The Observatory Team is rapidly growing, and we've been excited to recruit some great new field technicians, who began their training with us over the Summer. It has been fantastic to see them quickly getting to grips with hands-on field training, which they love!
Early October, a new Technical Lead (design engineer) started with the team, who will lead system integration and telemetry approaches. There's still detailed design development ongoing for our first field stations that will be deployed in the field next year.
We are focusing on Recharge Stations - all of the measurements that tell us how much water is going into the catchment (precipitation), minus the measured actual evapo-transpiration, and the resulting change in groundwater (recharge). Add to this the soil water storage changes and the drainage through the unsaturated zone into streams and rivers - there's a lot to measure here, and this is all key to understanding how river flows respond. The actual river water level and flow monitoring stations will be our next focus after the Recharge Stations.