THE MEADOWS
The project is concerned with a series of mesotrophic meadows in a Local Nature Reserve in Mid Sussex which is owned and managed by the District Council. The meadows to the NE of Big Wood, in the centre of the site, formed part of the open grazing land of Valebridge Common until enclosure in 1828, while there is evidence that those to the SW of Big Wood were carved out of the surrounding woodland at least 500 years ago - see Figure 1 below:
Figure 1
An initial vegetation survey in the summer of 1996 showed considerable
differences in floristic composition between the fields which may
relate to this history, although they all fell within the broad NVC
classification of MG5a grassland. Over the last 100 years the landscape
has changed little - See Figure 2 below:
Figure 2
Some of the fields were arable as recently as 20 years ago, but they
have all been grass with an annual hay cut for at least the last 10
years and are reasonably species rich. See Figure 3 below:
Figure 3
Meadow G5 and G2 were selected for the experiment as TWINSPAN analysis of the 174 quadrats in the 96 survey showed them be the the most uniform meadows .