Preparation Work for Dunwich 2
Questions
Based upon your studies of Dunwich, you need to come up with a question for each of the topics studied in the three sites on fieldwork day:
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Threats from the sea - the beach and cliff area
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Threats from tourism - the area around the Coastguard Cottages
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Management of the heathland
task:
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Start with The beach and cliffs.
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Write out the questions you have chosen.
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Explain what information you will need to investigate each question.
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Explain how you will obtain that information. This will include a brief description of the equipment you will use and how you will record your data.
The beach and cliffs
advice
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Write out one of your questions: these are just ideas that we are going to investigate on fieldwork day. One could be; 'Are the cliffs at Dunwich Heath are being eroded by a number of forces, not only the sea'.
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Describe what you are going to do to investigate this question - which is to sketch a cross-section of the cliffs (judging it to a scale printed on your record sheet) and label the features you can see; take a photo of the cliffs full-on, label the processes you observe and the features you see. This will be in response to a talk by the teacher.
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Describe what equipment you will use and how to use it ... in this case it's only a clipboard!
Now move on to the beach and longshore drift!
A suitable question for the beach here might be 'Has the beach has been formed more by longshore drift than the cliffs behind'.
We will survey the beach, and record data on a form called a Profile Log. Later the cross-section will be drawn up and labels applied to the features of the beach we can identify. It is important to note the beach material (sand and shingle) as the beach is surveyed. This can be used to help us understand the beach, and the processes at work upon it.
The use of the pantometer; describe the instrument, sketch and label it, annotate a photograph (obtained from last year's field photos) and then put in your beach data and graph the results.
Graphs should have axes labelled, a title and features on the section labelled. Every graph should have a short paragraph describing what the graph shows.
longshore drift
If there are waves on fieldwork day, they are likely to strike the beach at an angle, and it should be possible to see if longshore drift is active here, and in which direction it is operating. 'Longshore drift is operating at Dunwich from north to south' might be a suitable hypothesis.
Some beach material, of various sizes, have been painted, and will be put into the swash zone next to a surveying pole. at short intervals of time the position of the stones needs to be noted, or plotted. At Dunwich it is known that beach material is taken offshore quickly, so much of the material will disappear fast!
Tourist pressures on Dunwich Heath
this section of the day will deal with tourist pressures at the site. A question might involve asking 'Is there any evidence at Dunwich Heath of tourism'
An A3 sized map of Dunwich Heath has been provided. It has been drawn to a scale of 1:1250, which is a standard scale for detailed mapping. the map has been sketched from the Suffolk CD photograph. On this map can be plotted items which show that either tourists are catered for at Dunwich Heath, or that they may cause damage or wear-and-tear on the environment.
One item of wear-and-tear that will be measured are the footpaths, in selected locations. You can see for yourselves if and where there is a suitable site. The hypothesis could be as simple as 'Footpaths show signs of erosion'. The method for surveying the footpaths will be to take a cross-section, using a long pole across the path; then taking measurements down to the ground surface every 20 centimetres. From these measurements a cross-section can be drawn, and the vegetation encountered plotted on. A number of such surveys could be put together by groups sharing information over the internet - like this item!
Management of Dunwich Heath
Mr Armstrong will take the group to about 10 locations and will be asking questions about the vegetation cover and how it has been managed. Perhaps the key questions here are ' What are the aims of the management of heathland at Dunwich, and have they been met? or simply 'Is heathland management at Dunwich effective?' This session will be clipboard and note-taking, with the results plotted and annotated onto a base map.