Where SYP has been.
Reconstructing Classic Maya droughts
David Hodell, Ola Kwiecen, Daniel James and co-authors deployed SYP in Grutas Tzabnah to collect weekly 15 ml drip-water samples over a full year — providing data for a speleothem reconstruction of drought events during the Classic Maya period, published in Science Advances.
150 m underground, beneath a sequoia forest
Dr Yuval Burstyn deployed SYP in Crystal Cave — 150 metres beneath a giant sequoia forest in the Sierra Nevadas — where it autonomously collected 31 samples from atmospheric river events over six months. Data presented at the Climate Change and the Karst Record conference, Cape Town 2025.
SYP MkIII enters the Yucatán
Oana Dumitru (University of Florida) and Fernanda Lases-Hernández (UNAM) installed a MkIII SYP — complete with rain jacket — among the stalactites of a Yucatán cave, gathering autonomous samples through the season.
Sampling without disturbing the bats
UC Davis PhD student Kesego Letshele installed SYP in Oregon Caves National Monument to quietly collect drip water through winter — without disturbing the hibernating bat population. Exactly the kind of long-term autonomous deployment that manual sampling makes impossible.
Named in Science Advances
SYP is cited by name — with URL — in the methods section of a peer-reviewed paper in Science Advances. The instrument's data contributed to a major reconstruction of Classic Maya drought response, one of the most significant palaeoclimate findings of 2025.
