The geomorphology of mid Wales only a click away!

Hywel Griffiths from Aberystwyth University reflects on the process of creating virtual landscape tours of mid Wales during a BSG-funded project.

During the covid-19 pandemic, digital resources quickly became even more essential for geoscience teaching, particularly as travel restrictions impacted on traditional field teaching activities.  Excellent digital resources had been developed before the pandemic of course, including the excellent Antarctic Glaciers and VR Glaciers but the determination to provide students with an experience of fieldwork, rapid developments in technology, and a recognition of the benefits for accessibility and inclusivity, led to the development of a range of resources on a variety of digital platforms. In 2021, funded by a special ‘Digital Resources’ call for the BSG’s Education and Outreach grant, a team from Aberystwyth University (Hywel Griffiths, Tris Irvine-Fynn, Stephen Tooth, Marie Busfield and Dewi Roberts) and Sheffield Hallam University (Jonathan Bridge and Naomi Holmes) set out to develop a set of virtual tours of six special landscapes in mid Wales, with the aim of inspiring interest among the general public about geomorphology. The project coincided with the National Eisteddfod of Wales occurring in Tregaron, located in the heart of the Cambrian Mountains, and the project collaborated with the Eisteddfod from inception with a view to developing a display for the weeklong festival of Welsh culture.

Over the summer of 2021 we collected images spheres using GoPro 360 cameras at three sites – Cwm-du, a large postglacial landslide deposit, the Grogwynion reach of the Afon Ystwyth and Tanybwlch beach, gravel ridge and shore platform at Aberystwyth. We also researched and wrote content reflecting both the scientific, geomorphological interests at the sites and the links between geomorphology and history, culture and society and stitched them together into tours using the Seekbeak platform. The continuing restrictions meant that the 2021 Eisteddfod was a digital festival only, and the three tours were made available via the Eisteddfod’s website and social media.

Feedback from viewers was integrated into a second round of tours created in January and February 2022 for Cors Caron bog, Devil’s Bridge waterfalls and Ynyslas coastal sand dunes. The six complete tours were displayed for the duration of the 2022 Eisteddfod festival, and presented during a talk in the festival’s science programme.  The tours were also key components of Aberystwyth University’s British Science Week activities in 2022 and 2023, the University’s activities at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show in 2022, and in various outreach and education talks and workshops. Although evaluation is ongoing, feedback received has been very positive both from members of the public as well as stakeholders such as Natural Resources Wales. The Tanybwlch tour has been viewed over 1600 times.

From a personal perspective, the process of creating the tours, particularly being ‘in the field’ with a group of like-minded experts in different aspects of geomorphology, as well as the sense of enchantment felt when researching how geomorphology intersects with history, culture and society at each site was particularly fulfilling and we hope that this is communicated in the tours. From a technical perspective, Seekbeak is very user-friendly, customisable, and intuitive, and the support provided by the company is excellent. The tours created in 2021 and 2022 are necessarily static snapshots of dynamic landscapes – each winter more gravel is transported landward at Tanybwlch, new sand dunes grow at Ynyslas, the channels at Grogwynion shift, and NRW restoration efforts at Cors Caron change the surface and sub-surface hydrology. While acknowledging that technology will no doubt change rapidly in future, we hope that the platform will allow us to potentially capture these changes over the next few years. We hope that they will encourage people to visit and enjoy these stunning locations responsibly, and learn more about how they were formed and how they are currently changing. We also hope that the tours will enable those who may not be able to physically visit the sites for a variety of reasons to experience a sense of the landscape.

Tour links:

Request for feedback

We would be very grateful for any further feedback on the tours – please email (hmg@aber.ac.uk) or get in touch via Twitter (@HywelGriffiths). Is there enough information, or too much? Would you like to know about any other aspects of the landscape? Do you have any technical recommendations? We are currently working on developing tours for school and college pupils specifically, including incorporating field data that can be analysed, and extending to include geographic themes more broadly, funded by the Royal Geographical Society.

We are very grateful for the support of the British Society for Geomorphology via an Outreach Grant, Aberystwyth University’s Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, the Department of Natural and Built Environment at Sheffield Hallam University and the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. We are also grateful to Natural Resources Wales and other landowners for their support.

– Hywel Griffiths, Jonathan Bridge, Marie Busfield, Naomi Holmes, Tris Irvine-Fynn, Dewi Roberts, Stephen Tooth