The South Gloucestershire ALSF Project
The formal title of the ALSF-funded project is 'Review & Interpretation of South Gloucestershire's Regionally Important Geological Sites'
This website was created as part of a two year project between 2005 and 2007 to celebrate the geological history of South Gloucestershire.
In addition to the website, 9 new information panels were erected at 8 different sites in South Gloucestershire - Aust Cliffs, Cromhall Quartzite Quarry, Cromhall Quarry, Codrington, Shortwood, Wick, Huckford Quarry and Chipping Sodbury - providing a series of fascinating and dramatic images of the area's geological past. The boards feature a series of eye-catching illustrations by Bristol artist Shane Feeney and aim to provide a simple, clear picture of periods of geological time when South Gloucestershire looked very different to how it is today and was a landscape covered, in turn, by warm, tropical seas, mountain ranges and hot, dry deserts.
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As well as the boards, the project produced a booklet - 'A Journey Across 400 Million Years - The Story of Geology and Landscape in South Gloucestershire' - which can be downloaded as a pdf file from this website. The booklet provides specific but accessible information for a wide range of interest groups, including schools and the public.
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Download: South Gloucestershire Geology Booklet |
Funding for the project has also meant that the Group is able to carry out the painstaking and invaluable work of surveying and recording each of South Gloucestershire's most important geological sites.
The project was run in partnership between South Gloucestershire Council, the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre (BRERC) and the Avon RIGS Group, and was funded through DEFRA's Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF), administered by English Nature (now Natural England), the statutory advisor on nature conservation.
The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund came into being in 2002 when a levy was introduced on aggregate extraction. Part of the money raised by this levy is used to finance the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) with the aim of addressing the environmental and social costs of aggregate extraction by delivering environmental improvements, minimising the demand for primary aggregates and reducing the local effects of aggregate extraction.
