Surveying Church Field
Today was the annual re-survey of Church Field in the Slad Valley with the Stroud Wildlife Survey Group. This is a community nature reserve, and the botanical survey informs the grazing and other habitat management over the next season.
Just casually looking around, you can see the difference grazing has made in the last season. Large clumps of knapweed, field scabious and lady’s bedstraw right across the site, and also large areas of thinner meadow grass.
There were enough of us to split into four teams, which would enable us to get around all 29 in reasonable time.
Our team had the top of the pasture section which is very species rich. The main idea of this methodology is to measure the increase (or decrease) in species in 1m squares.
It’s always interesting to see that even when close together, quadrats can have different distribution of species. We pretty much found all the main expected plants and noted down some new ones not on the list.
The best ones were on the steeper, south facing slopes. These squares had pretty much everything in them.
Around 1pm we finished and sat down to a picnic in the meadow. Spots of rain appeared now and again, but not enough to drive us away and some very pleasant conversation while looking at the stunning views.
