Biodiversity Planning and Design: Sustainable Practices

By Jack Ahern, Elizabeth Leduc, Mary Lee York and Landscape Architecture Foundation

How do you measure biodiversity, and why should landscape architects and planners care? What are the essential issues, the clearest terminology, and the most effective methods for biodiversity planning and design? How can they play a role in biodiversity conservation in a manner compatible with other goals? These are critical questions that Jack Ahern, Elizabeth Leduc, and Mary Lee York answer in this timely and useful book.

Real-world case studies showcase biodiversity protection and restoration projects, both large and small, across the U.S.: the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle,Washington; the Crosswinds Marsh Wetlands Mitigation Project in Wayne County, Michigan; the Florida Statewide Greenway System; and the Fort Devens Stormwater Project in Ayer, Massachusetts. Ahern shows how an interdisciplinary approach led by planners and designers with conservation biologists, restoration ecologists, and natural and social scientists can yield successful results and sustainable practices. Minimizing habitat loss and degradation-the principal causes of biodiversity decline-are at the heart of the planning and design processes and provide landscape architects and planners a chance to achieve their professional goals while taking a leading role in the environmental community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781597267458

Book preview

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: BIODIVERSITY PLANNING AND DESIGN

The state of biodiversity is of increasing concern around the world. Considerable agreement exists among scientists that habitat loss and degradation are among the leading causes of global biodiversity decline. Renowned entomologist and champion of biodiversity awareness E. O. Wilson (1988, 3) claims: Overall we are locked into a race. We must hurry to acquire the knowledge on which a wise policy of conservation and development can be based for centuries to come.

If habitat loss is the leading cause of biodiversity decline, it follows that planning and design will be essential in any viable solution by directly conserving, protecting, or managing landscapes and habitats. Planners set policy and make plans to organize land use to meet multiple goals. Landscape architects create designs that are realized in physical form, affecting protection, change, and restoration of land and habitat. Landscape architects and planners engage biodiversity by working independently or in interdisciplinary teams that include conservation biologists, restoration ecologists, and natural and social scientists. Some of these teams have very successfully addressed biodiversity across a range of scales and geographical contexts.

As part of its case study series, the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) sponsored this issue-based research into how landscape architects and planners have addressed biodiversity in their work. This case study undertook to learn how biodiversity fits with other goals in professional planning and design work; the role(s) of landscape architects and planners in interdisciplinary teams; and strategies for moving forward with biodiversity planning and design when faced with uncertainty and incomplete knowledge. The study includes five biodiversity planning and design projects, arranged into a comparative, issue-based case study representing a range of scales and geographic locations across the United States. The projects include the following:

The Woodland Park Zoo’s long-range plan, by Jones & Jones, Architects and Landscape Architects, in Seattle, Washington.

A storm water management and wetland restoration project by Carol R. Johnson and Associates in Devens, Massachusetts.

The Crosswinds Marsh Wetland Mitigation project, in Wayne County, Michigan, by the Smith Group/JJR of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Willamette River Basin Study in Oregon, by University of Oregon landscape architect David Hulse and colleagues.

The Florida Statewide Greenways System Planning Project, by the University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture.

Our research found that biodiversity planning best succeeds when it is integrated with other goals, including environmental education, environmental impact mitigation, and regulatory compliance. Achieving multiple goals requires an interdisciplinary approach, and planners and designers often excel in leading such teams. Landscape architects and planners offer the ability to synthesize and visualize complex information, a familiarity with construction processes, skills in facilitating public participation, and expertise in implementing and managing projects. Additionally, the case study found that, although important, biodiversity is often a secondary or minor project goal in planning and design projects. It becomes more important in broad-scale, public policy-related projects and when mandated by regulatory and permitting agencies.

Data for planning and designing biodiversity projects are often incomplete for explicitly supporting planning and design decisions—an inherent problem related to the site- and species-specific nature of the data required. Despite the lack of good data, however, monitoring has rarely been conducted, due mostly to cost and convenience. This limits the ongoing involvement of landscape architects and planners in the projects they conceive, design, and build and thus to learn if the intended results were achieved. The lack of monitoring misses opportunities to (1) contribute new knowledge to science, (2) afford planners and designers the chance to expand their interdisciplinary collaboration with scientists and decision makers, and (3) to learn by doing to develop and refine planning strategies and design responses to address biodiversity more effectively.

Biodiversity is implicit in virtually all of the work of planners and landscape architects, and many signs point toward increased global interest and support for biodiversity planning. Both disciplines—planning and landscape architecture—include principles guiding the treatment of the natural environment in the ethical codes put forth by their professional societies. Landscape architects are expected to uphold values of environmental stewardship, especially as described in section ES1.13 in the American Society of Landscape Architects’ (ASLA) Code of Environmental Ethics: The principles of land use planning and design and the principles of wildlife habitat protection should be integrated to promote the enhancement, protection, and management of landscapes that promote wildlife (American Society of Landscape Architects 2000, 1).

Similarly, the American Planning Association outlines its Ethical Principles in Planning to guide the behavior of both certified planners and all other working planners. Included in these principles is the statement that planners must strive to protect the integrity of the natural environment (American Planning Association 1992, 1). Biodiversity planning and design are central issues for the Society of Ecological Restoration International, which states the following as part of its mission: to promote ecological restoration as a means of sustaining the diversity of life on Earth and reestablishing an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture (Society for Ecological Restoration International 2004).

Biodiversity represents a significant growth opportunity for planning and design professionals. To become more active players, landscape architects and planners need to: become more familiar with the issues, terminology, and methods for biodiversity planning and design; understand the complex issue of representative species selection and how to apply a method in the context of species/habitat associations and ecological models; and to develop advanced skills for leading interdisciplinary teams. By examining how planners and designers have been involved in five specific projects in the United States and by identifying areas of strength and points of weakness, this study seeks to identify specific ways these professionals can participate in and contribute to biodiversity conservation. The study is intended to not only encourage design and planning professionals to take a more active role in projects that involve biodiversity issues but also to better inform them about biodiversity and conservation efforts in general.

DEFINITIONS OF BIODIVERSITY

Biodiversity has many definitions in the current literature written by independent researchers, government agencies, and international organizations. The differences among the definitions emphasize the complexity of the issue. Some include detailed spatial or temporal considerations, whereas others are quite simple. For example, the Keystone Center (1991, 2) describes biodiversity as the variety of life and its processes, while biologist B. A. Wilcox (1982, 640) calls it the variety of life forms, the ecological roles they perform, and the genetic diversity they contain. These simple definitions recognize that both the quantity of species and the ecological processes that affect those species are important. Conservation biologists R. F. Noss and A. Y. Cooperrider (1994, 5) extend the Keystone Center’s definition to say: "Biodiversity is the variety of life and its processes. It includes the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, the communities and ecosystems in which they occur, and the ecological and evolutionary processes that keep them functioning, yet ever changing and