Environmental monitoring results: Holme temperature

As the temperature starts to drop outside this week, let's have a look at the temperature results from Holme Moss. This environmental monitoring site is situated at about 540m above sea level.

Thanks again to Andy Burn for producing these graphs which show the monthly and seasonal average (mean) air temperatures collected over the last three years by our volunteers.

Environmental monitoring results: Edale temperature

Over the next few weeks, we'll post a series of blogs showing some of the results for our Community Science monitoring sites in graphical format.

We'll start with here temperature information collected from our Edale site on Kinder Scout  - which shows monthly as well a seasonal averages across the years of monitoring so far.

Huge thanks to volunteer Andy Burn for producing these graphs:

 

 

A volunteer celebration walk

Dec 8th 2017 saw our hardy volunteers wrap up for a celebratory walk on to Kinder Scout.

What were we celebrating? Well, not just that Christmas is coming. This social event allowed us to salute Community Science's brilliant volunteers for all their fantastic efforts through the year, and also to thank them for helping the project to win this year's prestigious 'Park protector Award' - awarded by the Campaign for National Parks.

Volunteers were joined by Peak District National Park CEO Sarah Fowler, and Head of Programme Delivery at Moors for the Future Partnership - Chris Dean - who was also celebrating 15 years at the Partnership.

At the plateau, Phil from the Partnership's Conservation and Land Management team talked about some of the wider conservation work that has been happening in the area, but the -14C windchill meant the stop was short and sweet! 2017 has been a great year for the project, and the snowy views and mince pies were a perfect way to round it off.

Community Science wildlife records 2016 - an overview

During 2016, Community Science received sightings of 6324 individual animals via our 'casual record' surveys; that is: birds (curlew, red grouse and swallow); butterflies (peacock, orange tip and green hairstreak); mountain hares, brown hares and rabbits; and ring ouzel and redwing.

The majority of sightings - 4322 - were from the birds survey, but 300 butterflies were seen along with 893 hares and rabbits, and 809 ring ouzels or redwings.

The map below shows the distribution of these records across our project area - the Peak District and South Pennines. The blue line is the boundary of the Peak District National Park, and the purple shape is the SAC (Special Area of Conservation) designated as internationally important for the habitats it contains - including blanket bog.

The light blue dots show where sightings of these individual animals came from (note that each dot could represent more than one individual animal, for example if someone saw 10 swallows in a particular place) and it is interesting to note that generally, the sightings broadly match the SAC shape, especially in the Dark Peak area.

The red dots, added for comparison, show where we distributed freepost postcards asking for people to send in sightings (sightings were also submitted via our website and the MoorWILD app). These hint at the correlation between location of sightings and distribution of postcards - underlining the limits of 'casual' surveys such as these.

Nevertheless, there are some useful and interesting things which the data can reveal: During 2016 the casual ring ouzel sightings helped to inform where surveyors looked when conducting an extensive breeding bird survey of the Eastern Moors area. The distribution of hares, and the correlation between mountain hare coat colour and snowfall has fed into a PhD on the subject of 'seasonal crypsis' in that species.

In the longer term, we'll be able to see if the dates certain species are first sighted in a year (for example emergence of green hairstreak butterfly, or the return of curlews to their moorland breeding areas) are shifting - and whether this fits into a pattern of earlier springs which are predicted to occur as our climate changes.

To find out more about current climate change research, please see some of the links we've gathered together on our webpage.

Photo competition 2016 - 'Water in the Uplands'

We're very happy to announce that this year's Community Science photo competition is now open for entries.

The theme for entries this year is 'WATER IN THE UPLANDS'  - intended in part to draw attention to the wide-ranging positive effects of re-wetting blanket bogs. As ever you are free to interpret this theme as you see fit - using as much creativity and imagination as possible!

This year there are age-based categories for photographers to enter - 'Adults' or '15 and under', and we have kindly been donated some fantastic prizes:

The winner of the adults category will win this amazing HD nest box camera system worth £99 - donated by Gardenature.

The winner of the 15 and under category will win this (appropriately) waterproof camera worth £130 donated by Harrison Cameras.

The deadline for entries is 31st Dec 2016. For full details of how to enter, please see our webpage. Good luck!