Together with the group of Jan Frouz, especially his PhD student Jabbar “Roj” Moradi, we performed a comparison of biodiversity of several groups of terrestrial arthropods of differently restored plots at the Velká Podkrušnohorská spoil heap, one of the largest dumps of brown coal spoil in Europe. After the heaping, it keeps a typical wavy surface with heterogeneous microhabitat conditions. Nevertheless, it is flattened by dozing soon after the heaping. In the paper, recently published in the highly-ranked Journal of Environmental Management, we have shown that such dozing, as the typical initial step of technical reclamation practice in Central Europe and elsewhere, decreases species richness and conservation value of post-mining sites for spiders, moths, ants, orthopterans and centipedes. We explain it through an apparent suppression of micro-habitat heterogeneity. We hope that such expensive practice, in both money and work effort meaning, will disappear from any restoration projects concerning biodiversity conservation.
Full citation: Moradi J., Potocký P., Kočárek P., Bartuška M., Tajovský K., Tichánek F., Frouz J., Tropek R. (2018) Influence of surface flattening on biodiversity of terrestrial arthropods during early stages of brown coal spoil heap restoration. Journal of Environmental Management 220: 1-7.
The wavy surface of brown coal spoil heaps spontaneously vegetated after heaping (upper parts of the figure), together with habitats after their dozing. © J. Moradi/Journal of Environmental Management