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Crusing across the Bangladesh coastal zone
I’m now on a ship in southwestern Bangladesh, the M/V Kokilmoni. Nevertheless, getting thus far had a number of the most intricate logistics of any venture I’ve had right here. We confronted issues with insurance coverage, delivery the gear, getting the appropriate batteries, visas, and the checklist goes on. Lastly, every thing received sorted out and we’ve been in a position to begin our 25 day cruise just a few days late. This journey, we’re doing a brand new sort of measurement for me that may examine a unique challenge than I often examine.
In massive components of the coastal zone of Bangladesh the groundwater is salty. This limits rice rising to only the rain-fed Aman rice in the summertime to fall. For ingesting water, they need to retailer the monsoon rain in ponds. Nevertheless, deep within the earth, in sediments from the final ice age, recent water might be discovered. It’s utilized in some locations, however a properly deep sufficient to succeed in it’s too costly for many farmers. One other challenge is that little is thought of the extent of this deep recent water aquifer. I’ve teamed up with a brand new set of colleagues to picture the saline and recent groundwater in coastal Bangladesh.
Since salt water conducts electrical energy a lot better than recent water, we will probably be utilizing two electromagnetic strategies to picture the distribution of recent and saline groundwater alongside two rivers in Bangladesh. To do that, we’ve shipped 1400 lbs. of apparatus right here. Kerry Key, additionally from Lamont, is our electromagnetic skilled and Mark Individual from New Mexico Tech, the pinnacle of this venture, is our groundwater skilled. We’re right here with their college students, together with Anwar Bhuiyan and a number of other college students from Dhaka College.
We arrived a number of days early in Dhaka for conferences and to guarantee that we get the gear launched from customs in time. With the assistance of Anwar, we had been in a position to get it the night time earlier than we had been on account of go away Dhaka. On the day we left, we needed to wait till we received the right deep-cycle batteries earlier than leaving. We then headed out on the lengthy drive to Khulna to fulfill the boat. With Anwar’s assist, we received VIP therapy on the ferry crossing the Padma River, because the mixed Ganges and Brahmaputra are referred to as, and didn’t have to attend lengthy for a ferry. We even received invited for tea by some authorities officers on the ferry. The brand new bridge throughout the Padma is sort of achieved and will probably be opened this summer time considerably shortening the time to drive to Khulna.
We arrived in Khulna round 6 pm and our caravan of three vans and one truck drove straight to the ghat (dock). The ship’s crew met us and carried the multitude of apparatus packing containers and baggage to the ready wood nation boats. We settled in, had our first dinner on the Kokilmoni, and began finalizing the places of our websites. Chris Small again at Lamont processed Sentinel-2 satellite tv for pc information to indicate proportion of vegetation, water or shadow, and substrate (soil) for every 10-m pixel. That allow us choose the precise places of the barren fields for our deployment.
We’re centered on coaching for our first day so your entire group of 12 stayed collectively. Only some of us have expertise with the sort of measurement. The magnetotelluric (MT) instrument makes use of radiation from the solar to picture the construction beneath the instrument. Excessive frequencies give shallow outcomes and decrease frequencies give deeper outcomes. As we’re centered on the higher few hundred meters, we’ll solely be deploying the devices in a single day.
At every website we’ve a central recorder and battery. These are linked by cables to north-south, east-west and vertical magnetometers. These are cylinders about 3 ft in size that have to be buried. Probably the most tough is the vertical and we introduced post-hole diggers to get them within the floor. Lastly, there are small electrodes for the electrical area which are positioned ~50 meters away from the middle within the 4 cardinal instructions utilizing a compass and digital rangefinder. In addition they have to be buried to attenuate noise.
Arriving on the first website, we discovered a big fallow rice area to put in the MT station. Kerry defined all of the parts and the process for putting in them, and we slowly went to work. At every website we employed an area farmer to look at over the gear in a single day. It is vital that no person goes within the 100 m x 100 m space of the deployment because the gear is delicate sufficient to detect folks strolling by. By the second website, we had been noticeably quicker and getting every thing deployed. In truth, we grew to become environment friendly sufficient that we handle to put in a 3rd website on the primary day. On the second and third website, we found one downside that Chris Small’s satellite tv for pc photographs couldn’t seize: cows and goats. Not solely might they lead to distortions of the alerts, however particularly the goats might eat the cables. Selecting the fields that minimized grazing livestock grew to become as necessary as different features of selecting websites.
On the second day we circled again and recovered the stations, studying the best way to correctly do it so they’re able to be deployed once more on the subsequent station. We spent the morning recovering the three websites and paying our in a single day guards. Then within the afternoon, we deployed three further websites. One of many websites is on the residence village of certainly one of our boat crew. We met his mom and uncle whereas working at that website. Our authentic plan was to separate into two teams for restoration and deployment. Nevertheless, with so many individuals, and particularly the assistance of the crew of the Kokilmoni, each deployment and restoration are very quick, so we determined to attempt to proceed as one staff. The ship’s crew is doing all of the heavy carrying of the gear to and from every website, and digging the holes for the magnetometers.
In the meantime, Kerry took a preliminary take a look at the information from the primary websites and so they look good. We’re all excited in regards to the potential success of this new technique, which has by no means been utilized in Bangladesh earlier than this.
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