Project direction is defined. . .

This morning the whole group sat down together with all the professors and TAs to get a sense of where everyone is with their projects.  The whole hydrology group wasn’t really honed in on what they wanted to do, but we got lots of feedback from the professors. It took a while to get through everyone’s ideas, but it was helpful to hear exactly what everyone is doing and how they are approaching different problems.

Afterward Kerry showed us how she put together our common product (she did an awesome job!)  and added a standardized metadata structure. Greg showed us all the naming structure Scott and him came up with, along with their procedure for getting data from UAVs.

In the afternoon the whole hydrology group got to get together with Dr. Becker to discuss what our projects would be exactly. Thomas and I are covering the submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), aka the seeps. We are splitting between near-shore and off-shore, though I’m sure much of the work will overlap. There will be a couple tools we will be using to identify where the seeps are. First, we will use conductivity meters all along our study site along with a GPS receiver to see if there are spots that definitely stand out. Second, we will hopefully get obtain thermal imagery by running some flights with the quadcopter, as long as the sensor is working. Thirdly, ground penetrating radar will be used along the road on the shore to see if there are any major differences in soil moisture or possibly an indication of fissures/channels underground. If we definitely find some seeps we can try some basic water quality measurements.  There may be some other tools that can be used for my project. Some more reading up on the subject tonight will be needed!

Time for a break and my favorite food ever… Lasagna.