Geography Investigations at Rhyd-y-Creuau
On Friday 17 June the Year 12 Geography students embarked on a six hour bus ride to Wales where they stayed at the Rhyd-y-Creuau field Studies Centre.
Mrs Clifford, Geography Teacher gave us an insight into their activities and learning;
Saturday
Saturday was our first day doing fieldwork in Wales and we headed to Morfa Harlech National Nature Reserve which was our classroom for the day. It was lovely weather as we collected our data, although poor Scott did get a little sunburnt on his arms.
While on the sand dunes, the students measured plant diversity and density over the succession of a sand dune to see how the types of plants were different at the start of the dune on the beach to the climatic climax near the coniferous forest at the back of the sand dune. They collected the soil’s pH, soil humidity, wind speed and learnt how to use GIS (Geographical Information Systems) to log the locations they visited, which allowed them to produce a located bar graph on Google Earth of the different plant types at the nine sites we visited.
In the evening the students practised writing up methodologies, presenting their data and worked in the geography lab to test the soil they brought back to work out its pH to see how it changed from the beach to the forest.
Sunday
Sunday was a little wetter as we headed to Criccieth Beach to examine the types of beach management and to produce a beach profile. While at Criccieth there was time to get a hot chocolate and a waffle as a treat for their hard work. Unfortunately it was so wet that after a couple of hours we headed back to the centre to warm up and do some lesson work. Back in the classroom the students went through the different stages of an investigation and completed a statistical test with the data collected from previous years.
Monday
On Monday we went into the mountains in Snowdonia and climbed the beautiful landscape. Here, the students used map work and their Cold Environment knowledge to identify glacial features. While up in the mountains they did a small role play to go over how u-shaped valleys are formed. At 1pm we left the Field Studies Centre to return to the school, looking forward to a good night’s sleep!
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