The past month has been a very fast month. I’ve had a great start to my research as well as many opportunities to interact with faculty, students, and others around Chillán. In terms of my work on understanding groundwater resource changes across central and southern Chile, the major activities have consisted of 1) extensive literature review of recent advances in groundwater monitoring and any new studies across Chile, 2) obtaining satellite remote sensing data and historical ground-based observations of groundwater levels, precipitation, evapotranspiration, streamflow, soil moisture, and snow water equivalent, and 3) developing computer codes to process the data in the regions of Interest.

In addition to my research, I am also working with 4 others on their research projects. I am told that I am one of two people at the university who are familiar with satellite remote sensing, but am the only one who utilizes it for water resources. Given this, I have been very involved in helping others learn about remote sensing, teaching coding to process the data, and providing input and guidance on projects. This month I gave a presentation at the Universidad de Concepción for a seminar commemorating World Water Day. The talk of my presentation was titled, “Evaluación de la partición hidrológica y el rendimiento del agua después de un incendio forestal en las cuencas hidrográficas forestales”.

My goal for April is to get initial results of terrestrial water storage changes across central and southern Chile. To get to this point, I will need to finish the major review of the literature, finish some of the computer codes, and filter through the data and complete any additional processing. Obtaining these initial results will be important to determine the next steps and identify any challenges in isolating the groundwater signal. One challenge I foresee is needing to account for the major 2010 earthquake in the gravity signalI feel one of themost positive impacts that my project created this month was excitement among students and faculty at the university to possible remote sensing techniques for water resource problems.