The Lyons Share

OK so I hadn't quite finished my field work. I have wanted to initiate some standardised aquatic invertebrate monitoring on the lake at Woods Mill for some time. This is to gauge the effectiveness of any future management.. Ideally three visits are needed in spring, summer and autumn. I started by defining the mesohabitats and these were: floating broad-leaved aquatics, fine-leaved submerged aquatics, leaf litter under alder and willow carr, reed dominated margins and sedge dominated margins. Three minutes of sampling was divided up between the five mesohabitats. Three of these needed a boat to get to due to the size of the lake.

Invertebrates were sorted in the field and stored in alcohol for later identification. Unsurprisingly there wasn't a lot of invertebrates to be seen, plenty of room for improvement. A big thank you to Alex Collins for helping out today and to Fran Southgate for taking the photos. I certainly miss being out on a boat. What a coincidence, I seem to have found myself out of the office for the next three days and the weather forecast looks rather good...