Surveying in Slad

The Stroud Wildlife Survey Group hosted a botanical survey of a community nature reserve in Slad that is leased from the nearby church. I had popped down yesterday to help set up the quadrat locations, and today we had eleven members arrive for the survey itself.

This is the second annual survey, and the methodology was to resurvey the same quadrat locations as last time, so that the differences could be measured and inform the land management plan.

I was assigned the section of the field at the bottom near the stream, and Beck, Mandy and I set off to find the markers.

Not surprisingly, the sward was high in this part of the field and the percentage of wildflowers pretty low.

However, we did find a number of the indicator species we were looking for.

We did have time after completing those six to proceed further along the field with new quadrats in the northerly direction. The species mix certainly improved and by the time we got to the last one we were recording 50-60% herbaceous ratio to grass.

This was another successful event on our 2024 calendar and there are still a few to go.