2000 Years of History—What Future for Ball Clay Extraction in the UK?

摘要

The debate in this paper truly reflects the aphorism that 'resources are defined by man, not nature.' Clearly the ball clay resource is valued for economic reasons but equally the environmental resources, be they habitat, species, landscape, cultural or historical, are defined by our interpretation of their value. Most of the UK habitat and landscape, and hence the numbers and diversity of species present derive to a considerable extent from human actions. liven so. conservationists in the UK have an inbuilt rejection of the concept that the resources they value are not truly 'wild,' that the species present can be anomalous in either range or numbers and, of direct interest to the topic discussed here, that many of the species considered rare either exist because of the anomalous vegetation cover or, of even more significance to mineral extraction, are primarily colonising species. Old quarries, and even active quarries, can provide those particular characteristics (drought conditions, exposure, infertility, highly variable topography, mires, etc.), which can provide essential and otherwise limited refugia for colonising species.