Recent ucb_landscape items

Reparative planning through contextual vulnerabilities for disaster mitigation: a Gulf Coast case study

Tue, 2 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose: Reparative planning, when paired with participatory research, can serve as a framework for addressing ongoing harms that enable disaster racism while building toward more equitable disaster mitigation. This paper discusses the intersection between disparate disaster impacts, environmental racism, compounding disasters and the role of contextualizing vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach: A participatory research framework is explored in the context of disaster recovery and mitigation, which led to uncovering the roots of institutional vulnerabilities experienced by the predominantly Black community of North Port St. Joe, Florida. Findings: The main findings include the significance of situated knowledge in the relational participatory process, the importance of redistributing decision-making power and the development of a desire-based reparative disaster mitigation framework in local hazard mitigation planning. Social implications: Disaster impacts compound...

Vertical Planting: tectonics and aesthetics

Thu, 8 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This book, which has been developed from the original presentations at the symposium, presents the thoughts of a select international group of landscape architects and historians who discuss the subject of planting design through the lens ...

Vertical Planting: Tectonics and Aesthetics

Thu, 8 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Vertical Planting: Tectonics and Aesthetics

Spatial Variation in the Association between Extreme Heat Events and Warm Season Pediatric Acute Care Utilization: A Small-Area Assessment of Multiple Health Conditions and Environmental Justice Implications in California (2005–2019)

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

BACKGROUND: The increasing frequency and severity of extreme heat events due to climate change present unique risks to children and adolescents. There is a lack of evidence regarding how heat's impacts on pediatric patients vary spatially and how structural and sociodemographic factors drive this heterogeneity. OBJECTIVES: We examined the association between extreme heat events and pediatric acute care utilization in California for 19 distinct health conditions. We then assessed how extreme heat's consequences varied at the ZIP code level and identified environmental justice metrics that modulated children's vulnerability to extreme heat. METHODS: This study analyzed 7.2 million unscheduled hospitalizations and emergency department visits for children years old in California between May and September from 2005 to 2019. We first utilized a time-stratified case-crossover design to generate statewide estimates for the association between extreme heat events and care utilization....

The health benefits of reducing micro-heat islands: A 22-year analysis of the impact of urban temperature reduction on heat-related illnesses in California's major cities

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates the relationship between temporal changes in temperatures characterizing local urban heat islands (UHIs) and heat-related illnesses (HRIs) in seven major cities of California. UHIs, which are a phenomenon that arises in the presence of impervious surfaces or the lack of green spaces exacerbate the effects of extreme heat events, can be measured longitudinally using satellite products. The two objectives of this study were: (1) to identify temperature trends in local temperatures to characterize UHIs across zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in the seven observed cities over a 22-year period and (2) to use propensity score and inverse probability weighting to achieve exchangeability between different types of ZCTAs and assess the difference in hospital admissions recorded as HRIs attributable to temporal changes in UHIs. We use monthly land surface temperature data derived from MODIS Terra imagery from the summer months (June-September) from 2000 to 2022....

Can restoring water and sediment fluxes across a mega-dam cascade alleviate a sinking river delta?

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hydropower, although an attractive renewable energy source, can alter the flux of water, sediments, and biota, producing detrimental impacts in downstream regions. The Mekong River illustrates the impacts of large dams and the limitations of conventional dam regulating strategies. Even under the most optimistic sluicing scenario, sediment load at the Mekong Delta could only recover to 62.3 ± 8.2 million tonnes (1 million tonnes = 10⁹ kilograms), short of the (100 to 160)-million tonne historical level. Furthermore, unless retrofit to reroute sediments, the dams are doomed to continue trapping sediment for at least 170 years and thus starve downstream reaches of sediment, contributing to the impending disappearance of the Mekong Delta. Therefore, we explicitly challenge the widespread use of large dead storages-the portion of the reservoirs that cannot be emptied-in dam designs. Smaller dead storages can ease sediment starvation in downstream regions, thereby buffering...

The landscape of things

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As found in the Nordic tradition of the Ting and the proto-parliamentary German Ding, Things once pertained to landscape-based community assemblies for discussing matters of importance. Over time, as these forums moved indoors, the meaning of the word thing drifted towards its current use to refer to inanimate objects or events to which we are indifferent. Divested of its thingness, the concept of landscape also shifted from an active agent in cultural practice to a physical scene. Set within this historical context, the article explores design mechanisms for re-envisioning the landscape-thing in the present day. Drawing on concepts from the diverse cross-disciplinary field of thing theory, the article sketches a framework that considers the role, shape, and representation of contemporary landscape-things. This framework contributes to the advancement of landscape agency in the field.

De/Framed Gardens: 2011 World Horticultural Expo, Xi’an, China

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

De/Framed Gardens: 2011 World Horticultural Expo, Xi’an, China

Unleveling the Land: On Sand and Lava

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Unleveling the Land: On Sand and Lava

Cultivating the City: Instilling Urban Design in Landscape Architectural Education

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cultivating the City: Instilling Urban Design in Landscape Architectural Education

HIGH FIDELITY

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

HIGH FIDELITY

Three Lavas

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Three Lavas

Landshape urbanism: The topography of public space

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Landshape urbanism: The topography of public space

Lava Life: Homesteading in Kilauea’s Active Rift Zone

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Lava Life: Homesteading in Kilauea’s Active Rift Zone

The Gravity of Things: Grounding Landscape Parliaments in California’s Borderlands

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Gravity of Things: Grounding Landscape Parliaments in California’s Borderlands

Things that Matter: Shaping Landscape Agency in the Anthropocene

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Things that Matter: Shaping Landscape Agency in the Anthropocene

Mapping Mountain Pine Beetle Mortality through Growth Trend Analysis of Time-Series Landsat Data

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Disturbances are key processes in the carbon cycle of forests and other ecosystems. In recent decades, mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks have become more frequent and extensive in western North America. Remote sensing has the ability to fill the data gaps of long-term infestation monitoring, but the elimination of observational noise and attributing changes quantitatively are two main challenges in its effective application. Here, we present a forest growth trend analysis method that integrates Landsat temporal trajectories and decision tree techniques to derive annual forest disturbance maps over an 11-year period. The temporal trajectory component successfully captures the disturbance events as represented by spectral segments, whereas decision tree modeling efficiently recognizes and attributes events based upon the characteristics of the segments. Validated against a point set sampled across a gradient of MPB mortality, 86.74% to 94.00% overall...

Design and Planning Opportunities for the Big Sur Region - UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

WILDERNESS / UX - DESIGN RESEARCH “Design & Planning Opportunities for the Big Sur Region” THIS RESEARCH WAS SUPPORTED BY THE PEDER SATHER CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY AT UC BERKELEY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING UC BERKELEY LDARCH 203 - FALL 2023 Isaiah Rapko Olivia Jones Lynsey Coke-Ferreira Aishwarya Dharmarajan Eli Demosthenes Lulu Liu Dongni Ma Luis Lu Jie Han Aishvarya Dubey Alex Jordan Claudia Lamberty Instructor: Richard

Investigating the Links between Climate Injustice and Ableism: A Measurement of Green Space Access Inequalities within Disability Subgroups

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Investigating the Links between Climate Injustice and Ableism: A Measurement of Green Space Access Inequalities within Disability Subgroups

Technical Lands: A patent Perspective

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Technical Lands: A Critical Primer

Patents and physical geography have paralleled each other for more than

six centuries. The systems, modules, instruments, strategies, material

processes, and devices disclosed in patents transform landscapes, construct

sites, and are integrated into the everyday environment. Patent law, and the

bureaucratic infrastructure that supports the global patent system, also

have geographical dimensions through the management of sequential

innovation, transfer of technology, and strategic initiatives at the intersection

of innovation and environment. The agency of patent law and patented

technology is particularly relevant today, as environmental systems and the

infrastructure of urban landscapes become more technologically advanced,

networked, logistical, and integrated, simultaneously expanding the disciplinary

scope of environmental design and planning disciplines while challenging

conventions...

Ecological History of Los Laureles-Goat Canyon

Fri, 3 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ecological History of Los Laureles-Goat Canyon

The canal and the pool: infrastructures of abundance and the invention of the modern desert

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Modernist ontologies of water physically materialise in Phoenix’s landscape: over 100 miles of canals convey water to the suburban grid, where thousands of gallons are piped into backyard swimming pools. The canal and pool are thus joined in architectural folly to move, hold, and control water in the service of sustaining the belief that dry ecologies are but supply chain problems in need of engineering solutions. These typologies reveal longstanding entanglements between the promises of modernity and aridland urbanism; and they further amplify the immense challenge of transitioning away from modern water infrastructure in the face of climate change. By using the canal and the pool as signifiers of the insidious entanglements between modernity, growth, and aridland urbanism, this article advances an historical examination of Phoenix that destabilises tropes of water scarcity as a problem to be solved but which has also created cultural perceptions of abundant water.

How to draw a dust storm

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How to draw a dust storm

Waving the Magic Wand: An Argument for Reorganizing the Aridlands around Watersheds

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Waving the Magic Wand: An Argument for Reorganizing the Aridlands around Watersheds

Waters Resist

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Modern ideology strips water of its sociocultural and political contexts, reducing it to the scientific abstraction of H2O. This reductivist approach to water has erased longstanding ontologies and physically transformed America's aridlands to advance modern political and economic agendas. By studying the 1947 proposal for the Orme Dam and the Yavapai Nation's forty-year resistance to it, this paper reveals the interconnected relationship between modern ideology and the design, development, and management of the environment. I also suggest that the inclusion of alternative ontologies can inspire the design of more just and resilient environments.

Strategic basin and delta planning increases the resilience of the Mekong Delta under future uncertainty

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The climate resilience of river deltas is threatened by rising sea levels, accelerated land subsidence, and reduced sediment supply from contributing river basins. Yet, these uncertain and rapidly changing threats are rarely considered in conjunction. Here we provide an integrated assessment, on basin and delta scales, to identify key planning levers for increasing the climate resilience of the Mekong Delta. We find, first, that 23 to 90% of this unusually productive delta might fall below sea level by 2100, with the large uncertainty driven mainly by future management of groundwater pumping and associated land subsidence. Second, maintaining sediment supply from the basin is crucial under all scenarios for maintaining delta land and enhancing the climate resilience of the system. We then use a bottom-up approach to identify basin development scenarios that are compatible with maintaining sediment supply at current levels. This analysis highlights, third, that strategic placement...

How Eco is Eco-Tourism? A Systematic Assessment of Resorts on the Red Sea, Egypt

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How Eco is Eco-Tourism? A Systematic Assessment of Resorts on the Red Sea, Egypt

Greenness, texture, and spatial relationships predict floristic diversity across wetlands of the conterminous United States

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Plant diversity safeguards wetland ecosystem functions, stability, and resilience, but is threatened by habitat loss and degradation. Remote sensing could support the cost-effective management of biodiversity by providing consistent and frequent data at large scales. While identifying individual species from remote sensing datasets with low spatial and spectral resolution is challenging, studies can focus on factors known to correlate with or promote diversity. We tested the predictive potential of such factors — maximum annual greenness as an indicator of productivity, texture (i.e., spatial arrangement of grey tones) as a proxy for habitat heterogeneity, and spatial autocorrelation — across a dataset of 1115 wetlands in the conterminous United States surveyed by the EPA’s National Wetland Condition Assessment. We used multivariate linear regressions to test whether spectral and spatial metrics derived from two open-source datasets — NASA’s Landsat 5 TM and 7 ETM+ (30 m,...

Impacts of sediment derived from erosion of partially-constructed road on aquatic organisms in a tropical river: The Río San Juan, Nicaragua and Costa Rica

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout the humid tropics, increased land disturbance and concomitant road construction increases erosion and sediment delivery to rivers. Building road networks in developing countries is commonly a priority for international development funding based on anticipated socio-economic benefits. Yet the resulting erosion from roads, which recent studies have shown result in at least ten-fold increases in erosion rates, is not fully accounted for. While effects of road-derived sediment on aquatic ecosystems have been documented in temperate climates, little has been published on the effects of road-induced sediment on aquatic ecosystems in developing countries of the tropics. We studied periphyton biomass and macroinvertebrate communities on the deltas of Río San Juan tributaries, comparing north-bank tributaries draining undisturbed rain forest with south-bank tributaries receiving runoff from a partially-built road experiencing rapid erosion. Periphyton biomass, richness and abundance...

The Tsinghua–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China: unlocking the power of cities for a healthy China

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Tsinghua–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China: unlocking the power of cities for a healthy China

Remotely sensed phenological heterogeneity of restored wetlands: linking vegetation structure and function

Tue, 6 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Seasonal phenological dynamics of vegetation hold important clues on ecosystem performance towards management goals, such as carbon uptake, and thus should be considered in projections of their targeted services. However, in wetlands spatio-temporal heterogeneity due to mixing of open water, soil, green and dead vegetation makes it difficult to generalize ecosystem functioning across different regions. Remote sensing observations can provide spatially-explicit, cost-effective phenology indicators; however, little is known about their capacity to indicate the links between wetland ecosystem structure and function. Here we assessed this potential by comparing one-year Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from satellite products at high (5m; RapidEye) and low (30m; Landsat) spatial resolutions with eddy covariance time series of net carbon exchange, field digital camera (phenocam) greenness and water temperature among three floristically similar restored wetlands in California, USA. Phenological...

Integration of the WUDAPT, WRF, and ENVI-met models to simulate extreme daytime temperature mitigation strategies in San Jose, California

Tue, 6 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

An obstacle to the modeling of strategies to mitigate extreme urban temperatures is frequently the lack of on-site meteorological data. The current study thus reports on a method that used the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to generate inputs for the ENVI-met model to produce building-scale canyon temperatures within a 300 m square near downtown San Jose. A land use distribution was generated for WRF by a WUDAPT classification, and the days of interest were then the hottest day in California history and a typical summer day. The source of meteorological data for ENVI-met, run with a 1.5 m cubic grid, was either an urbanized version of WRF; its default version; or observations at the closest NWS site. All WRF simulations were run on a 1 km grid, and output at its grid closest to the study area provided ENVI-met with lateral boundary conditions. The mitigation strategy was comprised of three parts, which either increased vegetation, rooftop albedo, or architectural...

Exchange of medicinal plant information in California missions

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

BackgroundMissions were established in California in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to convert Native Americans to Christianity and enculturate them into a class of laborers for Californios (Spanish/Mexican settler). The concentration of large numbers of Native Americans at the Missions, along with the introduction of European diseases, led to serious disease problems. Medicinal supplies brought to California by the missionaries were limited in quantity. This situation resulted in an opportunity for the sharing of knowledge of medicinal plants between the Native Americans and the Mission priests. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree to which such sharing of knowledge took place and to understand factors that may have influenced the sharing of medicinal knowledge. The study also examines the sharing of medicinal knowledge between the Native Americans and the Californios following the demise of the California Missions.MethodsTwo methods were employed in the...

Deploy diverse renewables to save tropical rivers

Tue, 26 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A strategic mix of solar, wind and storage technologies around river basins would be safer and cheaper than building large dams, argue Rafael J. P. Schmitt, Noah Kittner and colleagues.

Planning dam portfolios for low sediment trapping shows limits for sustainable hydropower in the Mekong

Fri, 15 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The transboundary Mekong Basin has been dubbed the "Battery of Southeast Asia" for its large hydropower potential. Development of hydropower dams in the six riparian countries proceeds without strategic analyses of dam impacts, e.g., reduced sediment delivery to the lower Mekong. This will impact some of the world's largest freshwater fisheries and endangers the resilience of the delta, which supports 17 million livelihoods, against rising sea levels. To highlight alternatives, we contribute an optimization-based framework for strategic sequencing of dam development. We quantify lost opportunities from past development and identify remaining opportunities for better tradeoffs between sediment and hydropower. We find that limited opportunities remain for less impactful hydropower in the lower basin, where most development is currently planned, while better trade-offs could be reached with dams in the upper Mekong in China. Our results offer a strategic vision for hydropower in...

Landscape beauty: A wicked problem in sustainable ecosystem management?

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Recent discourses on sustainable ecosystem management have increasingly emphasized the importance of bundling relationships and interactions among multiple ecosystem services supported by similar natural and anthropogenic mechanisms within the total environment. Yet, the aesthetic benefits of ecosystems, playing critical role in management of both wild and anthropogenic landscapes, have been under-represented in these discussions. This disregard contributes to the disconnection between environmental science and practice and limits our understanding of ecological and societal implications of management decisions that either generate aesthetic benefits or impact them while targeting other ecosystem services. This discussion reviews several "wicked problems" that arise due to such limited understanding, focusing on three recognized challenges in present-day ecosystem management: replacement of natural ecosystem functions, spatial decoupling of service beneficiaries from its environmental...

The geographical dimensions of patent innovation: history, precedents, praxis, and pedagogy, in an expanded field of landscape technology.

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Innovation has geographical dimensions, ranging from site and building technology, to infrastructure and environmental systems. As the allied professions of environmental design expand disciplinary scope beyond aesthetics into questions of territory, landscape infrastructure, performance-based design, and issues related to climate adaptation and the Anthropocene, an expanded concept of technology and innovation becomes essential to address new pedagogical adjectives and praxis. One of the most effective ways to track technological change in a specific sector of technology is through patent innovation. The global patent archive is the world’s largest technological dossier. An estimated 90 million patents have been granted globally, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) alone has issued more than 10 million patents since 1790. A unique subset of these inventions relate to site and building technology as well as large-scale environmental systems such as rivers,...

Sediment Management in Taiwan’s Reservoirs and Barriers to Implementation

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Reservoirs play a critically important role in supplying water for human uses. However, sedimentation limits storage capabilities and increases risk for aging infrastructure. The objectives of this paper are to synthesize both general sediment management strategies and past sediment management efforts in Taiwan in order to identify the barriers to more effective sediment management in reservoirs globally. A review of the broader literature and six Taiwan case studies was conducted to examine the characteristics, limitations, costs, and effectiveness of different sediment management strategies. Results highlight how social barriers play an important role in limiting reservoir sustainability, particularly the crisis-response approach to addressing sedimentation and the low priority for sediment management relative to competing objectives, such as tourism. Technical barriers are driven primarily by the engineering and costs of retrofitting existing dams and site conditions that may...

Large Rivers in the Anthropocene: Insights and tools for understanding climatic, land use, and reservoir influences

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Since the industrial revolution, human impacts on landscapes and river systems globally have intensified significantly. Humans nowadays artificially increase and decrease fluxes of water, sediment and nutrients on a scale far exceeding natural fluxes. Rivers integrate such changes occurring throughout their drainage basins, and thus can be considered as indicators of landscape processes and river basin "health" more broadly. This special issue brings together a set of papers that explore interactions of climate change and river processes, influences of land use changes, effects of reservoirs, as well as new approaches to sorting out the relative importance of these diverse influences on rivers and uncertainties in modeling future behavior. These papers contribute to a growing body of work demonstrating the fundamental differences between large rivers in the Anthropocene and rivers in prior time periods. © 2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

Sustainable sediment management in reservoirs and regulated rivers: Experiences from five continents

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sustainable sediment management in reservoirs and regulated rivers: Experiences from five continents

SEDIMENT STARVATION FROM DAMS IN THE LOWER MEKONG RIVER BASIN: MAGNITUDE OF THE EFFECT AND POTENTIAL MITIGATION OPPORTUNITIES

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

SEDIMENT STARVATION FROM DAMS IN THE LOWER MEKONG RIVER BASIN: MAGNITUDE OF THE EFFECT AND POTENTIAL MITIGATION OPPORTUNITIES

Geospatial Tools for the Large-Scale Monitoring of Wetlands in the San Francisco Estuary: Opportunities and Challenges

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Significant wetland losses and continuing threats to remnant habitats have motivated extensive restoration efforts in the San Francisco Bay–Delta estuary of California, the largest in the western United States. Consistent monitoring of ecological outcomes from this restoration effort would help managers learn from past projects to improve the design of future endeavors. However, budget constraints and challenging field conditions can limit the scope of current monitoring programs. Geospatial tools and remote sensing data sets could help complement field efforts for a low-cost, longer, and broader monitoring of wetland resources. To understand where geospatial tools could best complement current field monitoring practices, we reviewed the metrics and monitoring methods used by 42 wetland restoration projects implemented in the estuary. Monitoring strategies within our sample of monitoring plans relied predominantly on field surveys to assess key aspects of vegetation recovery...

Inventing Venice:An Urban and Environmental Innovation Model from the Lagoon City

Wed, 9 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Innovation in physical urban infrastructure is a vital component of city making in an era of sea level rise, climate change, and rapid urbanization. Venice pioneered an urban and environmental innovation model in the 14th and 15th century, successfully negotiating the cities complex geography and the sociotechnical processes that characterized Renaissance urbanism. A review of early inventor rights issued in the city suggests that the process of patent innovation facilitated urbanization of the Venetian lagoon through development of advanced drainage, dredge, irrigation, and reclamation infrastructure, essential to the city’s survival. In addition to granting patents for new inventions, the Venetian government established expert review for proposed inventions, supported prototyping and testing for untried technologies, and used patent rights to attract experts with novel inventions from across Italy and Europe. These processes, in addition to the extensive dossier of patents issued...

The Hard Habitats of Coastal Armoring

Wed, 5 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This book aims to discuss contemporary ideas about planning and design for coastal resilience, how our thinking about the coast has changed to be far more dynamic and less stable, and to include a better understanding of the implications of ...

Prototyping the Mississippi Delta: Patents, alternative futures, and the design of complex environmental systems

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The bird foot delta of the Mississippi River exists at the nexus of cultural and environmental forces. Attempts to build navigable channels through this dynamic deltaic landscape illustrate the tension between human necessity and transformation of river systems. Each channel cut through the delta served the dual function of facilitating navigation to the Mississippi’s epic inland waterway, while simultaneously expediting the movement of valuable sediment to ever-deeper water, ultimately robbing the delta and its environs of life-sustaining substrata. Technological innovation paralleled transformation of the delta, and as the navigable channels advanced, so too did the methods and devices used to rake, exhume, and define new paths for ships. This ‘modern’ history is strikingly well preserved in the geomorphology of the river as well as in the archives of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A forensic look at patent documents for the period suggests that two unrealized...

PATENTS, AGENCY, AND ENVIRONMENT

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PATENTS, AGENCY, AND ENVIRONMENT

Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River

Tue, 22 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River

A vertical garden: origins of the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System (1938)

Tue, 22 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A vertical garden: origins of the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System (1938)

The drone’s eye: applications and implications for landscape architecture

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The use of next-generation automated consumer drones for aerial imaging and mapping is increasingly common. As a field that recurrently seeks new mapping methods, the practical aspects of drone imaging and mapping are most evidently applicable to landscape architecture. However, as a social art, landscape architecture also has a vested interest in the cultural implications of the consumer-oriented features of next-generation drones. This article bridges these professional and amateur domains of drone use. First, the article uses a topographically complex case study site to compare drone functionality against established imaging and mapping technologies. Second, the article interprets the potential implications of these applications on the practice and theory of landscape architecture. The article concludes that high fidelity drone mapping has the capacity to refocus contemporary landscape discourse from a predominantly satellite-based viewpoint to the site scale at which landscape...

Reconceptualizing Suburban Terracing: Topographically Responsive Development Scenarios for a Sandy Coastal Site

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Originally developed in California, earthwork terracing has proliferated worldwide as an expedient method for grading terrain for subdivision development. In Western Australia, terracing is now entrenched as conventional practice for facilitating suburban development on highly malleable coastal dunes. Although the adoption of international urban design models was partially intended to reduce topographic modification, retaining walls continue to increase in height and extent. To address this disjunction between theory and practice in current suburban development, this article tests landscape-based urban design mechanisms for improving the conservation and expression of natural topography on a coastal site in Perth, Western Australia. With the international growth of coastal suburbanization, the article contributes to the establishment of more topographically sensitive suburban planning practices on steep coastal settings.

The Shape of Things: Re-imagining Landscape Parliaments in the Anthropocene

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Shape of Things: Re-imagining Landscape Parliaments in the Anthropocene

Design with (human) nature: recovering the creative instrumentality of social data in urban design

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In the mid-twentieth century, environmental psychology emerged as a field of significant potential that aimed to methodically decipher the influence of environments on human behaviour. However, by the 1980s innovation slowed, due in part to the limitations of the analogue technologies and techniques of the day that curtailed the field’s wider application to urban design and planning. Across a similar timeframe, ecologically based methods for organizing the urban landscape also waned. However, unlike environmental psychology, ecological planning underwent considerable renewal in the late 1990s. Technology played a significant role, with access to ubiquitous high-resolution satellite imagery and advances in GIS applications ultimately catalyzing the urban design paradigm of landscape urbanism. Although useful, the ecological design framework that came to define landscape urbanism offered only a partial account of urban design. To address this imbalance, this paper considers how...

Aerial Reconnaissance: Drone Mapping Complex Landscapes in High Fidelity

Thu, 9 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Aerial Reconnaissance: Drone Mapping Complex Landscapes in High Fidelity

Fields of Decline: Landscape Strategies in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt Region

Thu, 9 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Fields of Decline: Landscape Strategies in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt Region

Dis/orientation machines: journeys into labyrinthine landscapes

Tue, 7 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Dis/orientation machines: journeys into labyrinthine landscapes

Territory and Technology: a case study and strategy from the california delta

Sat, 4 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Territory and Technology: a case study and strategy from the california delta

California's Legacy of Swamplands

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

California is living with a legacy of swamplands. The consecutive Swamp Land Acts (1949, 1850, and

1860) were among the ?rst federal water policies to reach newly minted western and southern states,

designed ostensibly to encourage reclamation and settlement of wet and inundated areas. They are

known today to have displaced indigenous cultures, retooled ecological systems, incentivized risky

prospecting, and left California and large swaths of America with aging ?ood infrastructure projected

to cost billions. However ?awed, the legacy (and trappings) of the Swamp Land Acts are worthy of

further consideration as a vast environmental, cultural, and technical experiment that aimed to build

extensive drainage and ?ood infrastructure throughout millions of acres on a shoestring budget.

Inventing Landscapes

Thu, 6 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Inventing Landscapes

The Satellite’s Progeny: Digital Chorography in the Age of Drone Vision