HOW CAN WE RESTORE THE BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN MINING AND INDUSTRIAL SITES? Additional disturbances as a beneficial tool for restoration of post-mining sites: a multi-taxa approach Klára Řehounková 1 & LukášČížek 1,2 & Jiří Řehounek 3 & Lenka Šebelíková 1 & Robert Tropek 2,4 & Kamila Lencová 1 & Petr Bogusch 5 & Pavel Marhoul 6 & Jan Máca 7 Received: 19 November 2015 /Accepted: 28 March 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract Open interior sands represent a highly threatened habitat in Europe. In recent times, their associated organisms have often found secondary refuges outside their natural hab- itats, mainly in sand pits. We investigated the effects of differ- ent restoration approaches, i.e. spontaneous succession without additional disturbances, spontaneous succession with addi- tional disturbances caused by recreational activities, and for- estry reclamation, on the diversity and conservation values of spiders, beetles, flies, bees and wasps, orthopterans and vas- cular plants in a large sand pit in the Czech Republic, Central Europe. Out of 406 species recorded in total, 112 were classi- fied as open sand specialists and 71 as threatened. The sites restored through spontaneous succession with additional dis- turbances hosted the largest proportion of open sand special- ists and threatened species. The forestry reclamations, in con- trast, hosted few such species. The sites with spontaneous succession without disturbances represent a transition be- tween these two approaches. While restoration through spon- taneous succession favours biodiversity in contrast to forestry reclamation, additional disturbances are necessary to maintain early successional habitats essential for threatened species and open sand specialists. Therefore, recreational activities seem to be an economically efficient restoration tool that will also benefit biodiversity in sand pits. Keywords Human-made habitats . Restoration ecology . Trampling management . Post-industrial sites . Biodiversity conservation . Sand mining Introduction Natural open and nutrient poor sandy biotopes, such as conti- nental sand dunes or riverine banks, used to be relatively com- mon components of some Central European regions (Jentsch and Beyschlag 2003; Riksen et al. 2006). Their total area has strongly decreased over the past few centuries as a conse- quence of both direct and indirect human impacts (Fanta and Siepel 2010). As unproductive bare land, the majority of sandy habitats were either afforested or extracted for sand; wet sandy sites were drained (Chytrý 2010). Simultaneously, these originally nutrient poor biotopes were affected by pas- ture cessation, rapid successional overgrowing accelerated by increased aerial N-deposition and the spreading of com- petitive eurytopic plants during recent intensive urbanisa- tion (Walker and del Moral 2003). As a result, the inland dunes with open Corynephorus and Agrostis grasslands, for Responsible editor: Thomas Hein Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11356-016-6585-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Klára Řehounková klara.rehounkova@gmail.com 1 Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 1760, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic 2 Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences, Branišovská 31, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic 3 Calla-Association for Preservation of the Environment, Fráni Šrámka 35, 370 01 České Budějovice, Czech Republic 4 Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, 128 44 Prague, Czech Republic 5 Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Králové, Rokitanského 62, 500 03 Hradec Králové, Czech Republic 6 Beleco, Slezská 125, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic 7 Na Potoce 276, 391 81 Veselí nad Lužnicí, Czech Republic Environ Sci Pollut Res DOI 10.1007/s11356-016-6585-5