Landfills are a common landscape feature in the Anthropocene. Despite their unfortunate environmental impacts, they can also make great sites for restoring grassland ecosystems, inspiring visitors and providing homes for grassland-associated plants and animals. In a new commentary in Ecological Restoration, I discuss this silver lining in the context of landfills in the Mid-Atlantic US, and specifically a recent re-restoration of an important landfill grassland in Croton, NY. The site, which was championed by both Roger Tory Peterson and Pete Seeger, was restored in the 1990s and again in recent years (see Webster, 2021, same issue). The map in the paper was based the EPA’s LMOP database. You can explore the data and get the code to make the map here: https://github.com/mikeallen-eco/NEUS_landfills

Allen, M. C. (2021). Landfills as islands of grassland biodiversity: placing a next-generation habitat restoration plan in context. Ecological Restoration, 39:284-287. (link)