Meadow surveys and flash floods

 A large part of my work with the North Pennines AONB Partnership has been my involvement with the Hay Time-North Pennines Project. Hay Time-North Pennines aims to restore upland hay meadows throughout the North Pennines by harvesting seeds from species rich meadows and spreading them on species poor meadows. The reason these hay meadows are worth conserving is because they are an extremely rare habitat in the UK, with about 40% (400ha) of them being found in the North Pennines AONB. Outside of the North Pennines the intensification of agriculture, such as application of inorganic fertilisers, drainage, silage cutting etc, has lead to the conversion of these habitats into species poor grasslands.




Upland Hay Meadows on a suspiciously nice day in Weardale


I have been assisting the Haytime Project Officer Ruth Starr-Keddle with hay meadow surveys in order to assess the quality of hay meadows in the scheme. If the surveyed meadow is species rich it may act as a donor to restore species poor meadows found in the same valley. If the surveyed meadow is moderately species rich, but is lacking a few species typical of hay meadows, it can be enhanced by spreading seed on it from meadows that contain these species. In a typical survey Ruth and I would walk across a field in a W pattern recording all wildflower and grassland species we came across and noting features such as species rich banks, undesirable species like cow parsley and rushes, field entrances and wet areas. At the completion of the walkthrough suvey we would then estimate the abundance of each species according to the DAFOR scale (Dominant, Abundant, Frequent, Occasional and Rare).



Idealistic but an inaccurate depiction of hay meadow surveying


Now hay meadow surveying sounds pretty idyllic and it probably conjures of up images of bursting into song while prancing through the fields and making clothes for Austrian children out of old curtains. The reality (at least this year) has been far different with torrential rain, thunderstorms, floods and not a single Julie Andrews song. At one point my car was marooned on a farm as the ford I had driven across earlier had turned from a trickle into a raging torrent in a matter of hours.




Typical survey conditions in the North Pennines

   Ruth and I persevered though and all the surveys were completed on schedule despite the poor weather. More importantly I was reunited with my car which was a very emotional moment.





Yellow Rattle- A typical hay meadow species