A Field Laboratory in The National Forest

Background

Of these woodland developments, the 'flagship' is The National Forest. This is set in the English Midlands and is being developed by The National Forest Company as a deliberate attempt to restore a landscape devastated in the past by extensive mineral extraction. In particular, it cuts through the now largely defunct Leicestershire Coalfield, at one time an area of both deep and open-cast mines.

This bold and long-term venture to re-establish a landscape not seen since before the Agricultural Revolution, and certainly not since the mechanisation of farming in the mid-Twentieth Century, means a radical shift in the balance of nature and a potential change in natural processes. This change opens up opportunities for study. It also demands understanding if only because a shift in vegetation can have unknown hydrological and ecological impacts that might have significant resource implications for a countryside already under considerable pressure.

The Field Laboratory

The field laboratory is located at Coleorton, 18 km or 12 miles west of Loughborough. The site is Rising Wood and lies within the boundary of The National Forest. The vicinity has a long history of deep mining dating back to the 15th Century and Lount Colliery can claim to be among the first in Europe (and the World) to employ deep-mine technology.

In the 1980s, the site became British Coal's Lounge Opencast Mine. The Coal Measures (Carboniferous) are close to the surface and faulting makes them accessible once overburden has been stripped off. The small headwater valley now occupied by Rising Wood was systematically dismantled as excavation progressed up-valley from the North. The drag lines removed material to circa 30 - 40 m deep.

Following extraction, the valley form was 'faithfully' restored, the backfill being carefully regraded to reconstruct as closely as possible the pre-existing pattern of contours. Drainage was installed. This consists, in part, of sub-surface large-bore plastic pipes and, in part, of ditches. The trunk stream was reconstructed, though as a trapezoidal channel without sinuosity. Its banks and bed were lined with geo-textile and this is kept in place by interlocking concrete rip-rap, ensuring permanent channel form and efficient disposal of rainwater.

 

The regraded contours were clothed with topsoil. In the upper part of the catchment, the land was put down to permanent improved pasture. This is currently grazed by sheep. There is no surface drainage here and underdrains collect and discharge directly to the uppermost of the ponds. The lower part of the catchment has been 'gripped' (a form of ploughing that throws a sod in order to establish a gravitational gradient between the sod and the furrow; the objective is to promote soil drainage). This is the site of Rising Wood - an embryonic woodland, currently planted with saplings with inevitably variable success. For more information on the trees...

Objectives

• Establish a field laboratory on newly planted woodland over restored ground within The National Forest.
• Create a support facility for teaching and learning in practical modules and dissertations in physical geography within the undergraduate programme.
• Provide the infrastructure for research into hydrological, pedological, ecological and micrometeorological aspects and problems of afforestation of 'made' ground.

Benefits

• Students can study at first hand the impacts of radical rural landuse change on hydrological pathways, soil and stream water chemistry and biological diversity in the context of planned environmental management.
• The laboratory opens up the prospect of new teaching initiatives in environmental science.
• Continuous records of environmental parameters facilitate long-term research in an ameliorated but problematic setting and offers understanding of changes brought about by radical landscape changes.
• Transferable knowledge of prospective benefit elsewhere on 'made' ground in Britain and Europe.

The People Involved

Project Leaders

Professor Ian Reid, hydrologist

Dr Steve Rice, geomorphologist

Technician

Computer Assisted Learning

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Snibston Discovery Park for kind permission to take the photograph of the opencast mine