A helping hand

Stage = 46cm, Ta = 16.8C, Tw = 15.5C

Today I received a helping hand from two students who are considering joining my lab for their graduation thesis next year. I introduced them to the Takiya River monitoring site, and the surrounding Miomote and Murakami region.

We took the all-important discharge measurement, and I then gave them a quick tour of the lower part of the basin. It was cool and raining a little, but I hope that my student guests could appreciate the beauty of the river and the importance of the research work being done there. Perhaps it caught their interest?

The light rain had raised the water level just a little above the summer low flow stage. The rains also brought some surface runoff and added grey-coloured fine sediment to the water.

Summer low flow

Today I visited Takiya River for the first time in about a month. Over the past month the river has basically shown the summer low flow condition with stage at around 40-45cm. There are some rainfall events, and one flood reached nearly 1m stage, but these are all short-lived events and the river stage quickly fell back to the summer low flow condition. Groundwater levels are decreasing steadily as indicated by the decrease in low flows between rain events. Surface soil conditions are extremely dry.

Stage = 42.5cm, Ta = 23.5C, Tw = 17.9C