March 6th was the first solo mission for me, Oliver, and Luis, and in typical fashion, things didn’t go as planned for us. We spent hours scouting for an ideal site to deploy an instrument, but apparently in the wrong area all along.
A bright side to this is that we saw this crazy looking animal! I managed to grab a photo before it scurried off in a hurry. A few google searches later we found that it was a pizote. This can also be called white-nosed coatimundis.
After our scouting extravaganza, we ultimately found a location to deploy a site. However, the directions we were given by the landowner led us to the wrong property so we had to backtrack and contact the landowner once more. This slowed us down yet again, and we ran out of time and had to hold off on the deployment until the next day. To top off this disappointment of a day, the drive back to the beach house in Sámara was around 2 hours. We set off to try to get back in time for dinner. While our group was sorting through logistical issues, the other group (Samer, Alexa, and Gabriel) blew through their deployment and managed to recover a few sites. This was enough to keep us mostly on track for the day! While we have suffered some consequences when splitting up, this increase in productivity is a huge benefit.
Progress update after March 6th:
Yellow marker: currently recording. Green marker: recovered stations. The yellow house is Casa Zerimar.
On the following day, March 7th, we were on a mission to actually get the delayed deployment completed. This time around we were joined by a friend of Luis, fellow geology student and Guanacaste native David Rodríguez. Oliver, Luis, David, and I planned to deploy a site and then scout for another site afterward, this time in the correct area. The deployment went smoothly!
This was my first fully solo deployment running the computer and setting up the instrument without Darcy or Samer there to watch over me. While this was nerve-wracking, it was also a good way to test my abilities. To be certain the receiver was functioning as planned, I decided to run a 10-minute test recording. We do this by simply starting the receiver and then pulling the SD card out after 10 minutes to check and make sure the preliminary data looks good and to make sure the receiver is logging the signal. In this case, it was successful! This is what the data looked like after 10 minutes:
Notice how the data looks really noisy between 10 to 0.1 Hz frequencies (along the x-axis). This is because of the “dead band” in the MT signal. The dead band is where the higher frequency signal we obtain from global lightning activity (this will be detailed in another blog post soon!!) ends and where we transition to the lower frequency signal generated from the interaction of solar wind with the geomagnetic field (see blog post ). Because of this, there is an area in between these two sources where not much natural signal is produced. Here is a quick plot that shows where our MT signal is from to hold you over until the lighting signal post:
Otherwise, the higher frequency data (>10 Hz) looked smooth, which gave me confidence that this was a good site and that all was working as expected. This is what we expect good data to look like after it has had enough time to average out the low signal in the deadband:
After this successful deployment, we moved on to the scouting portion of the day in the designated area, which was around an hour’s drive away.
On arrival, we found a gorgeous field that would work great for deployment; this is the easiest part of scouting. The issue of locating the owner of the said land is where things get tricky. We typically go around asking locals walking along the street or the residents of nearby houses. In this case, we were able to skip the trial and error because David said he knew the landowners and quickly led us to their house. This was amazing and cut out a large portion of the time spent scouting! Luis and David obtained permission for deployment in record time! We did not have a full deployment kit, so we would have to return the following day, but this still saved a huge amount of time.
The other team (Samer, Gabriel, and Alexa) managed to scout and deploy an unplanned site in a remote mountainous area and proceeded to another site near the scenic beach in Ostional, completing two deployments! All in all, this was a successful day that was reassuring after Darcy’s recent departure.
Progress update after March 7:
Yellow marker: currently recording. Green marker: recovered stations. The yellow house is Casa Zerimar.