Ecological impacts of road construction on the wider landscape are considerable. Impacts on existing plant communities are particularly important in terms of their support and provision of ecosystem services. Road corridors crossing intensively managed agricultural land may offer potential refuge for native flora and may improve landscape connectivity. In 2006, Ireland?s National Roads Authority published an updated set of guidelines for road landscaping to be implemented along new national road schemes. In 2009 we made a large scale assessment, comparing pre-guideline landscape treatments with post-guideline ones, along the N25/N22 corridor between Rosslare and Tralee. Relative plant species richness of a number of pre-guideline and post-guideline landscape treatments (including horticultural planting and natural recolonisation) was quantified, and compared with adjacent land use (agricultural fields and semi natural sites). In addition, the contribution of the seed bank to overall biodiversity was assessed in order to enhance the quality of information on biodiversity which may not have been revealed in vegetation surveys. Finally, a major limiting factor preventing the establishment of species-rich semi-natural plant communities is high soil nutrient content, which is frequently a feature of agricultural soil. Such soils were the basis of pre-guidelines landscaping and their use is discouraged under the new guidelines. Thus we assessed the nutrient status (nitrogen and phosphorous content) of soils and examined relationships with roadside plant communities. On rock-scree road verges, there was little overall difference in the early stages of plant community development between areas planted with horticultural varieties and those left to natural recolonisation by plants. This has important implications in terms of financial cost (natural recolonisation represents a low/nil cost option) and the ultimate environmental sustainability of the landscape treatment used.The ultimate output is expected to inform those involved in the planning, design and maintenance of road schemes of a more sustainable way of creating and maintaining vegetation communities in the road corridor.

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SAFER-Data Display URL	https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/display?isoID=3036
Resource Keywords	Biodiversity, plants, road landscaping, soil nutrients, invasive species
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Code	2007-B-CD-1-S1
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Theme	Biodiversity
Resource Availability:	Semi-Private
Limitations on the use of this Resource	Time restrictions based on publishing peer reviewed articles from this research are requested. Please contact Rosalyn Thompson for more details rosalyn.thompson@student.ucc.ie
Number of Attached Files (Publicly and Openly Available for Download):	0
Project Start Date	Tuesday 1st April 2008 (01-04-2008)
Earliest Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Monday 1st September 2008 (01-09-2008)
Most Recent Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Sunday 30th June 2013 (30-06-2013)
Published on SAFER	Thursday 24th October 2013 (24-10-2013)
Date of Last Edit	Wednesday 4th December 2013 at 17:31:53 (04-12-2013)
Datasets or Files Updated On	Thursday 24th October 2013 at 23:05:03 (24-10-2013)

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Description of Geographical Characteristics of This Project or Dataset
In 2009 we made a large scale assessment, comparing pre-guideline landscape treatments with post-guideline ones, along the N25/N22 corridor between Rosslare and Tralee.

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