Weather Station Installation
Finally time to head to the field! Our site is, fortuitously, not located in the rainy coastal mountains, but far inland towards the Argentinian pampas, and constitutes the headwaters of the Río Coyhaique that supplies the city’s water. The area is dominated by various forms of deforestation: the initial burning to make room for sheep when the area was first settled in the middle of the 20th century, and then recent cutting to provide firewood for the city of Coyhaique . The drive is pure magic, rolling hills of golden grass radiating from soil hummocks, the rare wetlands host white swans, pink flamingos. It is deep autumn and the lengas ( nothofagus pumilio ) glow orange in the understory while the ñires ( nothofagus antarctica ) crown the canopy with fiery flecks of red. Day 1: We head into the deforested watershed and look for a site for the first weather station – we have two stations, one for this watershed and another for the native forest nearby. I pick a windswept s...