GWDTE Training

A busy couple of weeks training. First, two days of excellent training from Peatland Action at Eskdalemuir Community Hub in Dumfries and Galloway. Honestly one of the most useful courses I've been on (also free!) with excellent presentations about the different methodology, what has worked where and why (or why not) and some heartening success stories that demonstrate how successful these simple, but logistically challenging projects can be. Useful information on peat condition and Peatland Action applications. The Community Hub looked after us really well and is well worth a visit in itself with a lovely cafe and some great birdlife outside-not just the resident mallards but goldfinches, nuthatches, wrens, chaffinches, robins, house sparrows and long tailed tits all observed outside. I am looking forward to more peatland restoration training and hoping I manage to get a place on the LANTRA training later this year.

A few days later I headed up to Dunkeld for some ground water dependent terrestrial ecosystem training (or GWDTE-neither is that easy to say..). This was a CIEEM course and technical-learning about hydrology and I had to try and remember my undergraduate geology lectures. After an intense day in the classroom we headed out to a wet woodland nearby and the next day, headed out to Kinnesswood in Fife and walked up towards White Craigs to search out some GWDTEs. Unfortunately, this environment is badly degraded and overgrazed with gorse allowed to cover large swathes of the hillside. Some of this has been cut at no little effort and the cuttings left in the gullies that are possibly GWDTE which is unfortunate. A useful course although from a NVC point of view, would be a bit more useful further along in the season.