< Blog
August 15, 2021
The fall campaign begins!
By Marc SimardThe field teams are getting ready for another successful field and airborne campaign in the Mississippi River Delta, more specifically in the Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins. While the first radar flights are planned for the 19th over the Atchafalaya basin, some field teams are already in the field and others will begin within the next couple days.
The Water Quality team (Boston U.) has been out for the last two days collecting water samples across the Atchafalaya basin. The JPL team (ADCP/gauges/RTK/Spectral) begins tomorrow in the Wax Lake Outlet surveying water level gauges and collecting a few ADCP transects.
Today, the JPL team picked-up the boat and prepped the instruments. The Island team (Caltech and U. Texas) is setting up instrumentation at LUMCON prior to installation at site 421 and Mike Island. The Vegetation (LSU and FIU) and ADCP (U. North Carolina) will begin sampling in a couple days.
Alexandra Christensen initializes the ADCP instrument
Daniel Jensen tests the spectrometer on plants
We are closely following the progress of Fred and Grace. Currently, the local weather is okay with some morning cirrus, followed by the formation of scattered cumulus clouds that become thunderstorms toward the end of the afternoon. Thus early morning to early afternoon have been good and expected to be good for tomorrow. There are no planned flights, but the WQ and JPL team will be on the water.