Rock happy

In a bit more rummaging (see last week) I came upon a shelf that was home to a small pile of fossils and rocks with a dusty little cabinet of geological samples. The picture shows one of the drawers. A few are labelled but most are not. However, there is a fascinating variety of rocks of all kinds – another curating job for my list!

This set me thinking that ecologists all too often forget about, or at least pay insufficient attention to, the geology of the sites they survey and manage, yet the underlying rocks dictate so much about what grows above them or directly on them. Their chemistry and pH, microbiology, porosity, density, and other physical characteristics are all vitally important to the roots and stability of the vegetation.

We all think about Sites of Special Scientific Interest but we tend to consider them in terms of the plants and animals recorded there and forget that we have many geological SSSIs in Britain. Over the years, Betts Ecology have been involved with several geological sites, often former quarries where there are exposures to be conserved. Indeed, when we survey any site, geological interest is on our checklist of attributes not to be forgotten.

Returning to my specimen cabinet, I have added a sample myself from near our Martley office (my second photograph). This is from the “Martley Pit” or “Martley Rock” as it is also known. This exposure has some very special geology where pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, carboniferous and Triassic deposits can be seen at a location where the East Malvern fault runs through the site.