ECOLOGICAL CPR

Light/Air/Water

Written by R. Kirk Johnson, AIA, LEED AP

Conservation.  Preservation.  Restoration. Although similar in nature, these three commonly used words regarding sustainable elements are oftentimes mistakenly used interchangeably, yet are vastly different in intent, meaning, and application.  At a most basic consideration, conservation involves minimizing current resource levels, preservation involves keeping these at the original level, and restoration involves making these new again by bringing the site back to the original condition.  To phrase another way, conservation aims to limit the damage, preservation aims to prevent the damage, and restoration aims to repair the damage.

Although these interrelated elements pertain to multiple venues such as energy, materials, resources, and other vital areas of environmental concern, perhaps in no greater area of sustainable construction are these elements at the forefront than in ecological site design.  Understanding and analyzing these fundamental issues are essential to any endeavor required to achieve a sustainable project and a balanced site construction.  These three pivotal ecological concepts of conservation, preservation, and restoration are integral to the U.S. Green Building Council LEED Rating System sustainable sites section, as they are woven into multiple credits centering on these basic concepts.

CONSERVATION

Sustainable site design strives to integrate conservation throughout multiple ecological levels and various typologies.  This simple but far reaching approach is at the heart of any successful ecological footprint strategy.  At one level, a sustainable site may strive to conserve water resources that are part of a particular site or conserve the amount of trees that are maintained in the development.  It could also involve conservation of other natural resources such as wetlands, topsoil, natural topography, wildlife habitations, views, windbreaks, aquifers, sunlight, aesthetic beauty, and air quality. All of these elements, and many others, are essential to achieving balanced site and to developing a broad long term view towards conserving as many natural resources as possible.  This approach should be paramount with any sustainable development.

However, a broader understanding of the relationships between local ecosystem components and environmental opportunities is necessary to successfully implement conservation guidelines.  When these proven elementary concepts are ignored the potential for considerable damage to local ecosystems can be encountered.  Some of these damaging effects such as soil erosion and siltation can contribute to potential flooding, storm surges, damage to existing vegetation, reduced soil infiltration, excessive runoff, water pollution, or even drought.  Changing many development and construction practices may be required.  A change of perspective may be even more paramount to reversing common practices.

For instance, it is readily understood that soil erosion attacks many of the topsoils found in natural topography.  However, as common practice, many construction developments strip the land prior to construction simply to make the efforts easier to work around.  Others may do the same, in an effort to alter natural topographical drainage patterns in proposed developments.    Both of these examples exemplify an attitude of treating resources such as soil or water as simply a commodity to be consumed or a waste product to be discarded rather than a resource to be conserved.

Obviously, not all developments take such an attitude.  However, according to the U.S. EPA, construction site sediment runoff rates can be up to 20 times greater than agricultural sediment loss rates.  Removing natural vegetative cover affects far more ecological systems in an adverse way than can be justified by the ease of construction methods.

Gaining a greater understanding of healthy ecosystems and practices will certainly help, but more will be required.  Jurisdictions need to update policies of land development, zoning, and permit usage that reflect more ecological based sensitive priorities. Regulations need to be codified that reward and encourage ecological sensitive designs that adopt patterns of environmental conservation rather than those that simply stay with the present course of action.  The upcoming Standard 189 regulation will help by provide some of the tools and code enforceable language that can be adopted to encourage such site conservation.

Completing a comprehensive site assessment analysis provides another helpful avenue in achieving greater conservation practices and should be commissioned prior to design commencement in order to ascertain as many of the positive benefits of a site that could be part of an overall sustainable strategy to conserve, preserve, or restore our natural resources.

At a minimum this analysis should incorporate information regarding transportation patterns (vehicular, bicycle, mass transit, pedestrian, etc.), views, amenities, drainage patterns, topography, soils (depth, type, location), environmental quality, water, utilities, wetlands, trees (species, trunk size, location), vegetation (shrubs, plants, flowers, turfs, etc), pollution sources, areas of opportunity, sun patterns, wind patterns, rainfall levels, aquifers, on site material formations (rocks, water, vegetation, hardscape, etc.), land use, and location of shaded areas.  Upon development of these foundational and other possible site observations, exploration of design opportunities with sustainable measurement systems such as the U.S. Green Building Council LEED Rating Systems may be commenced.

The LEED Rating System concentrates upon conservation of soil, land, water, and vegetation throughout multiple credits.  Many of these are synergistic and complimentary.  For instance, Sustainable Sites pre-requisite 1 focuses upon minimizing construction activity soil erosion through the use of common best practices and credit 6.1 compliments the intent by attempting to reduce the amount of surface water transversing a particular site.  Both of these focus upon conservation of soil and water.

PRESERVATION

Another complimentary perspective, and arguably a most beneficial manner of improving the natural landscape would be to adopt preservation methodologies focused upon prevention of ecological damage rather than simply resource conservation.  This simple concept is found in the site selection credit within the LEED Rating System that aims to reduce the depletion of prime sites and strives to preserve the natural ecological features inherent in these premier landscape areas.  It is found again within the Site Development 5.1 credit that aims to protect the natural habitat, incorporated within sustainable site credit 5.2 with providing greater vegetated open space area, and infused residually in the reduction family credits of stormwater, heat island, and light pollution.  A balanced site works best when all of these elements work together.

RESTORATION

Considerable developmental activities have historically occurred throughout the built environment that has damaged the natural habitat rather than enhancing the landscape.  In these areas, a primary ecological path to pursue would be the avenue of site restoration.  Pursuing this environmentally sensitive approach renews the health of the natural landscape and re-energizes activities required to implement healthy conservation and preservation best practices.

One primary credit within the LEED Rating System that specifically address the concept of restoration is the Sustainable Site credit 3, focused upon cleaning up hazardous contaminates found in a large amount of soils as a result of previous development activities or operations.  Another area particularly associated with the concept of site restoration is sustainable site credit 5.1 which aims to restore the natural habitat with new developments.

Actions

Inherent to discussions of site conservation, preservation, and restoration is a call to transformative achievable action and the development of more evidence based performative measurement criteria.  Pollination of industry wide successful case studies addressing proven methodologies and technological advancements can serve as a foundational step in creating restorative environments unique to each specific site context.

Developing concise, clear, and site specific ecological goals serves as another positive stem of development.  Planning for ongoing continued landscape operations and maintenance should be integral to the development process.  Adopting both short term first-cost and long term life-cycle cost perspectives is encouraged in order to craft overarching balanced healthy natural habitats for people, activities, vegetation, and materials.

Simply put, achieving balanced sites full of complimentary conservation, preservation, and restoration elements requires focused, clear, concise, and measured decisions.  We must move beyond elemental principles of sustainable into a broader perspective of aligning healthy developments with healthy environments that are full of full of ecological beauty.