Our second day, though not the most exciting in imagery and data, was critical for the success of the expedition.  Permits are incredibly important for field work since they ensure that the area remains protected and only research that will not cause damage or harm to the local wildlife and geology are conducted.  For Lanzarote, permits have to be obtained in person, so our first activity for the day was to head down to Arrecife (the capital), to the Municipal building to speak to our contact there about the work we had planned.  The island is home to many beautiful birds including the Egyptian vulture and the Harris's hawk.  Because they are nesting right now, we needed to wait for our drone and kite permits for later in the week while they check to ensure our area is free of nests. The rest though were good to go!

After a quick coffee on the seaside, we went back to our accommodation to do some baseline testing for all of our gear.  In field work it's important to get your first set of data in a controlled environment where you can be sure of what it is you should expect from all of your instruments.  This ensures that the next day in the field when you see something wild, it's more likely real data, and not instrument error.

Our last activity of the day was to hike up La Corona. Each team member was assigned a location on the island that we would be visiting to learn about and then teach the rest of the team, field school!  Chucho gave us our first lesson all about the La Corona volcano.  This 20,000 year old volcano is the origin of the massive lava tube we are studying and shaped the landscape of the Northern part of the island. It is 610 m high and is a 400 m diameter crater.

This field research was made possible, in part, by MIT Media Lab member company, Castrol.