(Ferrovial) Relevant actions

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Recovery of the Natural Environment

New transport needs require increasingly capable and technically complex infrastructures, implying the use of the latest technology and rather large earth moving machinery. These major performances have a considerable impact on the natural environment.

In order to reduce the effect that these projects have on the environment, at present, almost all the infrastructures include actions of varying degrees of complexity designed to recover the area affected.

Land is restored through planting, sowing, hydro-seeding and other bioengineering measures. In 2007, the total length of linear infrastructures studied amounts 2,260 km. In terms of surface, a total of 3,469 ha (an area equivalent to over 4,600 soccer pitches) have been treated in terms of both linear and non linear infrastructures (EDARs, ports, dams, desalination plants, industrial installations, landfill, etc)

Ecological Restoration

For many years, almost all the large civil works carried out include replanting projects to be carried out after or during the performance of the main works. It is a fact that enormous financial resources are invested in mitigating the appearance of large areas of land which are laid bare from vegetation in this type of projects.

Most of the replanting techniques and activities are based on fairly conventional agronomic and engineering criteria. These techniques, which have been tried and tested over time, play an extremely important role in restoring plant cover, basically in the periods subsequent to the earth moving activity. Nevertheless, there is still a considerable lack of scientific knowledge with regard to development and progress of restored ecosystems, and the extent to which such replanting projects assist in retaining or restoring what we could call natural vegetation.

In the nineteen eighties a branch of ecological science was developed which came to be known as restoration ecology. Based on this new area of scientific knowledge, the term ecological restoration was used to describe all those restoration techniques or operations designed and executed with ecological criteria, in addition to the agronomic and engineering aspects.

However, it is a fact that the level of scientific information and the technical definition of the criteria which should govern ecological restoration are still very much at an early stage.

In Ferrovial we consider that more work needs to be done to develop the ecological bases of environmental restoration projects. We are convinced that these new criteria could serve in the medium term as a means of developing more efficient practices from an ecological perspective and, after all, why not? becoming more profitable in economic terms. In order to take this new idea a step further, Ferrovial has collaborated with the principal research centers in Spain (CSIC, Complutense University Madrid) in developing the TALMED project (Ecological principles for restoring TALudes MEDiterráneos –or Mediterranean embankments) which has become one of the most relevant research projects in its field on an international level.

The main purpose of research in this project was to create a solid base of scientific knowledge which will help in future to guide environmental restoration of infrastructures (mainly highways and railways) from the perspective of "ecological restoration".

Recommendations for developers, planners, builders and project managers.

After more than 4 years of research (2000-2004) a few of the main conclusions drawn from this work could be technically applied almost immediately. These conclusions are contained in a document listing 11 recommendations for improving ecological integration of sowing and planting, the full content of which is available on this website.

Detailed information on this research project, including the results, as well as the literature published by this and other teams throughout the world can be viewed on the TALMED web site.