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Mires Research Group: Field trip to the Norfolk Broads 23 – 24 April 2005

This trip was organised by Andy Baird (Queen Mary, University of London) and Jane Bunting (University of Hull) and was attended by six members of the MRG. On the first day we visited the RSPB’s nature reserve at Strumpshaw Fen in the Yare valley, and were met by the reserve’s manager, Tim Strudwick, who showed us around the range of habitats at the site and explained the RSPB’s current and future management of the site. The reserve consists of a range of habitats, including open water, grazing marsh, wet woodland, reed fen, and mixed, tall-herb fen. We were also accompanied by Ben Surridge of the Catchment Science Centre at the University of Sheffield who has recently completed a PhD on the hydrological and nutrient dynamics of the fen peat at Strumpshaw. His work involved an assessment of the importance of:

• ground-water exchanges between the near-surface peat and the underlying mineral aquifer and
• water exchanges between the near-surface peat and open water in drainage/irrigation ditches.

These exchanges were used to help understand the nutrient (especially phosphorus) dynamics of the peat. Ben showed us around his research sites and discussed the key findings of his work. Together with Andy Baird (one of his PhD supervisors), he discussed the equipment and experimental setup used at his sites and demonstrated one of the new field methods that was used to measure the hydraulic conductivity of the peat (Surridge et al., 2005).

The second day was spent at Upton Fen in the Bure Valley where Jane Bunting (University of Hull) and Martyn Waller (Kingston-upon-Thames University) reported on a NERC-funded project investigating the pollen signal of the present-day vegetation gradient in valley wetlands. Jane and Martyn discussed how the project team were able to explore a landscape where dryland woodland, wet ash woodland, alder and willow carr graded into one another, making it a plausible analogue for Holocene coastal and estuarine alder fen peats. They explained the sampling methods and vegetation survey, and also the implications of their results for the interpretation of pollen diagrams from alder carr peats throughout lowland Britain. Their work has resulted in three recent publications (Binney et al., 2005; Bunting et al., 2005; Waller et al., 2005).

References:

Binney, H.A., Waller, M.P., Bunting, M.J., and Armitage, R.A. 2005. The interpretation of fen carr pollen diagrams: the representation of the dryland vegetation. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 134(3-4), 197-218.

Bunting, M.J., Armitage, R., Binney, H.A., and Waller, M.P. 2005. Estimates of ‘relative pollen productivity’ and ‘relevant source area of pollen’ for major tree taxa in two Norfolk (UK) woodlands. Holocene 15(3), 459-465.

Surridge, B.W.J., Baird, A.J., and Heathwaite, A.L. 2005. Evaluating the quality of hydraulic conductivity estimates from piezometer slug tests in peat. Hydrological Processes 19, 1227-1244, doi: 10.1002/hyp.5653.

Waller, M.P., Binney,H.A., Bunting, M.J., and Armitage, R.A. 2005. The interpretation of fen carr pollen diagrams: pollen-vegetation relationships within the fen carr. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 133(3-4), 179-202.

Andrew Baird

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