Welcome to the Evington Echo

OPAL Explore Nature is leading a series of five surveys nationwide, asking groups of volunteers, schools, friends and family to take part in surveys to determine the health of our natural environment.

This survey uses Lichens as the indicators of good or bad quality air. Farms that use Nitrogen rich fertilizers and cars exhaust fumes are releasing invisible pollutants into our atmosphere. By identifying where nine specific Lichens thrive in and around England, the experts can map where the best quality air is and monitor the damaging effects of these pollutants.

It was a lovely sunny day on the Sat 23 rd Jan, when I met some of the members of the Friends of Evington Park and Village Green at Evington Park House. After a cuppa and a chat about our mission, we ventured outside to start the hunt. Soon we were finding Lichens all over the place, including paths and tops of bins but we concentrated our search on broadleaved trees.

Firstly, we identified the type of tree and then measured the girth of the trunk. Using magnifiers, we then logged which of the nine Lichens we had found and how much of each covered the tree. Following that we moved onto the twigs and kept an eye out for creepy crawlies. This process was repeated on the best four different trees in Evington Park and a wonderfully good job was then completed.

Parks and Green Space Services have been organising these surveys throughout our Parks and along the riverside in the City with volunteers. The Air survey is the second of five experiments that are running through to 2011.

The results of this and other surveys across Leicester where then submitted to the OPAL website and these will help the experts to understand the impact of invisible pollutants in our City and Nationwide. They suggest that the northeastern side of Leicester has more Nitrogen sensitive lichens present from the trees we have surveyed and all the trees displayed Nitrogen loving lichens, which suggests that the North Eastern side of Leicester has better air quality.

The first tests for clarity of water using a round 'Opalmeter'. This is done by sinking the paper disc into the bottom of a drinks bottle, filling it with pond water, then viewing through the bottle using the funnel, count the number of Opal logos, all of which have been printed in specific colours especially to enable the tester to determine the colour of the water, hence the quality. Very scientific!

The third is a sweep of the pond to look at the pond life, then score the pond rating as to which species have been found.

All the results are then downloaded onto the website and the information goes to scientists at the Natural History Museum in London and also;

A national survey of lakes, ponds and pools in England providing useful new data using aquatic invertebrates as indicators of pond health

Information on the distribution of aquatic invertebrate classes. Focus on small and urban ponds not usually surveyed
Assess invertebrate class distributions with respect to (a) simple measures of water quality, (b) indicators of pollution (c) site characteristics
Contribute to knowledge of dragonfly and damselfly species distribution for a new BDS Atlas
Contribute to knowledge of invasive (and other) duckweed species distribution (with BSBI)
A national survey of trace metals in lake and pond sediments (with BGS)
Identify potential new BAP Priority Habitat Ponds

I would like to say a big thank you to all who attended on both dates and I look forward to the next surveys with interest.