07:00

Well here it is, as promised. If you click the graphs you will see a bigger version and can see the temp values a bit better. The high was 102F and the low was about 85F. I think it speaks for its self.