You got all your components for your project, so now it’s all about getting it all together. Then it’s great to be able to quickly exchange components and change wiring. That’s where a so-called “breadboard” comes in handy. It’s an easy to use device where you can connect microelectronic components without the need to solder anything. Breadboards are like pinboards for cables and microelect ...[Read More]
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) in Geoscience Miniseries – Part 2: Sensors & Electronics
As a child, I was a huge fan of LEGO. I would spend hours building and creating structures, vehicles and landscapes. For every birthday & Christmas, I wished for the newest sets of these colorful plastic bricks. While building the sets manually was fun, creating something new from my own fantasy was even better. It seemed like once I had a substantial amount of different bricks, combination po ...[Read More]
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) in Geoscience Miniseries – Part 1: Microcontrollers
We geoscientists need all different kinds of data: soil moisture, water-levels, snow height, radiation, precipitation height and the list goes on. However, the devices we need to generate that data are often too expensive, not available or even don’t exist. Therefore, it’s sometimes necessary to build them yourself (like many geoscientists do – those who annually present their senors p ...[Read More]
International initiatives to solve the challenges to trace sediment and contaminant in river systems
Soil and water resources that are essential to human and aquatic life are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of land use and climate change. Sediments play hereby a key role, particularly fine sediments with sediment-associated pollutants, which can lead to a substantial degradation of water body quality, such as in rivers and reservoirs. Sediment tracing as a first step t ...[Read More]