Falling Short of the Park

Recently the South Downs in Southern England became a National Park, granting the region a boost to tourism, altered planning regulations and plenty of new signs (amongst other things). The new national park has a website, designed to both attract visitors and give local people more information about, what is in essence their local authority.

http://www.southdowns.gov.uk

The National Park Authority

Geologically, the South Downs National Park are an area of Chalk, Early Cretaceous clays and sandstones folded by the Wealden anticline during the Cenezoic. The actual ‘downs’ themselves are the remains of the chalk cover that once stretched across the Weald to just south of London. So, what does the website (and therefore we can assume most of the paperwork) from Britain’s newest National Park have to say about the rocks?

Well firstly, where is Geology on the site? Logically it would be accessible under Learning, which it is, but within that subsection it is hidden under the unexciting ‘Themes to Study’ – not exactly going to entice too many people into the regions geology. The site blurts on about the beautiful landscape – but seems to hide the factors behind the landscapes formation.

‘To really appreciate the South Downs landscape you need to understand how it was formed.’ South Downs National Park Site

Apparently, Most of the rocks that make up the South Downs were formed 120 million years ago – which is odd as Seaford Head, a promontory within the chalk is in fact the stratigraphic boundary between the Santonian and Campanian - 83 million years ago. While stratigraphically the lowest rocks in the new National Park, the Wealden Clay are considered post-Tithonian/pre W Aptian in age or for those without beards, 151-125Ma. In fact only the Lower Greensand and Weald Clay are the only rocks in the park’s boundaries that could be considered to have for. The site’s very own stratigraphic column even places  only the lower units around the 120 Ma mark!

Coast of the National Park - an iconic image

Moving on from the bigger picture, what about the individual units... as something that actually got me into geology in the first place. Flints...

‘Flint was formed from the skeletons of minute animals, such as radiolarians, that floated around in those ancient seas.’

Firstly, very few people know what a ‘radiolarian’ is, I’ve touched upon this within the GSL Q&A page; ‘remains of tiny creatures’ would have been better. Secondly, there is a lot of debate as to the generation of flint –it took me a good few minutes to track down a digestible paper – which indicates that the flint was formed via microbacterial activity. Surely it is more exciting to the reader to just be honest, say you don’t know, or give a couple of theories (wherever they may be hiding)

‘20 million years – The Alpine Storm’

Maybe the first time orogenic activity has been viewed as a ‘storm’ – a completely useless term – meaning too many other things (weather, political etc) to be of use to anyone! The document goes onto place the Himalayas as being due to the Africa’s convergence with Eurasia. It then gets the order of diagenesis wrong (anticline formed THEN diagenesis – which is absurd – brittle faulting, was in action during the uplift).

What does this site say then, about geoscience communication? Firstly, it is difficult to get to, a casual observer wandering round the site is unlikely stumble upon the page on geology; and when they do information is not correct. The geology of the area is fascinating enough, without the need for incorrect data. 

Slow News Day

The BBC recently ran a story in how the Lonely Planet has been a little nasty to the delightful Devonian city of Plymouth, naturally as someone who has reasonable ties to the city I had a quick read of the article and then set upon reading the actually Lonely Planet entry – I have a strange thing about reading guide book entries for places I know rather well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/devon/hi/people_and_places/newsid_9373000/9373118.stm

It turns out that the BBC has been a little misleading on two counts,

Firstly news tends to be ‘new’ it’s kind of in the name, well this edition of the book is available on GoogleBooks (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tqpP0B-Hg7IC&lpg=PA196&dq) and does have an informative section on Plymouth which matches the text in the article; interestingly though this book has been out for three  years  (published in Feb 2008) and is duplicated in the Great Britain book (published 2009) , yet its cutting comments on Plymouth’s significant but at times God-awful architecture have been sitting about for three years... yet only make news on the 25^th of January 2011.

Secondary it subscribes to the Daily Mail manner of producing stories; that is ‘focus on the bit you want to bring across and only slightly mention any other aspect, oh and get something basic wrong’, it performs the later by successfully getting the wrong page number (it says 162, while in reality its page 196) while the former it delves into by essentially it indicating that Lonely Planet states that Plymouth is a bit of a dive but Exeter and Torquay are alright.

Well actually the only the negative text in the Lonely planet passage has been successfully mined out by the BBC, the rest of the article tends to be fairly nice, describing Plymouth’s history, wide range of attractions, bars and restaurants with the usual good flair – with a much larger slot that the more traditionally touristy Torquay and Exeter, besides , other than shopping and a day wandering round the compact barbican looking all historical– there aren’t many reasons for tourists to voyage to Plymouth.

So, this blog is roughly about geoscience; and its communication... what does the Lonely Plant describing Plymouth 3 years ago as grimy have to do with anything? Simple, the article was published not nationally, but in the local section, it’s audience was people from Plymouth or South Devon who may have strong feelings about the tourism knock-on effects of a poor write up, and travel guides are similar to scientific papers, they are an evidence based opinion, fieldwork has been conducted (the authors heading out and researching), it has been subject to peer review (has to be good quality or the ‘Rough Guide’ will sell more) and its audience is seeking knowledge and willing to gamble holiday time and money on it – the fact that the BBC felt it newsworthy to publish a three year old story on not a great deal of controversy points to how science can be reported; when a slow news day comes about, an old story, designed to generate aggravated feelings can be pumped out to generate emotions or concerns– something we’ve seen once or twice before