Are the Capital’s green spaces as green as they used to be?

As volunteers returf one city park, blaming the council for dragging its feet - how big a problem is erosion in Edinburgh?

We’ve all seen the pictures in the national news. Two of Edinburgh’s most famous hills looking like they had been laid to waste.

First there were Images of Arthur’s Seat scarred by wildfires, then pictures of Calton Hill exposed by erosion. It can look pretty devastating, but what lies behind it? Is it a sign of the impact of climate change, visitor behaviour or shortcomings in land management in our hilly, green capital?

Anyone who enjoys the hills of Edinburgh will know large areas of bare earth and rock are common not only on Calton Hill. Whether it’s slipping-and-sliding up the main tourist path to Arthur’s Seat on a rainy day, or clambering up and down washed-away paths in the Pentlands, erosion is all around us. But how much of a problem is it? And is it any worse than it used to be?

An old but growing problem

Erosion on our hills isn’t a new phenomenon; images from 1945 show desire lines (eroded paths created by many people taking the same off-path route) criss-crossing Arthurs Seat.

Holyrood Park in 1945. Image: Google Earth

Martin Gray began working as a royal parks ranger twenty years ago, and now manages Ranger and Visitor Services at Holyrood Park. In all the time he has worked there, the rangers have been working against erosion - whether laying matting to protect grassy areas or building official paths to reduce footpath erosion.

However, satellite imagery from the last twenty years show patches of erosion have become wider, and less green over time. While for some people the visual scarring of our landscapes is serious enough, there are myriad other problems caused by unmanaged erosion. ”It’s not just the paths… [erosion] impacts on the water management… on archeology that’s under the site, on biodiversity, on grassland… there’s a lot of knock-on effects,” says Gray.