Leona Quarry Revegetation Design

Alameda County, California

Integral staff restoration ecologists and landscape architects prepared the conceptual revegetation design and detailed construction documents for restoring a functional plant-soil ecosystem on 40 acres of steep, rocky, denuded quarry slopes along Chimes Creek at the century-old, abandoned Leona Quarry. The team conducted baseline soils and vegetation studies, integrated innovative topsoil preparation techniques into the grading and habitat restoration plans, and designed phased seeding and irrigation for the site’s steep, harsh slopes. Following construction, Integral staff conducted five years of annual vegetation monitoring, and the site met all of its final success criteria in year five. Reviewers at the State Office of Mines and Geology lauded the restoration plan and construction documents, and the team published the project’s lessons learned in the Ecological Restoration Journal (Busnardo, M. et al. 2017. Techniques to Restore Coastal Scrub at a Reclaimed Quarry in Central California. Ecological Restoration Journal. 34:354-361).