Publication details
Diverzita vápencových lomů a možnosti jejich rekultivace s využitím přirozené sukcese na příkladu Růženina lomu
| Title in English | Diversity of limestone quarries and possibilities of their reclamation with using natural succession on example of 'Růženin lom' quarry |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Zprávy Čes. Bot. Společ. |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Botany |
| Keywords | Hády near Brno; limestone quarry; natural succession; reclamation; restoration |
| Description | Hády hill, near the city of Brno, is situated in the southernmost part of the Moravian Karst Landscape Protected Area. During the last 90 years, an active limestone quarry has gradually destroyed unique steppe grasslands on more than half the southern slope. However, the quarrys effect has not been entirely negative: Some new biotopes with rare plants and animals have come into existence as a result of mining. One of the most important places in the large mining area is the Růženin lom quarry. Thanks to a spring of clean water flowing from the quarrys highest face a system of water–holes with a maximum depth of 2 m came into existence on the edge of the quarry bottom. Their banks were soon occupied by some new plants and animals and more significant species immigrated from the surrounding area. Before reclamation 21 nationally endangered plants occured here. The area can be characterised as a scenically and ecologically harmonic entity. The reclamation respected the natural value of environmental locality importance. In the northern part of the quarry (a) a new water–hole was created, (b) all waste products were covered up in depressions and (c) the dump of light ashes without vegetation was powdered by limestone gravel and a thin soil layer from the original steppe pastures. This action was based on the presumption that such soil will contain seeds from thermophilous species which will help to overgrow the sterile dump. The shallowness of the soil layer retards the expansion of synantropic plants, and a mosaic of various depths will increase the heterogenity of the quarry bottom. Biological part of the reclamation considered (a) elimination of invasive plants from the entire quarry and (b) collecting and sowing seeds of 64 steppe plants from surrounding grasslands to support and speed up the process of natural succession. (c) Some rare plant species were cultivated and then transplanted to the quarry. (d) Transplanting live plants from the surrounding area was also attempted experimentally. The reclamation made a mosaic of different new biotopes. Many seedlings of segetal plants (some very rare and endangered) grew from the soil seed bank. Ruderal plants occurred in only a few places. Perennial and slowly growing species (stress strategy) were preferred when collecting seeds of steppe and forest–steppe herbs and grasses from the surrounding area. About 70 % of 64 sown species reached maturity. This reclamation was non–standard. Therefore, the presented project provides a unique possibility for testing some approaches to site diversity enrichment while preserving the current natural site value. |
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