Introduction: My investigation looks into how environmental characteristics change with an increase in altitude along a 750m transect of Dumyat.
Dumyat is the frontier hill of the Ochill range, which lies on the north side of the fourth valley, approximately 3.5 miles north east of Stirling. It was formed from the build up of layers of basalt, ash and volcanic mud from the Lower Devonian period, some 410 million years ago. Dumyat is also composed of Andesite, a dark grey igneous rock. The distinctive south facing cliff, known as a scarp was formed when movement in the Ochill fault line caused land to the north to move upwards and land to the south to slip downwards. The Ochill fault is no longer visible today due to it being covered with top soil and glacial moraine. The formation of the scarp exposed areas of hard and soft rock. Millions of years later glaciers moved through the the Fourth Valley, in doing so they eroded the soft rock (e.g. Red Sandstone) by plucking, abrasion and freeze-thaw. Plucking is when the glacier freezes onto rocks on the sides and base, before pulling them out, creating moraine that will later be deposited. Abrasion occurs …show more content…
At site 1 the infiltration rate was 10 minutes, it then dropped to 56 seconds at site 4 before rising slightly at site 6 and 7 and dropping back down at site 8 to 25 seconds. The reason infiltration rate decreases as the altitude increases is due to the saturation of the soil. Ground shaded by trees has more water in it, because very little sunlight can reach it, meaning almost no evaporation happens, thus increasing the water content in the soil. Ground out in the open is exposed to sunlight almost all day, as a result of this more evaporation happens, reducing the water content significantly. The reduction in water content means it is easier for the soil to gain water, reducing the infiltration