Landscape Architects' Report Offers Hundreds of Tips for Sustainable Sites

• 

  Your Email: *

  Your Name: *

  Send To: *

  Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.

  You are going to email the following: Landscape Architects' Report Offers Hundreds of Tips for Sustainable Sites

  Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from GreenBiz.com®

  Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from GreenBiz.com®.

  Your Personal Message: *
  
• 
• 
• 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The American Society of Landscape Architects yesterday released a comprehensive report giving a snapshot of the many ways that architects, designers and facility managers can enhance how well their sites fit into surrounding ecosystems, provide cleaner air and water, and reduce the impact of climate change.

The report, a standards and guidelines report from the Sustainable Sites Initiative, lists more than 200 ways to improve the ecosystem services that landscapes of all sizes and in all regions of the country can provide.

Ecosystem services -- a way of describing the benefits of a naturally functioning ecosystem, such as the ways bees, birds or bats pollinate crops; wetlands provide flood protection; or how plants and soils filter water -- are increasingly applied to urban, commercial or other human habitats as well, as a way of restoring natural processes to every landscape.

The report from the Sustainable Sites Initiative follows from the nine guiding principles of the organization, which are:

• Do No Harm
• Precautionary Principle
• Design with Nature and Culture
• Use a Decision-Making Hierarchy of Preservation, Conservation, and Regeneration
• Provide Regenerative Systems as Intergenerational Equity
• Support a Living Process
• Use a Systems Thinking Approach
• Use a Collaborative and Ethical Approach
• Maintain Integrity in Leadership and Research

The report is divided into five chapters, first outlining the mission and goals of the Initiative, and then discussing in-depth the ways that ecosystem services improve the environment and laying out strategies to achieve goals that landscape architects should keep in mind for each of five necessary elements of the ecosystems: soils, hydrology, vegetation, materials and human well-being.

This is the first of three reports planned for the Sustainable Sites Initiative, and the group is soliciting comments on the details of the report until January 11, 2008. After all the feedback is gathered, another in-depth report will be published in October 2008, and the final Standards and Guidelines for Sustainable Sites will be published in May 2009.

The eventual goal for the program is to develop pilot projects to test a landscape design rating system by May 2011, leading to adoption by the U.S. Green Building Council as part of its LEED Green Buildings program. The USGBC has already announced that it plans to incorporate the final guidelines into the LEED program.

The report is available to download from GreenerBuildings; for more information or to provide comment on the report, visit SustainableSites.org.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative plans to produce a rating system by May 2011 and test the guidelines with pilot projects in 2010 and 2011.

Share: LinkedIn   StumbleUpon   Digg

Post a Comment »