Aggregates extraction
Marine aggregates
production in Britain involves a fleet of some 35 vessels working
full time and approximately 2500 people working both at sea and on
land to produce approximately 22 million tonnes p.a. Current
projections of the demand for marine aggregates show that the trend
remains upwards and is likely to continue to increase until
secondary use of building material for a variety of applications
becomes more widespread.
The Crown Estate owns the
mineral rights to the sea bed around the UK and issues licences for
extraction. A royalty is paid to Crown Estate for every tonne of
aggregate dredged and the Crown Estate will only issue a licence if
permission is granted by the a Government View (GV) procedure,
National Assembly for
Wales (NAW) or the Scottish Executive (SE) and
satisfactory environmental appraisals have been completed.
Although the programme is in the process of being reviewed, the
aggregate producers have supported research in the past, into key
areas of environmental concern through the Aggregates
Sustainability Levy Fund, co-ordinated by DEFRA, Natural England and
English
Heritage.
PML research which has potential application to the aggregates
sector are:
- Benthic community characterization to e.g.
investigate the impacts of extraction and potential for different
management approaches to enhance recovery
- Evaluation of goods and services provided
by benthic communities associated with aggregates extraction
areas
- Social and economic analysis as a basis to
provide improved understanding of progress towards
sustainability
- Evaluation of the interaction of aggregate
extraction of other users of the marine environment (e.g. fishing,
offshore windfarms) on ecosystem sustainability.
An example of a recent project
Predictive framework for assessing recoverability of
marine benthic communities following cessation of aggregate
dredging.
The purpose of this study will be to provide (for the first
time) a predictive framework for the rate of restoration of species
composition and subsequent recovery of biomass following growth of
the individuals in marine deposits prior to dredging or other
anthropogenic disturbance.
The study will therefore represent a significant advance on
current approaches to the assessment of 'recovery' of biological
resources which are entirely based on descriptive assessment
following cessation of dredging at particular dredge sites. This
will be the first study to integrate analysis of population
dynamics and growth data into the widely-used multivariate analysis
of community composition used in benthic studies in UK waters.