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Bomb Crater Pond holds clean water all year round supporting wildlife and cattle<\/p>\nIn February 1945, towards the end of the second world war, a German V2 rocket struck Walthamstow Marshes in east London. The explosion tore a crater into the marshland. Left untouched, it slowly filled with water, sediment \u2026 and life. Today, this wartime scar has become a thriving pond.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s small but it really punches above its weight,\u201d says Luke Boyle, a ranger for the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, as he kneels at the edge to examine aquatic plants sprouting their early spring shoots. \u201cWe can\u2019t manage the hydrology here, so it is actually a vital part of the ecosystem \u2013 it supports a range of plants, insects and amphibians, more than you might expect,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Bomb Crater Pond holds clean water all year round supporting wildlife and cattle<\/p>\n
Walthamstow\u2019s Bomb Crater Pond lies within a fenced-off section of the marshes, protected as part of a site of special scientific interest. Its clear waters provide a year-round refuge for wildlife in an otherwise highly managed urban landscape. More than a million people visit Walthamstow Marshes each year, most unaware that the modest pond near the perimeter fence began its existence due to an instrument of destruction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like an engine room for the marshes,\u201d Boyle says. \u201cDespite its size, it supports the wider ecosystem around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike most wetlands, there are no sluice gates here, no managed hydrology \u2013 the pond\u2019s natural depth means it holds water all year round, reliable and clean. The cattle drink from it too, and their hooves disturb the ground around the margins, creating a patchwork of habitats that allow different species to take hold.<\/p>\n
Park ranger Luke Boyle examines emerging spring growth at the edge of Bomb Crater Pond<\/p>\n
\u201cIn winter, you get snipe and lapwing out on the wetlands,\u201d Boyle says, scanning the margins of the pond. \u201cThen, by late spring, this becomes a breeding ground: newts and grass snakes. The dragonflies and mayflies come, butterflies along the edges.\u201d Frogs and herons are regulars. \u201cLast year was good nationally for butterflies<\/a>,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut, here, it\u2019s like that every year.\u201d<\/p>\n One species is creeping marshwort, among Britain\u2019s rarest aquatic plants, recorded at only two sites in the UK. It is too early in the season to see it but Boyle knows it is there, somewhere beneath the surface, waiting. \u201cWe watch that carefully,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about keeping the balance between open water and the vegetation that wants to take over.\u201d Under a countryside stewardship agreement overseen by Natural England, he is required to maintain at least 80% open water, pulling out reedmace by hand when it encroaches.<\/p>\n It is, he adds, his favourite spot on the marsh. As he speaks, the Stansted Express flashes past on the elevated line beyond the fence. A grey heron circles above as if signalling it would like to land.<\/p>\n Aquatic plants push through the surface of Bomb Crater Pond in early spring. The pond supports a wide range of freshwater speciesThe power of small ponds<\/p>\n Small ponds have been one of ecology\u2019s most underestimated assets. \u201cHistorically, because they are small, ponds have been dismissed as insignificant,\u201d says Prof Jeremy Biggs, CEO of Freshwater Habitats Trust. \u201cIn fact, the evidence shows the opposite: across a landscape, they support a wider range of freshwater plants and animals \u2013 including more rare and protected species \u2013 than other freshwater habitats, such as big rivers or lakes.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the reason is counterintuitive. Bigger water bodies attract bigger problems. Rivers accumulate diffuse pollution from the land they drain. Lakes receive runoff from vast catchments. Ponds, by contrast, are small enough to avoid the systems that damage larger waters. Nobody routes a sewage outflow into a pond \u2013 it\u2019s too small to dilute it.<\/p>\n Boyle circles the pond, which by late spring will be alive with newts, grass snakes, dragonflies and mayflies<\/p>\n \u201cPonds are powerful precisely because they are small,\u201d Biggs says. \u201cMany still hold clean water \u2013 something now increasingly rare in the wider countryside.\u201d That, he adds, is why creating and protecting clean-water ponds is such an effective way to support freshwater biodiversity. They are also astonishingly varied \u2013 acidic or alkaline, shaded or open, grazed or undisturbed \u2013 and create a mosaic of conditions across any landscape that no single large water body could replicate.<\/p>\n \u201cDarwin famously proposed that life began in a \u2018warm little pond\u2019, and freshwater species have spent millions of years evolving to colonise exactly these kinds of small, still waters,\u201d says Biggs. \u201cWhile it takes many decades or even centuries for most types of habitats to become established, wildlife arrives at new ponds almost immediately, and these small waters can become ecologically rich within just a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n Evidence from bomb craters makes this vivid. Biggs says: \u201cAt Tommelen in Belgium, 144 ponds \u2013 many created unintentionally by second world war bombs \u2013 now form a nature reserve supporting seven amphibian species, including great crested newts<\/a> and tree frogs.<\/p>\n \u201cAt Ashley Range in the New Forest, craters left by bouncing bomb tests, including one made by a 10,000kg bomb, have filled with water to create a network of ponds in heathland. These examples demonstrate how quickly ponds can become colonised. If the ponds are clean and in the right place, they can become rich habitats for a wide range of species.\u201d<\/p>\n Every crater tells a different story<\/p>\n Some 1,500 miles (2,400km) east of Walthamstow, the ground tells a different story. Since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the scale of destruction written into the landscape <\/a>defies comprehension. Satellite imagery studies have identified more than 600,000 craters in just two southern regions (Mykolaiv and Kherson) alone. Across the country, researchers estimate the number now runs into millions.<\/p>\n A bomb crater on the Irpin floodplain, north of Kyiv, Ukraine<\/p>\n The human cost has been devastating: tens of thousands killed, millions displaced, entire cities reduced to rubble. For Anastasiia Splodytel, a Ukrainian soil scientist who has worked across the country\u2019s devastated regions, each crater marks a moment of violence.<\/p>\n double quotation markA bomb does not simply tear a hole. The shock wave disrupts the layered structure of soil built up over centuries<\/p>\n What happens to the land afterwards is what she has spent years trying to understand. The answer, she says, is never simple. \u201cIt all depends on who is standing at the edge: their professional background, how they perceive what they see and a range of natural factors: soil type, the landscape-geochemical structure and the type of weapon used.\u201d<\/p>\n A bomb does not simply tear a hole. The shock wave disrupts the layered structure of soil built up over centuries, deeply embeds metal fragments and recasts the microrelief. Some of the most extreme cases that Splodytel has encountered involve phosphorus munitions. White phosphorus burns at up to 2,760C \u2013 hot enough that fertile black soil turns into cracked stone. Ukraine\u2019s chernozem, its famous black earth that is among the most productive agricultural soil on the planet<\/a>, can be reduced in seconds to something inert. The thermal shock kills what lies beneath: the bacteria, fungi and microorganisms that drive fertility and regulate moisture.<\/p>\n Early plant growth tentatively returns to the slopes of a missile crater in Buda-Babinetska, Bucha district, formed in February 2024<\/p>\n Heavy metal contamination in individual craters does not always reach catastrophic levels, often rising only modestly above the natural background before stabilising. But Splodytel is careful about what reassurance that offers. \u201cThe main threat is not toxicity, but the loss of soil fertility \u2013 disruption of soil structure and reduction in microbial populations.\u201d<\/p>\n Explosive compounds in the soil have barely been studied, and for communities living nearby, invisible contamination is easily underestimated. \u201cIt is precisely this underestimation that presents a significant threat,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Yet there is hope for even the most damaged soils Splodytel has examined. \u201cI was pleasantly surprised by how quickly nature begins to heal itself without waiting for human intervention.\u201d In shallower craters, she has observed accelerated pedogenesis \u2013 the rapid reformation of soil structure, new layers beginning to build almost before the dust has settled. Something, quietly, is trying to return.<\/p>\n For Bohdan Prots, a Ukrainian ecologist who has spent decades studying his country\u2019s natural landscapes, there are few straightforward answers. His starting point is pragmatic. In up to 90 % of cases, the right course of action is simply to fill a crater with clean soil and return the land to use. \u201cIt is not as big a deal as people think when they talk about craters causing huge pollution. Not when you are looking at a single explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Bohdan Prots examines a crater in Makariv, Bucha district. Four years after the strike, the crater holds water year-round \u2013 a pattern repeated across Ukraine<\/p>\n Scale changes everything. In the heavily bombarded zones of eastern Ukraine<\/a>, where explosions have occurred every few metres, the cumulative effect is catastrophic, with entire forests reduced to bare earth, soil overturned to depths of several metres and the layered structure that took centuries to form pulverised beyond function.<\/p>\n And then there are the mines. \u201cThe problem is not really the crater,\u201d Prots says. \u201cThe problem is unexploded devices.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markDiversity of habitats, even created by war, leads to species diversityBohdan Prots, Ukrainian ecologist<\/p>\n He describes a colleague\u2019s father in the Kherson region who, on just half an acre of land, discovered 36 unexploded devices over three years, even after military deminers had certified the area clear multiple times. There is, he notes, a well-known rule: one year of war equals an average 10 years of demining. Ukraine, now four years in, already faces 40 years of that work ahead.<\/p>\n A marsh frog surfaces in a flooded bomb crater near Moschun, Bucha district, Ukraine, where conflict has reshaped the landscape into a mosaic of temporary wetlands<\/p>\n Yet he keeps coming back to something he has observed across a lifetime in the field. Growing up in western Ukraine, decades after the second world war, he found old bomb craters in the forest \u2013 depressions slowly silting over, but still functioning as miniature reservoirs. \u201cThey were already not as deep as before,\u201d he recalls, but were \u201cstill a good resource for animals to drink and frogs to breed\u201d.<\/p>\n He pauses over the observation for a moment. \u201cDiversity of habitats, even created by war, leads to species diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n Nature\u2019s return is not always straightforward. The first species to arrive in damaged habitats are often pioneer or invasive ones, filling the vacuum before native plants and animals can re-establish. \u201cPeople see green and think it is fine,\u201d Prots says. \u201cBut green is not always beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n Each landscape must be read on its own terms, he says, whether that is wetland, forest, farmland or urban ground. Every crater carries a different story, depending on the soil, location, power of the explosion, intensity of the battle and whether clean water is present.<\/p>\n A drone\u2019s view of the Irpin valley, where abandoned positions, cratered ground and standing water mark the frontline of the 2022 battle for Kyiv<\/p>\n When asked about the postwar future \u2013 the tens of thousands of water-filled craters that will remain across Ukraine once the fighting ends \u2013 Prots\u2019s answer is measured but not without hope.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it is in the forest,\u201d he says, \u201cit becomes a biodiversity hotspot. At the bottom of these explosions, which go three to eight metres deep, there will always be water in the end, even in very dry periods. It is like establishing a small wetland.\u201d<\/p>\n He pauses. \u201cAnd that is a place where animals are always eager to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Find more age of extinction coverage here<\/a>, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston<\/a> and Patrick Greenfield<\/a> in the Guardian app for more nature coverage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In February 1945, towards the end of the second world war, a German V2 rocket struck Walthamstow Marshes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-430634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}