Starting my sample preparation for peat structure analysis (this was the test run some nice mosses)

Lovely day to go creepy crawly hunting!

Sorby Natural History Event: Snail lecture by the retired Prof Robert Cameron.

Lichen Haul :) indicator species largely at that

Lichen ID-ing certain species are also useful as indicator species for nitrogen pollution!

Sorry for the random reply after a month but do these look right? (I did the 3rd one later on so I'm not sure if it's accurate).

It's so interesting! Slowly been reading more about how useful for paleoenvironmental and archeological reconstruction they are.

Sphagnum found during some volunteering i did with the yorkshire wildlife trust where we removed an ornamental invasive species plant (Rhododendron ponticum)

Sphagnum and disciplines around bogs and wetlands was my entry into this field and always gets me excited seeing it. (Espec in yorkshire!)

I think it's interesting how much palaeoenvironment can supplementally be aligned through old text, especially trying not to fall into rabbit holes 😅

However I do think I'd prefer quantitive methods more.

(all copyright of these images are owned by the Sheffield Archive, with non Commercial use.)

New flex! I got to volunteer with The Wildlife Trust.

W/ a combination of on-site surveying, historical maps and some literature. We re-examined the distributions of ancient forests within and around sheffield. For classification. I learnt a lot about history which I didn't expect.

I see a lot of people with a range of cool interests and disciplines, I'd love to hear from people what you do or something interesting you learnt recently :)

(Also some photos of things I saw on campus)

One more thing, I think I'll show off today, but with my university, we went to skipsea to look at sediment stratigraphy from glacial deposits. But there was also a lake bed from the holocene and there were woodchips with bever bite marks as well as previously there had been bever hair.

I thought I might as well show off some cool things I got to do lately:

I went sphagnum moss plug planting to help with peatbog restoration and saw some beautiful landscapes. Sphagnum moss is also just really cool!