Sand Dune Management
Management of dune systems has the potential to mitigate adverse effects of large-scale environmental drivers such as climate change and nitrogen pollution. Much of our research is conducted with the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) and Natural England and helps guide dune management. Grazing and low impact management techniques are commonly used but we are also interested in more drastic options for restoration.
With CCW, the charity Landlife and BHP Billiton we are trialling a new technique of Deep-Ploughing (or Topsoil Inversion) to return highly nutrient-enriched dune grassland of low biodiversity value to an early successional stage. This buries the fertile topsoil down to 1m depth, leaving nutrient-poor bare sand on the surface.
