We often talk about loss of habitat to human activities but sometimes nature finds its way back. This is a picture from Padley Gorge a local beauty spot and site of scientific interest (primitive oak forest - the trees growing out of the rocks on the left are older than the ones growing out of the track on the right).
The track interested me because it had obviously been used by horse-drawn carts.
At the end of the track:
A quarry used for production of mill stones (these are the eponymous millstone grit measures of the Carboniferous - Pennsylvanian era). For centuries stones were carved out of these rocks both for flour mills and later for sharpening tools in the steel industry and then, one day, it just stopped ... leaving some stones almost ready for use but unwanted ... and nature returns!
Quote:
Originally Posted by paul m
Getting back to the urban ecology topic. Railway lines and goods yards provide some very interesting habitats for plants and insects when
they fall out of service. The substrate (I hesitate to call it soil) is well drained and entirely mineral so the closest natural systems are dunes or volcanoes! You get a very interesting list of invertebrates and plants - it was on a siding deep in coal dust that I discovered the first British Zodarion italicum (presumably fell off a train and thought it was near Vesuvius?).
This picture is of Templin station in eastern Germany where railway services are being cut (it's the same the whole world over?) and in five years there are seriously sized saplings as well as all sorts of other plants taking the station and sidings back into a "natural" state ....
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