Second year Geography students went on a residential fieldtrip to
Slapton, South Devon last week. The trip was organised by Professor Ian Foster
who has worked in the area for many years.
He was accompanied by Professor Ian Livingstone, the Dean John Sinclair,
Ruth Copeland-Phillips, Dr Joanna Wright and Ph.D. student Jenny Evans.
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| Slapton and the surrounding area |
They stayed at the Slapton Field Studies Centre and carried out
practical investigations of water and sediments around the Ley (local term for
a lake). Slapton Ley is the largest freshwater lake in the south west of
England, and is cut off from the sea by a barrier bar. The village is mentioned
in the Domesday book and the beach was one of the sites used for practising for
the D-Day Landings in 1944.
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| Road repairs at Torcross |
The village is small but picturesque and set a sensible distance back
and up from the sea. On the first day we stopped at Torcross, just south of
Slapton on the coast, and there we could see evidence of the power of the sea
and the continuing progradation of the barrier towards land as several houses
had broken windows from a storm the night before, and the road was being
repaired after the sea wall beneath it collapsed on Feb 12th.
The weather was glorious and the field centre is very convenient as we
could walk to some of the field sites.
We had two full days in the field and each day was divided into halves
so the students participated into four different activities. The investigations allowed the students to
test hypotheses of sediment and nutrient supply to the lake and the beach.
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| Measuring water flow and quality in the Ley |
Students measured water flow rates and cross sectional areas of the
streams flowing into the Ley, as well as water quality and suspended
sediment. This allowed them to calculate
water inflow and nutrient supply to the lake.
They also cored the sediment in the bottom of the lake, and one group
managed to get down to 6.1 metres, to the marine clay beneath the freshwater
peats. Dating of these sediments reveals when the lake was isolated from the
sea by the advancing barrier bar.
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| Pebbles at Blackpool Sands |
At Blackpool Sands students surveyed the beach profile, and measured
the shapes and sizes and noted the compositions of the pebbles on the
beach. This allowed them to test if the
source of the pebbles was the cliffs nearby.
The cliffs are schists (dark metamorphosed rocks) but the pebbles have a
high proportion of quartz and flint. The size and shape criteria indicate how
the energy of the water transport and how far the pebbles have travelled. Rounded quartz pebbles have been transported
very long distances.
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| Using the Russian Corer |
The weather was perfect, sunny if cool, with a slight breeze, although Professor
Livingstone would have liked more wind for his dune survey.
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| Folded schists at Blackpool Sands |
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| It's a hard life - students working at Blackpool Sands |
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| Surveying the beach profile |
On the final day the fine weather continued allowing for a stop on
Dartmoor to speculate as to whether the ice sheets extended this far south and
also to observed the landscape and reflect on to what extent and for how long
it has been modified by human activities, and what part changes in climate
played in that.
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| Dartmoor |
The fieldtrip allowed students to build up a picture of the evolution
of the Ley over the past few thousand years, and also to experience different
experimental techniques that they could use in their dissertation research.
