I Support the Seven Principles of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education! You Should Too!



Friday, September 24, 2010

Rivers Test and Avon




We spent a couple of days in Southeastern England exploring the Rivers Test and Avon made famous by Izaak Walton and others. Heading on the Salisbury Plain which is also the home of Stonehenge (did a Griswold on that site), these are beautiful and very productive streams albeit very inaccessible to anglers who don't have lots of money. The difference between chalkstreams whose chemistries are affected by the limestone lithology and the freestone streams of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Northern England is very apparent (see the large resident brown trout in the aquatic veg - Ranunculus? - in River Test photo above). Dave will be doing some more research on the centuries long maintenance of the fisheries here, and current programs to improve water quality in the Southampton region which is home to some of the most industrialized agriculture we've seen since leaving the US.




In Paris now and looking at the canals that link the Seine and Marne Rivers, I'm thinking that it is going to be very interesting to try to make sense of how these historic yet seemingly unnecessary hydrologic features affect riverine ecology today, and how this might change in light of the EU's Water Framework Directive, Biodiversity policies, and French landscape management policies. I'm just beginning to study some French vocabulary to prepare for research to be conducted further down the road in Burgundy, Lyon, and the Pyrennees.




More later, au revoir!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Rivers of Scotland






We spent some two weeks exploring Scotland - Loch Lomond NP, the Western Highlands and Glencoe, Loch Ness and Inverness, and the Cairngorms NP in which the Rivers Spey and Dee head. Travelled part of the whiskey trail, sampled some and some Haggis (good stuff w/ neeps and tatties - and an ale of course), and explored the Aberdeen area quite thoroughly including the coast south of there. Also injured our rental car by adding 1/4 tank of unleaded to it (it was supposed to have diesel only!) and now have a different one that runs on unleaded. From all that I talked to, it's a pretty common and easily remedied mistake that results from diesels dominating the roadways and both types of fuel on the same pump (you can put an unleaded pump in the diesel, but not the other way around). Should only set us back a couple of hundred pounds (about $300). Now we can fill the car and the stove fuel tanks together (figure we're getting about only 30 mpg from the stove - that's meals per gallon!). See the photo of us waiting for a cab back to our camp after the car was towed away.

Scottish salmon rivers are legendary and still hightly touted by the Scottish National Government's tourism division owing to their economic importance (probably second to golf, which of course follows oil and gas from the North Sea). The salmon still run but the trend seems to be downward over the last couple of years according to what I heard from various people. Challenges are many - agriculture, water abstraction (diversion) for hydro, whiskey distilling, and municipal uses), salmon farming in the near shore environment, predators, etc. There also appears to be a serious need for more progressive riparian managment, especially for LWD recruitment (and restoration), but the town and country planning approach employed in the UK has protected the rivers from rampant development we see in Montana.


The district salmon fishery boards (DSFBs) are the main bodies for fisheries managemment involving both riparians and angling associations in their activities (include hatchery programs, habitat work, monitoring, establishment of angling rules, etc.), but there are some noteworthy basin management programs and approaches that are underway such as the Dee Catchment Partnership's "Catchment Management Plan" (still have to finish downloading and digesting this!) and the Scottish Govt's implementation of the EU's Water Framework Directive.


The photo of the anglers' hut and the river with the bridge is from the Spey, and the other with the angler casing is on the Dee. We didn't get to fish after all given our schedule and the expense (about $60.00 US per day for even low quality pools/water - and that's a low budget rate apparently). Hope to make up for that elsewhere.


We are now in Wales again on our way south to Southampton and the legendary English chalkstreams (Rivers Avon, Test, and Itchen) to see what's going on there. Our stop in Wales was to see Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, and the Dr. Who exhibit here (they film it and Torchwood here).

Until later, Cheers!