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Centre for Atmospheric Science

OP3 Project Photo Album

Please click on the images below to view the full series of images for that topic. Additional images and commentary from the OP3 project may be found on the blog kept by Kate Furneaux a PhD student from the University of Leeds located at http://leedsop3.blogspot.com/.

 

The Journey

The Journey

The Danum Valley Conservation Area is located about 80Km away from the nearest town (Lahad Datu), and most of that distance is on unsurfaced logging roads. After geting stuck a few times on the way, the containers finally arrived at the bottom of the hill leading to the GAW tower. That is when the real challenges started. The road to the GAW tower is steep and narrow and in parts quite slippery. The large 40ft trucks carrying two containers each were too large to get up the hill, so the containers were unloaded from them at the bottom. The plan was then for the single truck and the crane to make 5 trips up and down the hill to shuttle the containers into position. While that sounds simple enough, it was just never going to work out quite like that. Despite the site having been surveyed by the transport company well in advance of the project, it was not decided that there was no way either the small truck or the crane were going to make it up the hill unassisted, so reinforcements were called in. Even then things did not go according to plan and desperate measures were employed to get the final container up the hill.

 

Setting Up

Setting Up

Fortunately for us our container had to be the first one in, so while most other people were waiting for containers to be put in position we were able to make a start putting our inlet up the tower. This inlet had been specially designed for OP3, but while the large pipework had originally been constructed for the NAMBLEX project and has been used on several other projects over the years this was the first time we had used all of it, and the first time it had needed to be insulated. The first task after unpacking the inlet from the container was to insulate each section of pipe, then mounting rails had to be bolted to the tower at 2m intervals up to 30m. Once the bottom sections of stainless steel pipe, and the drier etc had been assembled, the main support brackets were installed and construction of the main pipe could begin. Each section was pulled up the tower using a rope and pully system, then held in place while it was bolted to the section below and then secured to the tower with a pipe clip at 2m intervals.

 

Danum Valley Field Centre

Danum Valley Field Centre

The Danum Valley Field Centre is located about 5Km away from the GAW tower measurement site at Bukit Atur. All the accomodation for scientists involved in the project was provided here, either in rest house rooms of which there were one per group, or in the hostel. Accomodation in the rest house was relatively pleasant, but the hostel was pretty basic. Meals were also provided at the field centre, and in general were pretty good, although eating rice twice a day, every day did get a bit old after a while. In the evening those who did not go back up to the site, or work away in the library on email etc, would often sit on the veranda outside the rest house, which was quite pleasant and not excessivly hot.

 

The Jungle

The Jungle

While most of the OP3 measurements were made at the Bukit Atur GAW tower, which sits in a clearing, the ACES in canopy measurements were made in the jungle. The search for a suitable site involved a few treks off the trails into the jungle. Some people were also mad enough to venture into the jungle purely for reacreational reasons. Just across the river from the field centre is an area of primary forest (which has never been logged), which has a number of waymarked trails suitable for unaccompanied walkers (for trips anywhere else, a guide was required as in the past people have gone missing in the jungle for days after getting lost). The vegetation in the primary forest is really incredible, and there was plenty of evidence of elephant activity, but on this occasion no elephants were seen.

 

Above Canopy

Above Canopy

From the GAW tower there were far reaching views over the conservation area. Cloud would typically build during the day leading to heavy rain and sometimes thunderstorms in the afternoon. Being up the tower with thunderstorms around was not to be recommended for obvious reasons, getting caught in a rainstorm gave a thorough soaking, but otherwise was not harmful. After one such soaking some of the best views over the forest were seen, with mist and cloud forming over the wet canopy. Dawn was also a good time to admire the view, and it was certainly worth the effort of getting to site early and climbing to the top of the tower.

 

Above Canopy

Wildlife

While wildlife spotted by participants in the OP3 project included elephants, oragutans, a clouded leopard, wild boar, civit cats, and several snakes including a suspected King Cobra, most of the time it was the smaller inhabitants of the jungle which were regularly encountered. For the most part though these were not quite as small as might be expected.