5/10/2020
For our recce trip we began the day at Paradise Bottom, with the aim of scouting out the location and potentially take some preliminary measurements.
Following a brief meeting in the car park to plan out the tasks for the day (see David’s voice recordings for more info) and the route with our map, the team headed out into Paradise Bottom, all keen to see the site for the first time.
On arrival at the main tufa cascade, the team were delighted to see the vast extent of the tufa extending across the full width of the stream.
We decided the most systematic way of measuring data would be to divide the stream equally into sections which would enable us to measure the difference between areas of upper stream versus lower pond section, the stream velocities, total discharge and stream depth.
Upon Fiona’s arrival the team immediately got started on measuring data. This included pH, Dissolved Oxygen Content, Electrical Conductivity and temperature as well as marking the different site numbers with a whiteboard.
Shortly after taking measurements from site 2, we realised the area up beyond site 1 near the pipe, contained water with considerably different readings to site 1 and 2, there both the pH and DO readings were lower than site 1 with ~pH7.46 and DO ~8.0 mg/L. Therefore, we decided to include another site into our project, site 0.
We also came to the conclusion that two sites wouldn’t be necessary for the project and that the Paradise Bottom site contained enough streams, pipes and ponds to collect data from for our tufa investigation.
After some panic around lunchtime regarding the labelling of sites and samples, the team reorganized their labelling system before starting on the afternoon’s data collection tasks.
In the afternoon, Romney and Zara were set with collecting probe data from the Main Stream down to site *** whilst David and Hazim working from main footpath pond (site) down the lower stream to the lower forest pond.
At 5pm we packed up the equipment and headed home. In the evening we scheduled another quick zoom meeting to conclude the day’s findings, organize our data and plan out our goals for Tuesday.