News

CATS Cambridge field trip to the North Norfolk coast

Дата статьи : 2010/06/16 | Вернуться к новостям

Students on the CATS Cambridge Geography and Biology courses have visited the North Norfolk coast to practise a variety of sampling and surveying techniques.

Janet Holden, Deputy Head of Biology at CATS Cambridge, writes:

Field work is a very important part of the study of Geography and Biology and so students from both courses on a one day field trip to the Norfolk coast. Norfolk is the most easterly county in the UK and is a low lying agricultural area bounded by the North Sea, with the all important sand dunes protecting the inland from flooding.

The aim of the day was to carry out an ecological survey of the dunes using as many sampling techniques as possible and to observe coastal defences (put in place to protect the coast line from the ravages of storms and sea level rise due to climate change).

It was a wild and windy day! We had great fun battling the elements and collected as much data as we could before the wind drove us inland to the Nature sanctuary and Hickling Broad. A Broad is a wet land, a type of habitat facing threat all over Europe from drainage and agriculture. We saw a great deal of interesting things including the caterpillars of the rare swallowtail butterfly.

This field trip will be a regular feature of both courses in the years to come.