Coring recce in the field

I had been thinking about where to core during our upcoming field trip. I had decided on two locations where the School had cored before; either during earlier episodes of the same fieldwork, or with a master’s student. So I had coordinates ready. Then what I would need was a GPS to navigate to these locations. But Martin told me that the parallel activity on the same day also needed the GPS. And he suggested we might just mark my intended core locations with simple wooden stakes before the field trip. That sounded like a good idea!

He was going to try to combine it with getting the keys to the gate of the woodland we have to get through to get to the estuary, and the keys to our headquarters. He picked me up in the morning in his Landrover, and we first drove to the main gate, without an appointment. But it was manned, and the lady was happy to give him these keys. Success! We then drove, again without appointment, to our headquarters for the week. There it turned out the lady who had a key for him would be there in some 10 minutes. Which suited me fine; I had coffee in my bag, and cake for 2. So we just had a snack break.

With all keys sorted we drove to the gate. This was actually open, but guarded by a man who did not want to say what his business was. Martin knew anyway; there was filming going on. But we were there with permission so we could proceed. And Martin managed to drive his Landie all the way to where I hoped he would be able to park up. It's only a path, but his car can do it! 

The GPS made fairly light work of finding the first location. I had also brought a gauge and an auger to check whether there was indeed anything going on in the subsurface. And there was! So Martin hammered in the stake, and that was one location done. I made sure to take pictures so I would be able to navigate back to it without technological help.

Martin surveying in our stake

The second location was even easier. This was going well! And soon we could carry the GPS, gauge and auger back to the car. We were back at the office before lunchtime. Not bad!

Martin deciding to hammer the stake in with a gauge rather than the mallet

We have quite streamlined the coring day by taking the navigation out of it. That will be good, because we will have a lot of students in the field, and that might mean things take more time than usual. But this way I think we will be fine on the day!