Scottish Natural Heritage Archive Report No. 060 Site dossier for bryological interest – Gannochy Gorge SSSI ARCHIVE REPORT Archive Report No. 060 Site dossier for bryological interest – Gannochy Gorge SSSI For further information on this report please contact: David Genney Scottish Natural Heritage Great Glen House Leachkin Road INVERNESS IV3 8NW Telephone: 01463 725253 E-mail: [email protected] This report should be quoted as: Hodgetts, N.G. 2006. Site dossier for bryological interest – Gannochy Gorge SSSI. Scottish Natural Heritage Archive Report No. 060. This report, or any part of it, should not be reproduced without the permission of Scottish Natural Heritage. This permission will not be withheld unreasonably. The views expressed by the author(s) of this report should not be taken as the views and policies of Scottish Natural Heritage. © Scottish Natural Heritage 2019. Archive Reports Scottish Natural Heritage is committed to making the findings of all of its research publicly available whenever possible. In the past, a number of reports from staff and contractors were produced as paper documents and lodged in the SNH library or file systems. Some related to Site Condition Monitoring, others covered a range of subjects. These were not published as Research Reports for a number of reasons. In order to make these reports more available, we have decided to publish them online under the series title of Archive Reports. These will be numbered consecutively in the order that they are prepared for web publication. Their publication date, authors and title will be recorded as presented in the original report. The Archive Reports will be published as scanned PDF files of the original reports. They have not been subject to any new editing, formatting or other changes, other than the cover, title page and this page. Many of the reports published as Archive Reports were produced by contractors and were originally intended as internal documents to inform our policy and advice. As a result they may contain historical information that is no longer current or accurate, and may contain views of contractors or staff which do not represent the current views and policy of SNH. Many of the reports published as Archive Reports were produced by contractors and were originally intended as internal documents to inform our policy and advice. As a result they may contain historical information that is no longer current or accurate, and may contain views of contractors or staff which do not represent the current views and policy of SNH. This report was commissioned by SNH as part of the Site Condition Monitoring (SCM) programme to assess the condition of special features (habitats, species populations or earth science interests) on protected areas in Scotland (Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas and Ramsar). Site Condition Monitoring is SNH’s rolling programme to monitor the condition of special features on protected areas, their management and wider environmental factors which contribute to their condition. The views expressed in the report are those of the contractor concerned and have been used by SNH staff to inform the condition assessment for the individual special features. Where the report recommends a particular condition for an individual feature, this is taken into account in the assessment process, but may not be the final condition assessment of the feature. Wider factors, which would not necessarily be known to the contractor at the time of the monitoring, are taken into consideration by SNH staff in making final condition assessments. Access permission was obtained from all those owning and managing the site. Site Condition Monitoring dossier for bryological interest – Gannochy Gorge SSSI Introduction Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) are designated on the basis of notified features of interest. These include habitats, species or geological features. Site Condition Monitoring (SCM) is a six year programme of assessment of the state of all notified features of interest on designated sites. Reporting is based on feature types and will be to common standards across the four UK country conservation agencies. This project addresses bryophyte monitoring on sites in Scotland, and covers all Scottish SSSIs where bryophytes are a notified feature. Gannochy Gorge comprises a short stretch of the River North Esk from the Rocks of Solitude to just south of the gorge, straddling the Highland Boundary Fault. It is of particular importance for bryophytes and is also of high geological interest. The geology in the lower part of the site is Old Red Sandstone, including alluvial sandstones and conglomerates, while the upper part, on the other side of the Highland Boundary Fault, is of calcareous Dalradian schist. The site is also important for lichens and invertebrates. The known biological interest at the time of notification is described on the citation (Appendix 1). The site occupies 46 ha at altitudes between ca. 50 m and ca. 100 m, at grid reference NO595715 (site centroid), on the border between Watsonian vice-counties 90, Angus, and 91, Kincardineshire. Known bryophyte interest Gannochy Gorge was known to Ursula Duncan (Duncan 1960, 1966), and was visited by her and Jean Paton in 1965, when Scapania praetervisa (originally reported as S. mucronata) was found there (Paton 1966). Peter Pitkin visited the site in 1982 for the Nature Conservancy Council, and recommended notification for its bryological interest. Ben Averis produced a detailed report on the bryophyte flora of the site (Averis 1995). He reported that the site had a 'very rich' bryophyte flora, recording 167 species. In addition there are old records listed by Averis (1995) from A. Croall (1890s), Charles Gimingham (1960) and Dougal Swinscow (1963), and pre-1960 collections in Aberdeen University herbarium. The SSSI citation (Appendix 1) mentions bryophytes as follows: "The boulder-strewn river course and gorge along with its adjacent woodland and parkland, are of particular importance for mosses, liverworts and lichens." "Over 200 species of bryophyte are recorded; most grow on the damp rock ledges beside the river. They include several particularly rare species such as the liverwort Scapania praetervisa, which is known from very few British localities. Gannochy Gorge is one of the very few sites near the East Coast for several uncommon species with a strongly western distribution such as Eremonotus myriocarpus and Hypnum hamulosum." Therefore, the main bryological feature reported on is: Bryophyte assemblage, including rare species, high numbers of calcicolous species and strongly western Atlantic species. 1 Aims The aim of this exercise was to visit Gannochy Gorge SSSI and to produce a site condition monitoring dossier reporting on the condition of the notified bryological features. Features of interest and their condition were to be described in simple terms and an accurate record of their precise location is to be made in such a way that, using the dossier, a stranger to the site could relocate the features and describe their condition on subsequent monitoring visits. Methods Preparatory work consisted of collating existing data. The SNH files contain the citation, map and management statement, which includes some information on the bryophytes. They also contain a report on the bryophyte flora by Averis (1995), a shorter report on a site visit in 1982 by Peter Pitkin and a copy of the short note on Scapania praetervisa in the Transactions of the British Bryological Society by Paton (1966). Gannochy Gorge was visited on 18 August 2005, with about 6 hours spent on site. The SSSI citation, site map and additional data were used to relocate the features of bryological interest. 'Monitoring sites' were established at a number of points, most of which were chosen because of their bryological richness and accessibility (Fig. 1). The monitoring sites are not rigidly defined quadrats, but simply the areas shown in a series of digital photographs, in each of which the main bryological interest was identified and should be easily re-identifiable. A GPS is usually used to pinpoint monitoring sites and features of interest to a maximum accuracy of 5 m, but in the case of Gannochy Gorge the GPS did not work in the deep gorge - however, the location of sites should be obvious. Digital photography was used to identify the features of interest in more detail. Sketch maps and notes were made in the field and used, in conjunction with the SSSI maps supplied, to produce an account of the bryological interest. Although no attempt was made at a full survey, a summary list of species seen during the visit was made (see Table 1, below). All records were entered in the Recorder 2002 database. Bryophyte nomenclature follows Blockeel and Long (1998). Information on bryophyte status is taken from the latest revision of the Red List, which updates Church et al. (2001) and is published on the JNCC web site (www.jncc.gov.uk). The site score was arrived at using the Guidelines (Hodgetts 1992) in conjunction with up-to-date status lists (JNCC web site), since the lists in Hodgetts (1992) are now badly out-of-date. Frequencies in the species list are recorded on the DAFOR scale (d = dominant, a = abundant, f = frequent, o= occasional, r = rare. These are sometimes qualified with l = locally). Categories of Atlantic bryophytes follow Ratcliffe (1968), modified by Averis (1991). 2 Figure 1. Map showing position of monitoring sites sampled during site visit. 3 Survey and monitoring record General A total of 140 taxa were recorded (Table 1). Like previous surveys, recording was confined to areas that were safely accessible - much of the site is inaccessible without climbing equipment. Gannochy Gorge is clearly very rich in bryophytes. At all the places where the rock faces of the gorge are accessible, both the high level of bryophyte coverage on the rocks, and the diversity of species present, are very obvious (Figs.