Presently, a minimum level of remedial and restoration work is being carried out on site by the industrial partners. In general, UK planning conditions impose a minimal standard of residual management on current industrial activities but many industrial sites also carry an inherited problem from earlier or even historic industrial periods. These historic wastelands often require and justify some public investment. The essence of this project is to bridge the gap between this minimum standard of environmental attainment and the targets to which 'best practice' might aspire using EU environmental directives, EMAS, Agenda 21, and the principles of sustainable development. Some of these concepts can be implemented using EU CORINE habitat classification and its UK equivalent, the National Vegetation Classification (NVC), as a specification guide to habitat character.

The proposed reclamation of Penrhyn Quarry has been controversial in that public concern has been raised about the loss of local industrial heritage associated with the Penrhyn site. Whilst the continuation of quarrying at the site is crucial to the economy of this high unemployment area, through the maintenance of 200 jobs, there are other strongly held local views about the environmental impact of the quarrying, but also the tourist industry (in which such sites can play both a positive and a negative role). On other sites, local opposition to site restoration has led to high levels of vandalism. We will therefore involve the local community (as stakeholders) in the project. Their views will be elicited through a range of participatory rural appraisal techniques using questionnaires from a stratified sample of 500 members of the local community and semi-structured interviews with key informants. This appraisal will assess overall views on the future use of the post-industrial land on the site, restoration to semi-natural vegetation specifically, (and by reference to photographs, digital simulations and plans) specific views on the desired future landscape as it can be influenced by the spatial distribution of different restoration methods throughout the site environment. The resulting complex spatial information will be incorporated into the overall restoration of the site through geographical information systems (GIS) analysis (Section 2.2.1.3 below).

Particular attention will be given to amenity and heritage aspects as part of the site development plan. The historical remains of slate workings are a source of great interest to industrial archaeologists, and are of growing interest to the general public (DOE, 1995). This will principally involve the design and development of footpaths and a series of focal points or ‘cells’. Focal points may include interpretation of heritage and community for both local and tourist use. Access through the existing footpath network is an important issue for the community and this project offers the opportunity to upgrade the footpaths to the standards proposed by the Countryside Council for Wales in their ‘Footpaths 2000’ initiative. The consultation process with the community also offers the opportunity to inform people of their heritage and its importance. This is clearly consistent with the objectives of 1994-1999 5B Leader initiatives for Wales.

An accurate site assessment is critical to the success and future extension of this restoration project. Slate workings have many factors, positive and negative, which should be considered during the selection of sites for rehabilitation schemes. Factors that this encompasses include:

stability of tips/quarries
substrate quality
vegetation regeneration
site accessibility
drainage
wildlife value
landscape assessment
geological interest
recreation potential
archaeological interest
grazing-pressure
working activity
environmental impact assessment

There is a growing awareness that land that has no other productive use should be used to maintain regional biodiversity and, where possible, planting programmes should try to recreate natural or semi-natural habitats using native species. The use of plant material of local genotype (provenance) is an extension of this concept that is attracting increasing attention and is particularly appropriate in areas of high biodiversity and amenity value. However, most land reclamation schemes have used plants which are cheap, easily available in large numbers and which are propagated from genetic material unrelated to the environment in which the plants will be grown. This often causes plants to fail (e.g. Mediterranean seed stock planted in North Wales). Previous slate restoration projects in which fast growing grass species have been planted (e.g. ryegrass) have achieved little success due to the lack of their suitability for this adverse environment. In contrast, studies on the natural recolonization of slate waste tips has showed that slower growing native species of grass are more able to withstand these stressed conditions, albeit with a lower productivity but more importantly without significant management inputs (Robinson Jones Partnership, 1987). By contrast, the method to be demonstrated here will greatly accelerate remediation. In addition, for a remote and adverse environment such as Penrhyn Quarry it is likely that the choice of plant material will be critical to the success of the project. The choice of species will be based on the following criteria:

compatibility with the surrounding natural vegetation community
potential to accelerate the establishment of other species
tolerance of climatic conditions
tolerance of substrate conditions
post-reclamation performance
minimal maintenance capacity
tolerance of grazing
impact on waste tip stability
biodiversity value
amenity value
restoration goals

Best practice forestry methods are now adopting 50 to 100 m ‘vertical provenance zones’; this ‘altitude provenance’ concept must be adopted for restoration projects in sites with a wide altitudinal range, such as Penrhyn Quarry. In addition, in post-industrial sites with such difficult substrate conditions (e.g. coal waste tips) considerable improvement in restoration success has been achieved through the selection of plant genotypes more tolerant of that environment (e.g. Good et al., 1985: J. Appl. Ecol., 22, 995-1008). These genotypes are often not the same as those present in local natural vegetation. Therefore, in this project an innovative approach will be required in the selection of plant material to combine successfully the management requirements of cost-effective site restoration and conservation requirements of the use of local genotypes. Large numbers of plant seedlings of different known local provenances are already in production by the Slate Ecology Company (SEC) and will form a good basis for the selection of planting material for this project. The SEC has a proven record in the production of local provenance material including Calluna vulgaris, the character species of dry heathlands, and rare species such as the EU listed species Tuberaria guttata. The plant species that are already known to be able to colonize the range of environments at the Penrhyn Quarry site are listed in Table 2, which is based on previous ecological surveys carried out at the quarry and the surrounding area by the project’s collaborators (Oxley et al. 1993, 1995).

Table 2 List of plant species found close to (but rarely in) Penrhyn Quarry

The environmental zones produced by the assessment and mapping of the Penrhyn Quarry site (2.2.1.3 above) will be used as the basis for the exact location of the demonstration plots. A temporary allocation of the demonstration plots has been indicated in Figure 3. A cell or patch planting approach will be used within each demonstration plot with unplanted areas between these planted sub-plots or "cells".

The effectiveness of each restoration method will be demonstrated in sub-plots containing a number of stratum types (i.e. fine to coarse material). Selection of the restoration techniques will be based on previously undertaken laboratory and glasshouse based research. We know from these small scale, ‘ideal conditions’ trials that the techniques should be superior to existing restoration techniques although they have yet to be demonstrated in large, field scale trials. The goal of these demonstration plots will be to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these innovative reclamation approaches.

As illustrated in Figures 2 and 3, the Penrhyn Quarry site can be arbitrarily classified into two main ecological zones namely an ‘upland’ and ‘lowland’ zone. Although each zone contains a number of habitats, the vegetation at the boundary of the upland zone is dominated by ‘Dry Acid Dwarf Shrub Heath’, while in the lowland zone it is dominated by ‘Semi-Natural Broad-leaved Woodland’ (Figure 4). It is these two vegetation types that this proposal will restore as these have a known high conservation value. British sessile oak woodland in this type of site (NVC W17) are of European conservation importance, especially for their communities of lower plants: ferns, mosses, liverworts and especially epiphytic lichens and fungi. This is also in direct contrast with most previous restoration schemes which have planted ‘acid’ or ‘neutral grassland’ which possesses a low conservation/biodiversity value. In terms of CORINE classification, the Upland British heaths (31.212 and 31.225) have been classified by the Habitats Directive as habitats of European importance. This is due to their high conservation/biodiversity value and the continuing concern about the decline of heathland in the UK.

Table 3. Summary of the target vegetation in each restoration zone at Penrhyn Quarry.

Species selection (Table 3) will concentrate on early successional species (including Calluna, Betula, Sorbus and Salix) as these have the maximum potential to facilitate the natural colonization and establishment of other members of the vegetation community. Similar species to those at Penrhyn will be used in the ecologically similar wet-oceanic climate of the Irish site, while the species planted at the Spanish site will be selected from those dominating local natural vegetation : oak (Quercus ilex and Quercus suber) and early successional Cistus (Cistus ladanifer and Cistus salvifolius). Different forms of planting site preparation will be assessed including:

Slope stabilization (from earlier studies, instability of slopes leading to disruption of plant root systems is known to be a major limiting factor to plant survival)

Manipulation of slate particle size class composition

Addition of different amounts, distribution and composition of planting media (2.2.1.5 below).

In addition, different forms of plant protection and site management after planting will be used including fencing and individual tree shelters (Braithwaite & Mayhead, 1996, Arboricultural J., 16, 123-32; from earlier studies herbivory is known to be a major limiting factor on plant survival on such sites). All the treatments will be replicated and an appropriate set of control (untreated plots) will also be included for comparison.

Efficiency of design will be achieved by selecting sites where nested sub-plots can be established of each of the major strata versus treatment combinations. It is envisaged that a total of six blocks of demonstration plots will be established, each containing a restored area of 1600 m² and at least five independently treated sub-plots. Three blocks will be located in the ‘upland zone’ and three blocks in the ‘lowland zone’. Thus the total area of demonstration plots will be at least 9,600 m², containing a combination of at least 20,000 planted heathers and 5,000 trees.

The primary limitation to plant growth at Penrhyn Quarry and many other post-industrial sites is the lack of available water and nutrients. The slate substrate is inherently nutrient poor, weathers slowly and has little water holding capacity. In addition, excavation of the tips has revealed a predominance of boulder-sized material at the tip surface, while the finer grained material suitable for plant growth has migrated downwards due to the combined effects of water and gravity. Tips of apparently coarse waste material typically have fine grained material within one metre of the surface.

Figure 5. Schematic diagram showing the pocket planting design which promotes transplant growth, water capture, soil formation and sustainability.

In preliminary IES greenhouse trials, heathers growth on slate waste in the presence of PAM’s showed a five to ten-fold increase in plant production compared with untreated plants. We will use a number of formulations of these gels in order to maximize plant establishment. These are as follows:

Planting in organic matter pockets
Planting in organic matter pockets into which ‘Aquasorb’ PAM gel has been incorporated
Planting in slate fining pockets
Planting in slate fining pockets into which ‘Aquasorb’ PAM gel has been incorporated
Planting in slate fining pockets into which ‘Aquasorb’ PAM gel, rock phosphate and anti-microbial agents have been incorporated

Recently, there have been important advances in the environmental monitoring of forestry projects as a component of overall environmental management (see Platt & Healey, 1994, Environmental management for forestry projects: monitoring, Shell Forestry). However, there has been a general failure to incorporate these advances into the practice of post-industrial land restoration. The demonstration value of most land restoration projects is severely limited because their outcomes have not been properly monitored or assessed. We will develop and demonstrate generic protocols for monitoring in such restoration work, including: systematic design and documentation of an appropriate planting scheme for subsequent monitoring; baseline survey; selection of appropriate monitoring variables and frequency; analysis and assessment of monitored results; development of appropriate responses in the management of the monitored sites and alteration of the methods of subsequent restoration schemes. The variables monitored and assessed will include environmental condition; plant establishment success; and economic costs and benefits (including the perceptions of key stakeholders/local participants).

In addition, the role of this project in development and demonstration of improved methods will require detailed monitoring. With respect to social issues, we intend to monitor the number of individuals visiting the site and their affiliation (local people, tourists, school/HE students, professionals from Wales, UK and other EU countries). We will also monitor the take-up and implementation of our practices by professionals visiting from other sites. Plant establishment success will be assessed by the following key criteria: survival rate, growth rate and nutrient content. The rate of organic matter accumulation (i.e. ‘soil’ creation), establishment of new plants by natural regeneration and level of herbivory damage and weed competition will also be observed and monitored in each plot. Nutrient levels will be determined according to standard Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF, UK) protocols within the IES. In addition, the biodiversity of the area is a key endpoint of this study:

With respect to biodiversity monitoring, the re-establishment of native plants does not necessarily result in the re-establishment of biodiverse communities of invertebrates and vertebrates. Major reasons why native communities may not re-establish in the short term relates to the spatial configuration of the sites in relation to other habitat areas and also on the ‘quality’ of the plants as food sources of herbivores, which provide the base of any ecological community. Plant nutrient status is an important determinant of insect herbivore distribution and abundance, and as the heather and trees will be growing in nutrient poor substrates it is possible that their nutrient status will be different to similar species growing in adjacent areas on native soils. Should this be the case then the assemblage of animals that establishes in the quarries may differ from that in adjacent areas.

In order to test this, the abundance of detritivores and insect herbivores will be monitored in the re-establishment plots, and the structure of these communities will be compared with that of communities occurring on similar vegetation in adjacent areas. Insect herbivore sampling will be undertaken with a suction trapper on heather plots and through beating on trees. A combination of core samples and pitfall traps will be used to monitor the detritivores. Nutrient analysis of plants will also be undertaken. Invertebrate sampling will be undertaken between April and September on the Welsh and Irish sites in each of the three years of the project. In addition standard bird counts will be undertaken four times a year on each site.

As stated above, the project will initially be of a demonstrative nature with six restoration blocks with a total area of 9,600 m² containing at least 20,000 upland zone transplants (mainly heathers) and 5,000 lowland zone transplants (mainly trees) in Wales alone. The size of the restoration areas in Spain and Ireland will each cover 2500 m². In terms of sustainability, McAlpine Slate are committed to spend £3 million (4.2 million ECU) over the next 25 years. This spend was stipulated by Gwynedd Council in 1994 as a prerequisite to the local council granting planning permission for the future expansion of the quarry (zone shown on Figure 3). This spend is therefore guaranteed. Similarly, both the Spanish and Irish partners are committed to a significant restoration spend over the next 15 years. Over the three year duration of this project, a ‘best practice’ manual for the reclamation and restoration of such mineral extraction wastes will be produced and translated into at least four different European languages for dissemination (Spanish, French, German, Welsh; choice of languages based primarily on European location of slate waste). This will be critical for the later restoration by land managers at each site.

The combination of the parties involved in this project (IES, McAlpine Slate Ltd, Pizarras - Villar del Rey, Dan Morrissey Ltd and SEC) will offer a unique multidisciplinary solution to a fundamental land reclamation problem. This will ensure project success and maximize the potential for development of innovative solutions of wide impact.

The team has great expertise in all the required areas of the project including:

project management
post-industrial land restoration practice
ecology and biodiversity
socio-economic and landscape assessment
environmental survey, mapping and analysis
dissemination of outputs
field test design and analysis
arboriculture
plant selection and propagation
environmental and plant monitoring
analytical and laboratory methods

The feasibility of (and need for) the approaches proposed in this project builds on earlier work on derelict Welsh slate tips by ‘Richards, Moorehead and Laing Ltd’ (consultants) and has been demonstrated at Penrhyn Quarry by preliminary site surveys (Oxley et al. 1993 and 1995) and a limited set of non-systematic trial plantings carried out at the site by SEC over the past 12 months using traditional methods. Greenhouse and laboratory studies have shown that the polyacrylamide technology significantly enhances plant establishment success in low water and nutrient availability conditions. Funding is now required from the LIFE Programme to demonstrate this innovative technology in the field and to evaluate a complete set of methods for the achievement of sustainable, high biodiversity site restoration.

LIFE funds would provide the additional resources required to further develop, demonstrate and disseminate the use of multidisciplinary and innovative methods of post-industrial land restoration using local genetic material and an innovative set of site specific technologies. It is anticipated that LIFE would contribute 48% of the ecological restoration costs together with the underlying demonstration and dissemination tasks. The remaining 52 % will be supplied by the industrial partners. The LIFE funds will be used to employ two field coordinators and a technician capable of executing Tasks 1 and 3 to 12 of the project activities described above (under the supervision of the expert IES/SEC staff listed in 2.1.1). In addition, the hiring of technical assistance will also be required to perform the more manual planting and site preparation tasks (this will make a significant contribution to the local economy in this area of high unemployment).

This project will be a team effort (see Figure 1) involving close cooperation between all partners. A management team will be formed from representatives of each of the partners involved (IES, McAlpine Slate Ltd, Pizarras - Villar del Rey, Dan Morrissey Ltd, SEC and GC). This team will be led by the project manager and EU coordinator, Mark Baird, and will meet quarterly to review the results and confirm targets for the following quarter. Each task has been assigned to an expert Task Coordinator (see Task Summary Tables) who will report progress back to the management committee. These tables also identify other key experts involved in each task. Day-to day running of the project will be through the two Field Coordinators who will closely liaise with SEC and McAlpine Slate’s staff on site while reporting to the appropriate Task Coordinator in IES for technical expertise and direction. The finances will be managed through IES and audited annually with quarterly reports of expenditure presented at the quarterly meetings.