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@medievalslimes / medievalslimes.tumblr.com

Let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry
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furbyphobia
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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys
Anonymous asked:

You mentioned years ago that you once worked on a project restoring former coal mine land, trying to get plants to grow and break up the compacted soil and so on. Do you know how the site is doing now? I hope you don’t mind me asking, but it sounds like a very cool project and I would love to know if it worked!

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys answered:

Oh, extremely well! The trees are about a third of the height they should be for their age, but there's a little woodland there now. This year my uni is taking over the lease for the site, so investigations continue. We got a lot of papers out of it. Plus, we proved that if you get the trees to grow in, you increase other biodiversity, like birds and earthworms and small mammals and lizards (the place is alive with lizards every summer, actually. Sometimes they sit on your bag.)

The main project site is here, if you want a gander.

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

Progress photos, though! First, for clarity's sake:

That's the layout of the site from this vantage point. This photo is from August 1998, and I've labelled it so you can see the sections more clearly. We planted in the blue and white sections, blue first in the 1990s and then white in the mid-2000s onwards. The orange bit is just to show how there really are just bare heaps in these places, still; BUT, the whole site is made of the stuff, with a grass seed cover.

Anyway, the development:

You would be amazed at the lichens that turn up, too. And the butterflies. And the fungi. One of my students is doing her dissertation up there on mycoremediation, in fact. Fantastic place.

#wow!!!
cemeterys
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nocnitsa

“Drei Hasen und der Ohren drei und doch hat Keiner mehr als Zwei.“ (Alsace)

“Three hares, and three ears, and yet no one has more than two.”