First Meeting and Visit to the Sandpits

At the end of February, we visited our chosen location, sandpits near the town of Suchdol nad Lužnicí, for the first time. We met with the management of Cep I. and Cep II. sandpits, with the national QLA coordinator Ms. Kamila Botková and with the representatives of AOPK (czech nature and landscape protection agency) Mr. Jiří Neudert and Ms. Hana Chobotská. After a short organizational meeting with them, we went on a tour of the sandpits, during which we got acquainted with our future research areas. We were told about the overal management of the locality, about where new trees are being planted, where soil overburden removal is going to be done a lot of useful information. We looked carefully at the terrain and thought about where to mark out the research plots to cover a wide variety of habitats as efficiently as possible.

To get a more complex picture, we also went to see the Tušť sandpits, even though we aren´t planning to include them in our project.

Although spring was just around the corner, we still got the chance to say our goodbyes to the last snowflakes that appeared above the turquoise waters of the frozen lakes, where a promise of high biodiversity worth exploring awaited us.