Field Trip # 2 - 'Sunny' Brighton & the South Downs

Hello readers! Apologies (again) for the long pause in between blog entries.

Today's feature: My second field trip of the semester, this time to the South Downs near Brighton, in Sussex (on the south coast of England, about 1hr. from London).

The most common activity on our field trips in general is something I like to describe as the 'walk & talk'. Essentially our group drives out to a site of significance (be it biological, environmental, geological, etc.....), we meet up with a local expert on the issues of the area, we hike through said area, and then we periodically stop to either have a chat about the issues or to sample the local pub fare. This basic pattern is repeated for 2-3 days and evenings are filled with continued conversations at the pub. Or in the case of this specific field trip to Brighton, at a funky jazz club with a live band.

The reason for the location of this particular field trip was two-fold. Firstly, it was to investigate and area of southern England being considered for the creation of a new National Park. The ecosystem that they are trying to preserve is called 'chalk grasslands', essentially consisting of rolling hills of limestone overlaid with very thin soil and short grass maintained by the constant presence of sheep. From a North American perspective I must admit it that it has been challenging comparing the landscape management issues in the UK to those at home....there simply isn't any decent sized 'wilderness' areas left in England. While in Canada we might just periodically designate another far north location with (almost) zero inhabitants and call it a park, in the UK it's not that simple. When they make decisions about where to create parks they have to consider the fact that the land they want to designate for protection is often already overcrowded with people, towns, and agriculture. Furthermore, the idea behind the creation of the park doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the concept of preserving a 'wild' ecosystem, often it has much more to do with managing a certain area to maintain it in the way that fits some kind of preconceived notion about how a landscape should look. This is certainly the case for the South Downs where we visited most recently. The second reason for this field trip location was because it was the site of one of our professors ongoing research into soil erosion and flooding. It's a common problem in this part of England, when farmers change from growing grassland grazed by sheep (good for preventing erosion) to intensive crop farming which makes the land more vulnerable to run-off (which in turn floods villages poorly suitated in flood plains and gullies).

A side note....one of the days on the field trip we stopped for lunch in a town called Arundel that had a nice castle. As I explored the town I felt a vague sense of deja-vu....after consulting with my folks, turns out that my family visited this town when we lived in England previously. When I was 6 or so. Strange thing memory....