Working with partners, Nature After Minerals is here to offer and share best-practice advice on biodiversity-led minerals restoration.

Saline lagoons

Saline lagoons are bodies of brackish to hyper-saline water that are partially connected with the sea. Some exchange of seawater occurs with the sea through over-topping an impermeable barrier, by percolation of sea water through the sediment or via man made sluices. Tidal range is greatly reduced or non-existent in the lagoon, and so there is little exposure of bed sediment. Saline lagoons occur in low-lying, often soft sediment coastlines, generally south and east England.

Coastal Vegetated Shingle

Opportunities to re-establish Coastal vegetated shingle are very limited. It is a rare community that is restricted to a few coastal areas where marine processes have produced stable shingle banks. These banks develop characteristic vegetation communities over a long time period.

Coastal and floodplain grazing marsh

These habitats develop on land which is periodically flooded or waterlogged by fresh or brackish water, and where agricultural management– grazing, mowing or a combination – promotes vegetation dominated by lower-growing grasses, sedges and rushes.