Dear Colleagues
I am now able to report progress with arrangements in preparation for the visit of the IUGS Subcommission on Carboniferous Stratigraphy to stratotypes in N England (09 - 13 October 2015). YGS members will be aware that the designated stratotypes all fall within SSSIs, although not all are specifically Earth Heritage SSSIs. It has been necessary to arrange consents with Natural England and individual landowners for site clearing, preparation and mark-up on five sites and for the visit, access and controlled collecting on all sites. With the assistance of the relevant Natural England officers I can now report that all sites now have, more or less, all necessary consents in place.
Five sites require significant clean-up and site preparation: (in stratigraphically ascending order)
1) Pendleian stratotype- Light Clough, Wiswell Moor Side, Clitheroe, Lancashire;
2) Chokierian stratotype- Stonehead Beck, near Cowling, North Yorkshire
3) Alportian stratotype- Blake Brook, Shawfield, near Longnor, Staffordshire
4) Kinderscoutian stratotype- River Darwen section, Samlesbury Bottoms, near Preston, Lancashire
5) Marsdenian stratotype- Park Clough, Hey Green, Marsden, West Yorkshire
As part of the consent arrangements the Society has undertaken to inform the relevant Natural England officer and landowner when any site preparation work will take place and to ensure that such site preparation (and any subsequent collecting) is undertaken within the guidelines and locations consented specifically for each site. A number of affiliated and/or local groups have already offered assistance for the preparation of a number of these sites, although the working days have not yet been determined. However, this is an opportunity for any of the membership to offer assistance in the preparation, mark-up and logging of any of the individual sites. Offers of assistance from any of the membership will be appreciated and where possible such offers will be accommodated within the agreed working days for each site. Prior knowledge of the site or of this part of the geological succession is not necessary- much of the work will be vegetation and soil clearing; hopefully members with specialist knowledge will be on hand to provide orientation on each section. Site work will take place variously on weekends and weekdays from the week beginning 24 August through to week-ending 03 October.
Members wishing to take part in this activity are invited to contact me by e-mail and telephone; please specify the site or sites on which you can assist, also indicate availability on weekdays or weekends and any limitations on available dates.
Documentation on some of the sites is sparse. While some sites had been identified and described in more or less detail previously, the generally accepted point of reference in which the specific stratotype sections were designated was in the Field Excursion Guide, prepared under the editorship of W.H.C.Ramsbottom in 1981, for the visit of the IUGS Subcommission on Carboniferous Stratigraphy to Leeds in that year. This document was not published officially, and has been difficult to obtain through normal library sources. A number of Society members have been generous to locate and to provide more or less clean and legible copies of this document. This document may now be downloaded through the Society website-
http://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/Stratotypes/Ramsbottom1981.pdf
Members of the Society will be welcome to join the site visits organised for the October visit of the IUGS-SCCS. The visit programme will be specified in the next issue of the Society Circular and will be circulated through this membership mailing list.
With best wishes
John Knight
(President, Yorkshire Geological Society)
tels. 01773 836253; 07825 428750
e-mails- [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
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