Back in the summer, I wrote a blog post about summer in the pavements and what group members have been busy doing so I thought that it would be nice to have a similar autumn update. While fieldwork is becoming less intensive for most of us, we are still very busy.

Claire is the team member who has still been doing the most fieldwork. She has needed to get extensive permissions in place for her soil sampling, and with permissions still trickling through, she has been out collecting samples to analyse for fungal DNA. I have also been out in the field but not nearly so much; unfortunately, the start of teaching in the university has taken up quite a lot of my time. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have an excuse to get outside and move the fences at our grazing experiment earlier this month. It has been really challenging managing the grazing experiment this year. The very hot, dry summer we have had meant that we could not get sheep onto the field with our experiment in until the weather was a bit wetter, so they didn’t go up there until they were due to finish grazing. Nevertheless, we were able to get them up there for a month during the second half of September and the first half of October. It was great to see the big difference between the grazed and ungrazed areas. Grazing so late isn’t ideal for the experiment, but animal welfare is obviously a priority. The farmers moved the grazing exclosures for me last week and are ready for when we can get winter grazing up there.

Ezra has been out collecting litter bags from grikes. He is examining these to understand the decomposition and the organisms that live in the grikes, undertaking this ecosystem function. Sian and Katherine have also been really busy, in this case in the office while Sian completes writing up her Master's by Research and Katherine continues to seek funding to support the partnership.

Looking ahead, the winter is usually quieter and a chance for us all to catch up in the office and the lab. I am sure that will be the case this year too, but we always hope for a few sunny days spent out on the pavements. We are also going to be busy planning exciting new experiments, so there is lots to look forward to.

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