Water of Dye restoration: summer 2026 fieldwork

A very packed week working in the Water of Dye restoration project, we were out checking the equipment we installed last year was firstly still there (pretty exteme flooding last winter!) and that they were recording data. Thankfully everything was still there and there is some really interesting timeseries data. Water temperature, for instance, ranged from around 0°C to almost 25°C. Hopefully, as restoration interventions and riparian planting mature, this will help bring down the upper end of that range. We also installed some fixed-point photography posts, so people can submit their own photos to help track the catchment’s restoration over time. Vegetation surveys and root minirhizotron images were collected to track changes in plant communities pre and post interventions.

This gives us a valuable baseline dataset ahead of the restoration interventions planned to go in later this year.

Apart from the midges and ticks doing their worst, it was a fun week and just good to be outside! Looking forward to seeing how the landscape responds to the planned interventions…