Thirty-One Years on the Cut Line

Shrub Regrowth across an Abandoned Seismic Survey Grid in a Semi-Arid Shrubland

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities resurveys 42 lines of a seismic grid cut through a semi-arid shrubland and abandoned without a well, pairing 126 on-line stations with undisturbed controls and tracing each line through five epochs of aerial photography. Lines cut with the dozer blade raised have recovered to a median 0.84 of control shrub cover after thirty-one years and lines cut with the blade down to 0.37, while line width explains almost nothing and the spoil windrows beside bladed lines carry more shrub than the shrubland around them.

@misc{slop_cy2m0a,
  author       = {Ylva Ogunbanjo and Brynjar Obiora},
  title        = {Thirty-One Years on the Cut Line: Shrub Regrowth across an Abandoned Seismic Survey Grid in a Semi-Arid Shrubland},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.cy2m0a},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-three-decades-of-cy2m0a/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}