Reclamation and Restoration PPN Publishes Newsletter

ASLA’s Reclamation and Restoration PPN is pleased to announce the availability of its February 2007 newsletter, which can be accessed here [pdf].

In this issue:

• Joe Howard, ASLA, shows how ecologically oriented landscape architects and biologists can work together effectively as team members on restoration projects. As an example, Howard uses the Kobold Creek Reconstruction project in Contra Costa County, California, where LAs and biologists “collaborated to transform an eroded, debris-filled ravine into a natural creek channel with boulder and log weirs, pools, and riparian habitat.” In this team effort, biologists set the ecological goals; biologists and LAs worked together on design criteria; and LAs, with oversight from the biologists, developed the construction drawings, translating scientific concepts into projects easily understood by contractors.
• Keith Bowers, ASLA, presents a thought-provoking article about what it takes to successfully plan, undertake, and sustain an ecological restoration project. Research, tools, knowledge of the right soils and plants are all important, but people are even more essential, Bowers concludes. He sketches out a means for bringing all stakeholders, even the disenfranchised, into the process of planning, implementing, and monitoring projects.
• Matt Quinn describes how bioengineering techniques were integrated into ecological restoration designs for stream rehabilitation projects around Dublin, California. A goal of one such project was to restore habitat for the benefit of the federally listed California red-legged frog. Two years after this project was completed, surveys showed the frog was using rootwad and log structures put in place during the project.
• Kenneth Bahlinger and Lee R. Skabelund, ASLA, detail efforts at restoring Lousiana’s coastal marshes, a process under way long before the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. With descriptions illustrated with before and after photos, they show both the devastation and, in some cases, the benefits to wetlands of these storms. Before and after photos also convey effectively some important techniques of coastal restoration, such as sand fencing and terracing. The value of landscape architects who can balance the concerns of both engineers and biologists on restoration projects is underscored.
• Intern Tor Janson, Student ASLA, provides the results of some of his work on behalf of the PPN, including developing an outline of prominent topics and themes in the area of restoration/reclamation and reviewing an article on measuring restoration success published in the journal Restoration Ecology.

For additional information about the Reclamation and Restoration PPN, visit the group’s website at http://host.asla.org/groups/rrpigroup/. For information about ASLA’s other Professional Practice Networks, and links to PPN home pages, visit the main PPN website at http://www.asla.org/members/ppn/home.htm.