Druridge Bay Region
Druridge Bay is an seven mile stretch of idyllic coastline located 30 miles North of Newcastle upon Tyne. The village of Cresswell with it's three holiday parks and luxurious ice cream shop marks the south of the bay whilst the bustling harbour and fish & chip shops of Amble mark the north of the bay. Like much of the Northumberland coastline, Druridge Bay is teeming with wildlife. Several large nature reserves as well as a high frequency of smaller temporal pools which populate the landscape attracts a vast array of migratory waterfowl and subsequently is a popular stop for birdwatchers.Hauxley Nature Reserve
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| Three of the thirty 1 m2 experimental ponds at Hauxley. Some are rich in emergent plant species such as aquatic grasses and reeds (left), some have thick algal blankets (top right), and others with dominantly submergent plants (bottom right) |
Located at the northern end of Druridge Bay is Hauxley Nature Reserve, a former open cast coal mine which was landscaped in to a lake. While the lake itself is an extremely diverse system, it is the discrete field at the entrance of the site which is of special interest to us. The field is home to thirty 1 m2 experimental ponds dug out in 1994 by Mike J. for the purpose of studying the development of animal and plant communities, something which turned out to be markedly different across the site (visit Mike's blog where the Hauxley experimental ponds feature frequently).
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| Collection of sediment cores. Scott monitoring conductivity levels. |
After 20 years of monitoring how the ecological communities respond to annual climatic variances, primarily seasonal wetting and drying, the ponds now resemble a sort of time machine. Just as the individual pond ecologies vary greatly across the site, so too do the levels of organic carbon within their sediments, an extremely interesting puzzle considering they are all the same age, in the same field, and have been exposed to exactly the same conditions throughout their lives.
Blakemoor Farm & surrounding region
Blakemoor Farm owns the majority of the fields at the southern end of Druridge Bay, an area of land which overlays several abandoned coal seams that have flooded, collapsed and created depressions across the landscape. These depressions naturally act as drainage sinks and subsequently the area has become populated with one of the highest densities of ponds in the UK.
