Hydrological Sciences

Low-cost equipment keeps urban waterway greenhouse gas emissions research afloat

Liz Flint April 22, 2026

Shaking wine bags to collect methane gas within a scrubbed headspace

Greenhouse gas emissions from urban waterways Every field scientist knows to never go to the field without ample supplies of duct tape and cable ties. We utilised this notion daily within the University of Bristol’s Watershed Carbon Lab team, as we undertook a 2-year long field campaign across the UK, Europe and China collecting data for our FLF funded ‘Urban Waterways’ project. Rivers are known t ...[Read More]

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) in Geoscience Miniseries – Part 3: Getting it all together – Cables, Breadboards and Circuit Boards

Jonas Pyschik May 9, 2024

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]

Overlooked tips for the lost art of fieldwork

Natalie Ceperley February 29, 2024

The author finalizing installation of a meteorological station in the Vallon de Nant, just in the kink of time (before winter truly begins).

Not so long ago, almost all hydrologic data depended almost exclusively on fieldwork. Today, sure, you can download data from repositories, there are satellites that beam you magic numbers that you can interpret to give you almost any variable, and some (less than we might hope) long-term monitoring has been outsourced to governments (or in some cases to citizens with sensors). But somewhere in ...[Read More]

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) in Geoscience Miniseries – Part 2: Sensors & Electronics

Jonas Pyschik February 1, 2024

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]