Notable Trees

A bit of a strange week this week - I have felt exhausted and am not sure whether its jet lag from my journey home, or all the fresh air and exercise.

On Monday and Tuesday I had a couple of days off, mostly spend unpacking, washing, and doing bits of admin.  Tuesday was my official last day of work, and also my birthday, so we went for a meal out in the evening to celebrate.

On Wednesday I attended a CIEEM regional event on Notable Trees, held at Scriven Park in Knaresborough. The weather was good, and we had a wander around the estate looking at ancient trees and how to record their features. The main take away from the session was that it is not just ancient trees that are important, and there is no easy way to score one tree against another as they all have different merits at different stages of their life.  The best case scenario is to have trees of different ages as these will create more habitats for a greater diversity of species.

I was introduced to the DAFOR scheme, which is a way of recording the abundance of species found in a square: D = Dominant; A = Abundant, F = Frequent, O = Occasional, R = Rare.  There is then the Double DAFOR (DDAFOR) which is based on a grid system and records both overall and local abundance to show how clumped together or evenly spread the species is. For example FR and RF would have the same number of plants in the square, but FR would be single plants spread out and RF would be in one clump.

It was interesting to see how ecologists work and record data, and also some of the features of old trees and how they change shape. The photo shows bootlace fungus under the bark of a beech tree stump.

On Thursday I took part in a task day at Woodhouse Washlands with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Unfortunately a few other volunteers let us down, so it was just myself and the Reserve Manager Mark. The site is a floodplain meadow on the banks of the River Rother, situated between the M1 and Sheffield.  The Trans Pennine Trail runs through it, and quite a lot of litter had accumulated along the route, particularly at the entrances at either end of the site, so the morning was spent walking the length of the site and collecting litter. We ran out of bags by the time we reached the other end, so had to get a bit creative and use some plastic tubs that had been discarded.  After a few hours the site looked much better, but could still do with another litter pick (and would be much improved if people took their rubbish home with them!).

In the afternoon, we cut back some hawthorn scrub that had started to encroach on one of the meadows. The field will be grazed by cattle later in the year, so we removed young bushes from much of the site. As there was just the two of us, we didn't quite finish the field but again it was much improved. I finished the day feeling as though I had worked hard, and had the scratches to prove it!