NJASLA is very pleased to announce two national awards coming to members of the Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture
Dr. David Tulloch is receiving the 2010 Award for Excellence in Research, granted by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture. He will be honored next week, at the 2010 CELA Conference, in Maastricht, The Netherlands. His work is recognized for its consistent innovation and multidisciplinary emphasis, as well as for its integration into graduate and undergraduate education. His leadership in research within the discipline is recognized based on his roles in national organizations, review panels, and advisory groups.
Zeina Zahalan (SEBS 2011) will receive one of only two national awards from the ASLA Council of Fellows Scholarships. This scholarship is part of the Leadership in Landscape Scholarship Program run by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. As the title suggests, the student is recognized for leadership as well as academic excellence.
I am very pleased to see this recognition come to a faculty and student member of our department, the solitary undergraduate landscape architecture program in the Garden State.
To send a note of congratulations to either recipient - their emails are:
David Tulloch dtulloch@crssa.rutgers.edu
Zeina Zahalan zzahalan@eden.rutgers.edu
NJDEP - Draft Grass Swale BMP Request for Comments
Please note that a Draft Grass Swale BMP has been posted at www.njstormwater.org for comment until May 31, 2010.
This is a non-structural measure to be added to NJDEP Best Management Practice (BMP) Manual and is important to future practice and scope of responsibility for landscape architects in New Jersey.
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Draft Grass Swale BMP April, 2010 (pdf 527Kb) |
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Don’t Miss This Opportunity To Help Landscape Architects |
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ASLA Advocacy Day is April 29th |
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On April 29 scores of your colleagues will be on Capitol Hill advocating for legislation crucial to landscape architects and the sustainable design community as part of ASLA's 2010 Advocacy Day. Please help your colleagues' advocacy efforts; lend your support for legislation creating urban parks and clean water through green infrastructure! ASLA advocates will highlight 2 key pieces of legislation: HR 3734 the Urban Revitalization and Livable Communities Act gives localities matching grants to create new and rehabilitate existing park and recreation spaces. This bill will help revitalize communities, generate economic growth, and combat childhood obesity by providing recreation for children and their families. HR 4202 the Green Infrastructure for Clean Water Act invests in community-based green infrastructure projects that address water issues. This bill will help provide low cost environmentally sensitive solutions to stormwater runoff issues facing localities everywhere. Separately these bills will help provide communities much -needed infrastructure that provides a myriad of benefits. Also, together these policies could bring tremendous opportunities for landscape architects. Don't miss out on this opportunity to build on the momentum that your advocates are generating on Capitol Hill. Make your voice heard and support these two crucial pieces of legislation!! Click HERE to send your legislators a message supporting Urban Parks-we're hoping to have 2,300 by May 23-1 for each park project that this bill could create each year! Click HERE to support landmark green infrastructure legislation that helps landscape architects help their communities by offering cost effective sustainable clean water solutions! Thank you for taking the time to help landscape architects make their voices heard on Capitol Hill! |
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"A New Jersey update on one of our past Annual meeting Keynote Speakers”
Consultant with Morris ties says buildings must balance environmental,
human needs
April 10, 2010 By MEGHAN VAN DYK: 973-428-6633; mvandyk@gannett.com
Copyright ©2010 Daily Record
KINNELON — Bill Reed believes there is a fix that can assuage climate change and strike a balance of human needs and the Earth's resources that has nothing to do with going green.
"We can change light bulbs, recycle, cut carbon emissions, but while all that is incredibly important, it is insufficient," the longtime planning consultant told an audience of 30 at the Kinnelon Library Wednesday night. "By helping people to actually experience their home, they can fall in love with the environment again, and it's through that act of love that we can actually begin to make transformations — not by fearing it or taking guilt from it."
Reed, of Boston, is a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council and co-founder of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, a check-the-box approach to green building that awards planners points for incorporating energy efficiency, recycled materials, water conservation and other indoor environment quality improvements into projects.
He is also a former Kinnelon resident, and returned to the borough to share his insights on integrative design in a talk hosted by Kinnelon Conserves, a grassroots group of residents concerned about global warming and water conservation issues.
As president of the Integrative Design Collaborative, Reed has helped clients ranging from the city of Baja, Mexico, to a cooperative grocery store in Brattleboro, Vt., achieve higher levels of environmentally responsible design.
To do that, Reed said, one must take a whole-system approach to planning instead of working to address singular issues, like water and air pollution, habitat destruction or global warming because all are connected. Thinking that way goes even beyond the LEED system he helped design, he admitted, but said it is a good starting point.
"When we pick one thing or the other to work on, we are helping the system to crash," he said. "A building seen outside of its context is not a real building — that rock, stream, you, me are one big connected web of life and until we respect all entities as our brothers and our sisters, if you will, we are not going to get there."
Reed cited a Massachusetts town that was planning to spend $20 million on a desalination plant for clean water. A far less expensive alternative, and one that utilizes the natural environment, he said, is to create parks to filter and recharge storm water.
"What we like to do is buy our solutions," Reed said.
Reed said he believes the separation of wilderness and modern life has left humans with the inability to understand how to deal with the complex issues facing us — the places we live should be a "park and natural sanctuary," he said.
These are issues very much alive in New Jersey, said Dave Peifer, project director of the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, who attended the discussion.
"The important challenge facing New Jersey is to move in a defined way toward a more healthy relationship to nature and with one another," Peifer said. "We are very dense, but opportunities for redevelopment are alive, and it's important to ponder how a project could make your watershed, your block, your community and even the state of New Jersey a better place rather than looking at the bottom line yield."
Sylvia Kovacs, director of a new nonprofit group Sustainable Highlands NJ, said she is engaged in talks with area leaders to not just talk about change, but to make it happen.
"There are opportunities now here for localized energy generation we are working towards," said Kovacs, who owns an organic hay farm outside Hackettstown. "It's important to be self sufficient and realize there is a difference between reliability and resilience."
This year the Gala committee has developed a new award titled the Distinguished Achievement in Horticulture to recognize an individual whose contributions to promoting public horticulture have been noteworthy. The Gardens will honor Douglas Blonsky, President of the Central Park Conservancy, with the inaugural award. Mr. Blonsky, whose dedication to restoring Central Park to its original splendor has produced a beautiful public space for New Yorkers and visitors from around the world.
At the gala, the “Hamilton Award for Dedication and Outstanding Commitment to the Rutgers Gardens” (named for our friend and longtime colleague, “Doc” Hamilton) will be presented to Dr. Elwin Orton) who has played a pivotal role in the growth of the gardens.
With the Gardens as Dr. Orton's home away from home, he has been one of Rutgers Gardens’ greatest supporters over the past 50 years. In fact, each of his named selections contains a little bit of the Gardens for all to enjoy! Hopefully, more plant selections will continue to fill gardens around the globe since plant breeding will continue to be an important part of Rutgers Gardens’ future. In 2011 the student internship program will begin a plant breeding program under the guidance of Dr. Thomas Molnar, who will also carry on Elwin’s breeding work at Rutgers Gardens.
This festive evening includes dinner and dancing, both a live and silent auction and a wine and cheese tasting. All proceeds directly benefit the Gardens.
Interview with Andrea Cochran, FASLA 
In a recent book on your work from Princeton Architectural Press, Mary Myers writes, "Like Luis Barragán, Andrea Cochran is able to convey a forceful sense of volumetric space." Please describe your unique approach to space in your landscapes. What are your main influences?
I have two main areas of influence. One source of inspiration is the work of early modernist landscape architects: Dan Kiley, Garrett Eckbo, and James Rose. The gardens they designed in the 1930's were really a reinvention of space. They redefined the spatial constructs of modern architecture during a time that considered space over mass a defining quality.
Another big influence on my work would be Minimalist artists such as Robert Irwin, who reinterpret our perception of space. The edges become diaphanous, the spaces ephemeral. Spaces such as these and the work of another Minimalist artist Fred Sandback are defined by suggestions of structure. Sandback used colored string to compose space in a gallery. That's very much they way I see my work as a landscape architect – a more diaphanous or permeable quality. Edges are done with plantings and spaces are defined by a minimum of structure.
Full Article
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Sustainable Sites Initiative Area of Focus Fact Sheet Hydrology
Half of irrigation water can be wasted as a result of evaporation, wind and over-watering, but weather-based irrigation systems can reduce irrigation water use by 20 percent or 24 billion gallons per year.2
American public water supply and treatment facilities consume about 56 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year—enough electricity to power more than 5 million homes for an entire year.3
Thirty-six states anticipate local, regional or state-wide water shortages by 2013.4
Water is a limited resource that is essential to all life. At a time when demand for water in the United States is up 209 percent since 19501 , the typical single-family suburban household uses at least 30 percent of their water outdoors for irrigation. Meanwhile, in many older cities and towns around the country, rainfall is treated as waste, to be funneled directly from roof gutters and paved surfaces to sewers, leading to increased costs in stormwater management.
Rather than getting rid of stormwater as quickly as possible, a sustainable approach to stormwater management involves finding ways to harvest it on site, using it for irrigation, ornamental water features, and groundwater recharge. As the value of water is recognized, the value of natural systems to store, clean, and distribute available fresh water must also be recognized. Technology exists to integrate systems that mimic nature's capacity to store, filter, and clean water.
Examples of Sustainable Practices
Protect and restore existing hydrologic functions
Avoid development and disturbance near streams and wetlands, and in sites with high risk of flooding. Plant native or appropriate non-native vegetation, re-grade soils where necessary, and use soft engineering techniques to restore the functions of floodplains, and riparian and wetland buffers.
Manage and clean water on-site
Design a site to capture, slow, and treat stormwater runoff by reducing impervious surfaces, harvesting rainwater, and directing remaining stormwater runoff to soil- and vegetation-based water treatment methods, such as vegetated bioretention facilities, rain gardens, wetlands, green roofs, and bioswales. Maintain and restore vegetation to ensure water can percolate into the soil or groundwater.
In Portland, Oregon, nearly 49,000 downspouts have been disconnected, removing more than 1.2 billion gallons of stormwater per year from the combined sewer system.5
A 2,500-acre wetland in Georgia saves $1 million in water pollution abatement costs each year.6
Studies of landscape preference conducted over several decades show consistent patterns of favorable responses to views of water features across culture, landscape types, and viewer age.7
Design stormwater features to be accessible to site users
Integrate multifunctional stormwater management features into site design to improve both water quality and aesthetics. Stormwater management features can provide calming views, spaces for restoration, and even opportunities for play and interaction with water.
Design the site to minimize or eliminate use of potable water for irrigation
Use native and appropriate non-native vegetation adapted to site conditions, climate, and design intent. Group plants with similar water needs to maximize irrigation efficiency. Climate-based controllers for irrigation systems can also be used to lower water consumption. In addition, non-potable water can be collected and used for irrigation from sources such as rainwater from rooftops, graywater, air conditioner condensate, or stormwater basins.
[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). 2007. Why Water Efficiency. http://www.EPA.gov/WaterSense/water/why.htm
[2] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2007. Outdoor water use in the United States. (EPA Pub 832-F-06-005) Department of the Interior, Editor.
[3] U.S. EPA. Why Water Efficiency. 2007.
[4] U.S. EPA. Why Water Efficiency. 2007.
[5] City of Portland. 2007. Combined Sewer Overflow Program: Progress Report. City of Portland Environmental Services.
[6] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2007. Wetland Functions and Values. http://www.epa.gov/watertrain/wetlands/module05.htm (accessed July 30, 2008).
[7] Smardon, RC. 1998. Perception and Aesthetics of the Urban Environment: Review of the Role of Vegetation. Landscape and Urban Planning 15: pp. 85-106.
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50 means 50: Licensure Reaches Milestone in Vermont
Vermont Governor Jim Douglas signs licensure law
4/26/2010 After more than six years of hard work and persistence, the Vermont ASLA can celebrate victory with passage of licensure legislation for landscape architects. The lone hold-out state, a strict sunrise process in the Green Mountain State was a stubborn barrier to success, due in a large part to the fact that no blood-and-guts cases were found in Vermont itself, although the chapter produced evidence that demonstrated the link between landscape architecture and the public health, safety, and welfare. In the end, the primary driver of success was the profession of landscape architecture itself. The growth of its influence and expected growth in numbers convinced policymakers that the potential for harm from unlicensed, unqualified individuals will only grow with time. Sunset review was added, through which an analysis of licensure and its impact on the public health, safety, and welfare will occur in 2013. The 50 by 2010 Licensure Campaign was created by ASLA in 2000 to direct concentrated resources to enact practice acts. Then, only 30 states regulated the practice of landscape architecture and four states had no regulation at all. Vermont becomes the 17th state to enact a practice act during the campaign, for a total of 47 practice acts. Further, it certainly is worth celebrating that Vermont is the final state to achieve regulation of the profession. Congratulations to Vermont ASLA and to those ASLA Licensure Committee members (including Jeff Tandul of NJASLA) and ASLA Chapters, so involved in that effort with advice and financial support. |
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Fit City 5: Promoting Physical Activity through Design
Center for Architecture, New York City
The AIA New York Chapter, in partnership with the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, is hosting the fifth annual Fit City public conference to examine how design interventions create opportunities for increasing physical activity. This conference will bring together architects, planners, designers, developers, and public health professionals to address how building design and policy decisions can increase physical activity, thus helping to prevent chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and asthma. Through case studies, and analysis, conference participants will explore recommendations for modifications in the built environment as a means of facilitating physical activity and improving health. Metropolis’s editor in chief, Susan Szenasy, will be among the speakers. cfa.aiany.org/index.php?section=calendar&evtid=1715
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The 2010 Kodak American Greenways Awards
Do you know an organization that is working to create or improve a greenway, trail or waterway? Apply for a Kodak American Greenways Award grant, and your organization could receive up to $2,500 in grant funds and recognition that comes with selection by this prestigious national program.
The Eastman Kodak Company, The Conservation Fund and the National Geographic Society team up each year to present the Kodak American Greenways Awards Program. One major element of the Program involves "seed" grant awards to organizations that are growing our nation's network of greenways, blueways, trails and natural areas. These projects connect Americans to the outdoors and their heritage.
For 2010, the Program anticipates awarding up to fifty percent of the grants to those greenways projects that involve natural, cultural, and/or socio-political historical themes. Previous recipients have undertaken projects that included an addition to the historic Lewis and Clark Trail; the conversion of an abandoned rail line into a multi-use public trail along the historic Mission Zanja irrigation canal; creating a county-wide greenway plan in Joe Daviess County, IL highlighting the unique geology of the only part of Illinois spared by the last glaciers; and the construction of a trail connecting Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Tennessee. Please see the application at http://grants.conservationfund.org for full details and to apply for consideration of your greenway project for Kodak American Greenway Award funding.
This year's application deadline is June 15th. Most grants range from $500 to $1,000. The maximum grant is $2,500.
To learn more about the grant awards program, please visit our website or click here to go directly to the grant application. Questions? E-mail or call at (703) 525-6300.
Houston Low Impact Development Design Competition
The Houston Land/Water Sustainability Forum has developed an innovative, effective, and entertaining approach to promoting green infrastructure and low impact development within the design community. On January 27, 2010, the Forum hosted the final event of the Houston Low Impact Development Design Competition, featuring ‘lightning presentations’, expert judges, and an audience of 300 curious spectators. The Design Competition, announced in September of 2009, challenged teams of engineers, architects, and landscape architects to apply the principles of GI and LID to three actual properties in the Houston area . 22 teams entered the competition, drawing 225 design professionals from 48 firms. Finalists demonstrated that green infrastructure and low impact development can replace conventional infrastructure at lower cost, while producing attractive and inviting landscapes. For more information and ideas on hosting a competition in your community, visit the Competition website at http://www.houstonlwsforum.org/
LowImpactDevelopment
DesignCompetition2009-2010.html .
Slash and Sprawl: U.S. Eastern Forests Resume Decline
Since the 1970s woodlands that had been rebounding started to shrink again
By David Biello for Scientific American Magazine
Trees once covered almost the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. Vast forests supported a rich ecosystem, including flocks of the extinct passenger pigeon big enough to blot out the sun. But by the 1920s at least half of this forest was gone—a victim of tree-clearing for farming, forestry or fossil-fuel extraction.
Then, the forest rebounded for several decades as once-farmed fields were left fallow. But a new study reveals that since the 1970s eastern forests have begun to diminish again; roughly 3.7 million hectares of forested land—an area larger than the state of Maryland—have been transformed into subdivisions, tree plantations and lunar-esque landscapes resulting from mountaintop removal mining. In fact, the latter activity alone eliminated 420,000 hectares of woodlands in the past two decades.
"Human land use is a primary driver of environmental change," says geographer Mark Drummond of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who collaborated on the study in the April issue of BioScience with USGS Earth observation scientist Thomas Loveland. "The cumulative footprint of human activities on the land surface is causing a significant net decline in forest cover."
Suburban sprawl was the leading cause of the forest's recent retreat in much of the east. The megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., has grown in extent by 90 percent since 1970, resulting in the cutting of 1.9 million hectares of trees. The southern coastal plain, northeastern highland and the Piedmont—the hilly region between the coastal plains and the Appalachian Mountains stretching from New Jersey into Georgia and Alabama—lost the most forest cover.
That's bad news for the wildlife that had rebounded along with the woods. It also means that the newly lost trees are not incorporating more carbon dioxide—the most common greenhouse gas changing the climate. Since the early 20th century U.S. forests had been soaking up extra CO2, and this timberland was expected to play a role as an "offset" for greenhouse gas emissions from other sources (like the coal-fired power plants burning through the products of mountaintop removal mining) in any legislation to combat climate change, such as the bill currently being written in the U.S. Senate. "Over the past 30 years, the strength of the carbon sink may have decreased by as much as two thirds in some eco-regions of the east," the USGS researchers wrote.
"We need to improve our understanding of how the U.S. landscape is changing as a result of human activities," Drummond says. "The amount of decline in carbon sequestration is still being examined."
The USGS scientists used Landsat satellite data since 1972, combined with field visits, to more precisely estimate forest cover in the 162 million hectares of the eastern U.S. Previous efforts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and U.S. Department of Agriculture had found that forested areas in the eastern U.S. were still expanding overall, if only marginally, based on estimates.
Nor is this trend confined to the eastern U.S. Whereas FAO figures note that deforestation may be slowing globally—from 16 million hectares a year in the 1990s to 13 million hectares per year in the 2000s—that trend may have stopped or reversed in the developed world. "The recent declines in eastern forest cover that we are seeing may herald similar trends elsewhere, in other regions or nations," Drummond says. "We see net forest declines in the west and areas of the south-central U.S. caused by land-use change."
© 2010 Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.
A Paradox of Nature
Designing rain gardens to be dry
By Kevin Beuttell
Despite the proven environmental benefits of rain gardens, many people are reluctant to use them because they can be unattractive. But a close examination of the relationships between hydrology and vegetation in rain gardens suggests a solution for improving their looks and their function. Rather than think of rain gardens primarily as wet environments, we should design them as dry environments that experience only brief wet periods. This shift in thinking increases opportunities for ornamental planting without sacrificing environmental performance.
Rain gardens are one of the most frequently cited and promising strategies for managing stormwater responsibly and because of the ubiquitous presence of impervious surfaces, these systems can be used on virtually any type of site. Rain gardens come in many forms (and go by many names, such as bioswale, bioretention, and bioinfiltration), but for the purposes of this article, the term “rain garden” is essentially meant to describe a shallow depressional area designed to use the natural capacities of soil and vegetation to retain, cleanse, and infiltrate stormwater. FULL ARTICLE
A new role for the NJDEP: Economic Growth
Thursday, April 15, 2010, Excerpted from EnviroPolitics Blog by Frank Brill
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Commissioner Bob Martin told lawmakers on Monday that, while the environment is still Mission #1, he sees a second, important role for the agency—helping to revitalize the state’s economy.
In testimony before the Assembly Budget Committee, Martin said he’s planning to name a new Assistant Commissioner for Economic Growth and Green Economy. Among other duties, that person will oversee a new “one-stop-shop” for businesses and individuals seeking environmental permits.
The change comes in response to the business community’s experience of the DEP as the place where permits go to die. Or, at least, to languish for periods so long that the original business opportunity that prompted the application is lost.
This way of conducting state business has been just fine with a number of environmental groups who cling to the sophomoric notion that all business is evil and all growth is sprawl.
But it’s had the unintended (to be charitable) consequence of discouraging businesses from expanding in New Jersey. In some cases, frustrated business owners have chosen to abandon New Jersey altogether, moving their operations (and tax revenues and jobs) to more business-supportive states, like Pennsylvania.
Martin’s efforts to “change the culture” at the DEP were generally applauded by members of the Budget committee, Republicans and Democrats alike. One legislator confessed to once flirting with the idea of moving his own business out of state.
We checked yesterday with the DEP’s Press Office and learned that Commissioner Martin is “considering several strong candidates” for the Assistant Commissioner’s post and is expected to announce his selection in a couple of weeks.
Two Newark Parks for People Playgrounds Win Design AwardsIn 2007, a shooting at Newark's Mount Vernon Playground claimed the lives of three college students and injured one other. The tragedy galvanized the community and, in 2008, the playground was reborn-with TPL's help-through a participatory design effort. The park, dedicated to the victims of the shooting, recently garnered the New Jersey Recreation and Park Association's Excellence in Design Award.
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NJASLA Executive Committee
NJASLA Executive Committee
President
Nicholas Tufaro, LLA, NJPP, PARLA
President Elect
Erica Sollberger, RLA, LEED AP
Immediate Past President
Karen Twisler, LLA, RLA, LEED-AP
1st Vice President
David I. Lustberg, LLA,
2nd Vice President
Elaine Mills
Secretary
Ilonka Angalet, RLA, LLA, PP, LEED AP
Co-Treasurers
Robert Escheman
Raymond Milcsik, LLA
Trustee
Bruce John Davies, LLA, ASLA
Legal Counsel
Lawrence Powers, Esq.
Management & Governmental Affairs Consultants
Joseph A. Simonetta
Newsletter Editor
Nicholas Tufaro, CLA, NJPP, PARLA
New Jersey ASLA Today
Newsletter Editor
Nicholas Tufaro, NJCLA, NJPP, PARLA
Newsletter Layout/Graphics
Dean Tantum & Kristin Tencza
Editorial Offices:
414 River View Plaza
Trenton, New Jersey 08611
Phone: 609.393.7500
Fax: 609.393.9891
The opinions expressed in bylined articles
are those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of NJ-ASLA.
The authors are solely responsible for the information contained in those
articles.
For advertising information, contact Kelly
Biddle at 609.393.7500
NJASLA Today is published monthly by the NJ-ASLA. All correspondence,
address changes, etc., should be sent directly to these offices.