In early December 2014 I went to Cambodia to assist in the collection of water samples from a region affected by arsenic contamination of groundwater. This water sampling campaign was part of an ongoing NERC funded project at the University of Manchester led by Prof Dave Polya and Dr Laura Richards. This trip was timed to occur after the monsoon season and the aim was to extract water samples from 54 wells, spread across an area of 50 km2 in Kandal province, south of Phnom Penh in the Mekong river delta. A suite of organic and inorganic chemical analyses and microbial characterisation are to be done on these samples back in Manchester to find links between arsenic concentration and the abundance of other elements, the microbial communities, the site geology and seasonal variations in rainfall.
Everyone working hard in the field
Teyden, Laura and Chhengngunn
On a day to day basis, the work involved pumping water from boreholes. This alone provided challenges because, for example, sand and grit in the water can damage the pump. After flushing the borehole, a plethora of water samples were collected in different ways for different analyses. Some were bottled immediately for shipping, and some needed special packaging such as samples for noble gas analysis which are stored in copper pipes. Some samples need further preparation in the field such as filtering and other transient measurements are taken immediately in the field, with the help of a travel-size spectrophotometer. This video shows a timelapse snapshot of the various field-based stages involved.
There were challenges along the way, like getting our van stuck in mud and finding a poisonous snake on site, but despite this the trip was a success and all the required samples were collected and shipped back to Manchester. This was mostly thanks to Laura’s impeccable organisational skills and avid use of spreadsheets.
The time we were stuck in mud
Cambodia is a beautiful country and it was a privelage to work there. We are indebted to the Cambodian field assistants Chhengngunn, Zongta and Teyden, van driver Kheng and technical assistant and expert forager Sok who have worked hard towards this project.
Helen Downie
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In November Laura and I, loaded up with samples from a few folk in the geomicrobiology group, flew to California for beamtime at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. We were met in Berkeley by Adriana Figueroa-Garcia, a beamline scientist from Diamond, who was kind enough to give us a […]