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Climate and Biodiversity News (July 2025)

July 14, 2025 by Jared Green

ASLA 2023 Professional Analysis and Planning Honor Award. Reimagine Middle Branch Plan. Baltimore, Maryland. Field Operations / Field Operations and the Reimagine Middle Branch planning team

Flood Risk Is Widespread in the U.S. Few People Have Insurance for It, NPR, July 14
There is a major flood insurance gap: the vast majority of U.S. counties have experienced flooding over the past few decades, but only 4 percent of homeowners have federal or private flood insurance. One estimate found that a flood insurance policy can be an additional 30 to 75 percent on top of standard homeowners insurance.

I’m a Climate Scientist in Texas. Here’s What the Floods Tell Us, Time, July 10
Katherine Hayhoe, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, argues that climate change isn’t creating new risks but amplifying existing ones. “We need to prepare for what’s coming, not just what’s happened before. That means that we need more data, more expertise, more preparation, more communication, and more follow through, to keep people safe.”

What’s Holding Back Natural Climate Solutions?, Mongabay, July 14
New research from the University of Colorado at Boulder analyzed 352 peer-reviewed studies from 135 countries and documented nearly 2,500 barriers to implementing natural climate solutions. They found that “insufficient funding, patchy information, ineffective policies, and public skepticism” were top obstacles to achieving more nature-based solutions like reforestation and wetland restoration.

Baltimore’s Wetlands Restoration Pushes Ahead Despite Federal Funding Setbacks, Inside Climate News, July 13
The Middle Branch Resiliency Initiative, planned and designed by landscape architects at Field Operations, with Mahan Rykiel, DesignJones LLC, Kofi Boone, FASLA, NC State University, and The Urban Studio, lost $32 million in grant funding when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program was cut. The state of Maryland, local agencies, and private philanthropies have made up much of the shortfall.

As Nations Lag on Climate Action, Their Cities Are Stepping Up. Here’s Proof, Grist, July 2
Three-quarters of the world’s leading cities that are part of the C40 network are cutting greenhouse gas emissions faster than their national governments. A new report found that while global emissions continue to increase, per capita emissions across these leading cities fell 7.5 percent on average between 2015 and 2024.

European Union Targets 90% Cut in Emissions by 2040 as Green Groups Cry Foul, The Guardian, July 2
The new approach, which allows for the purchase of carbon offsets from other countries, raises concerns about whether true greenhouse emission cuts will be achieved. The EU has to submit a new climate plan before COP30 in Brazil later this year.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Bold Solutions from Emerging Landscape Architecture Leaders (Part II)

July 12, 2025 by Jared Green

Environmental Threat Today / David Buckley Borden

Research on climate change, biodiversity loss, and systemic inequities is being undermined. But there are still “crevices, nooks, and crannies” where important independent research is being conducted. “We need to nurture, protect, and enable these ‘petri dishes,’ no matter how small,” said Lucinda Sanders, FASLA, CEO of OLIN, during the kick-off of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF)’s latest Leadership and Innovation Symposium.

“We need to super-commit and do the hard work. We need to be action-oriented and advocates for healing. Respect, dignity, and love are foundational to our survival.”

Sanders introduced the latest class of six LAF Leadership and Innovation Fellows. They outlined the result of their year-long research, envisioning positive new futures in the areas of infrastructure, policy, public engagement, and agriculture:

“We are losing the cultural war on climate change because of a lack of effective communications,” argued David Buckley Borden, senior advisor of creative practice and innovation, Center for the Future of Forests and Society, Oregon State University, and associate research professor, University of Oregon College of Design. “Landscape architects can better engage the scientific community to close the science-communications gap. Landscape architects can contribute to expanding public eco-literacy.”

Site-based learning about climate change and biodiversity exists only in the margins, in “bougie garden festivals,” Borden said. Most designed landscapes are “not communicating environmental science,” even though they may be informed by science. He pointed to Teardrop Park in Battery Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, as a positive example of how to communicate earth sciences through design.

He said landscape architects can go beyond simply transferring scientific information to the public, instead using strategies that convey, contribute, contextualize, and criticize. He called for bringing in the visual arts, humor, pop culture, and applying a collaborative design process to scientific communications.

Tick Check Point, Harvard Forest, 2017 / David Buckley Borden et al,

His own work integrates a design studio with scientific labs and networks, helping to reframe landscapes as “hybrid collective space.”

Collaboratory / / David Buckley Borden

What do landscape architects have to do with farming and ranching? “Agriculture is the largest land use on Earth,” said Forbes Lipschitz, associate professor of landscape architecture, The Ohio State University. The agricultural sector shapes ecosystems and communities across the planet. So landscape architects need to get involved in “reframing and reshaping” the sector.

A climate justice strategy is needed to “break free” from current industrial, extractive agricultural practices and shift towards a more just and sustainable food system. For Lipschitz, elevating Indigenous approaches to food is key to this climate justice strategy.

She spent months traveling, exploring how the industrial food systems of the U.S. works. “It is not a single coordinated spatial arrangement.” There are more than 33 million cows, 124 million hogs, and 9 billion chickens, who produce more than 96 billion eggs per year. She calculated that shifting to a more plant-based diet would free up massive amounts of land, significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable “climate repair on a planetary scale.” She envisions a model like the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program, which restores parts of the ecosystems of farms, but now also enabling greater Indigenous stewardship.

U.S. Conservation Reserve Program analysis / Forbes Lipschitz

“Native communities have the vision and knowledge” of how to manage and harvest lands in a more sustainable, ecological way.

“How might a former soybean field be reforested by Fond du Lac tribe, who might harvest foods like acorns, venison and wild mushrooms” / Forbes Lipschitz

Agroforestry is a significant untapped opportunity, argued Amy Whitesides, design critic, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The approach involves combining trees and plants with crops or livestock. A type of agroforestry is silvopasture, which just focuses on integrating forest and livestock grazing. Today, just two percent of U.S. farms are agroforests.

Billions of dollars were allocated for agroforestry, alley cropping, soil restoration, and other “climate-smart” agricultural practices as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. This support for farmers to increase carbon sequestration through the land was put on hold through an executive order, Whitesides said. Allocated funding is expected to be cut.

Agroforestry is a way to increase ecological restoration and carbon sequestration on farmland, Whitesides explained. She proposed a national agroforestry plan, focusing on degraded farms, former mines and military sites, and areas surrounding rivers. These marginal landscapes, which have experienced pollution and extraction, can be restored, with some grazing that adds value. Agroforesty can also be incorporated into floodplains, providing a nature-based solution to flooding.

Riparian agroforestry opportunities / Amy Whitesides

She envisions the benefits from “productive, collective commons” in new agroforested areas over the long-term.

Riparian agroforestry opportunities / Amy Whitesides

Read Part I

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Emerging Landscape Architecture Leaders Envision Better Futures (Part I)

July 12, 2025 by Jared Green

El Paso Pedestrian Pathways, El Paso, Texas / SWA Group, Jonnu Singleton

Research on climate change, biodiversity loss, and systemic inequities is now being undermined. But there are still “crevices, nooks, and crannies” where important independent research is being conducted. “We need to nurture, protect, and enable these ‘petri dishes,’ no matter how small,” said Lucinda Sanders, FASLA, CEO of OLIN, during the kick-off of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF)’s latest Leadership and Innovation Symposium.

“We need to super-commit and do the hard work. We need to be action-oriented and advocates for healing. Respect, dignity, and love are foundational to our survival.”

Sanders introduced the latest class of six LAF Leadership and Innovation Fellows. They outlined the result of their year-long research, envisioning positive new futures in the areas of infrastructure, policy, public engagement, and agriculture:

Embodied carbon emissions from the extraction, manufacturing, and construction of materials like concrete, steel, and foam can result in enormous carbon footprints for a landscape architecture projects. Planting trees and plants sequesters carbon but can take a long time to offset emissions generated from building landscapes. Through her research, Anya Domlesky, ASLA, PLA, director of research at SWA Group, a landscape architecture and urban design firm, found some landscapes can take up to 200 years to become carbon neutral.

The next stage of “deep decarbonization” of the built environment must focus on reusing infrastructure, saving the emissions embedded in existing concrete and steel. Domlesky thinks ports, bridges, rail lines, roads, highways, and river infrastructure can all be adapted. “We can graft new uses on existing transportation infrastructure.” This kind of adaptation can “be climate action, if done right.”

She offered examples: an old bridge was remodeled to include a bike way; another was modified to expand space just for pedestrians. Urban forms can be redesigned to increase liveability and active transportation. The vast spaces now used by cars, including roadways and parking lots, take up 13-39 percent of cities’ areas, totaling more than 4,208 square feet (391 meters) per person. “A 10 percent reduction in roadways alone would generate $28 billion in value.”

El Paso Pedestrian Pathway, El Paso, Texas / SWA Group

A new policy framework is needed to undo widespread damage to rivers and water bodies, explained Aaron Hernandez, ASLA, an associate with the landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand. Focusing on Toronto, Canada, he explained how the rights of industry have trumped those of nature for centuries, leading to a concrete landscape, extreme flooding, and chemical pollution.

Map of hidden rivers (light blue), flooding areas (dark blue), and rail and industrial infrastructure (red and pink) in Toronto, Canada / Aaron Hernandez

Hernandez said transformational policy changes are needed, rooted in the legal recognition of the “agency of nature.” Rights for rivers, forests, and entire ecosystems can enable new forms of governance, restoring stewardship rights to Indigenous peoples.

The rights of nature movement started in the 1970s. In recent years, rivers in New Zealand, the U.S., and Colombia have achieved legal personhood. In 2021, the Mutuhekau Shipu, also known as the Magpie River, in Canada was granted legal rights by the Innu First Nation of Canada. It now has the right to flow, maintain its biodiversity, be free of pollution, and sue. In Toronto, Hernandez thinks rights for the Rouge National Urban Park would be a way to launch the ecological restoration of the greater Toronto region. But “a river is a community,” so restoration must be rooted in reciprocal relationships with the land and Indigenous peoples.

Rouge River watershed / Aaron Hernandez

To have greater impact, landscape architecture projects should be designed as learning labs, with curricula for K-12 educators, argued Brad Howe, ASLA, PLA, principal at SCAPE Landscape Architecture. Parks can become an “extension of the classroom” and “provide immersive STEM education.” Teaching the community about landscapes will grow the next generation of stewards and advocates.

SCAPE has been applying a “design, build, teach” approach with its Living Breakwaters in Staten Island, New York, and Tom Lee Park in Memphis, Tennessee. Both projects have “ready to use curricula” for teachers, developed with educational partners.

ASLA 2024 Professional General Design Honor Award. Tom Lee Park: “Come to the River.” Memphis, Tennessee. SCAPE Landscape Architecture, Studio Gang / Connor Ryan

For Tom Lee Park, Howe and the team at SCAPE, along with design partner Studio Gang, worked with students and educators early in the design process to develop accessible site elements that teach students about place making, ecological design, biodiversity, climate resilience, and more. “We planted over 1,000 trees, with a diverse canopy, including 10 different species of oaks.” The park is now used to teach all 3rd and 9th grade students in Memphis each year about “how trees are important to ecosystems, including birds and insects”; how they provide shade and cooling, using heat readings. And “we designed pollinator labs at the edge of the river.”

Pollinator Lab at Tom Lee Park, Memphis, Tennessee / SCAPE

Landscape-based education can take many forms — from self-guided tours to field trips and full integration into classroom learning. Howe said landscape architects are “not experts in curricula” but can be a bridge between clients and educators, enable collaboration, and “shape the learning context.”

Filed Under: Education

New Resource Helps Landscape Architects Find Environmental Product Data

June 26, 2025 by Jared Green

ASLA 2023 Professional Urban Design Award of Excellence. Heart of the City: Art and Equity in Process and Place. Rochester, Minnesota. Coen+Partners. Benches by Landscape Forms, which has developed environmental product declarations (EPDs) for its products / Sahar Coston-Hardy

ASLA and its Climate & Biodiversity Action Committee have developed a new hub that brings together environmental product data from landscape architecture product manufacturers and material suppliers in the U.S. and worldwide.

The freely-accessible resource enables landscape architects to find products and materials with:

  • Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)
  • Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs)
  • Eco-Label certifications (Forest Stewardship Council, etc)

It also includes industry-wide EPDs developed by associations representing manufacturers and suppliers. Industry-wide EPDs set baselines for product categories, such as bricks or pre-cast concrete.

“Products and materials make up more than 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from landscape architecture projects. They also have impacts on biodiversity and air and water quality. We need to look at environmental product data so we can be more aware of the impacts of what we specify and speed up our efforts to track and cut our emissions,” said Aida Curtis, FASLA, PLA, Chair, ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Committee.

“We applaud the product manufacturers and suppliers that have invested in providing EPDs and other product data to landscape architects. The entire landscape architecture community benefits from transparent, third-party verified product data – it enables us to achieve our collective climate and biodiversity goals faster,” said ASLA President Kona Gray, FASLA, PLA.

The resource will be updated on a rolling, monthly basis. Current ASLA Corporate Members and current and past ASLA Conference sponsors, EXPO exhibitors, and Landscape Architecture Magazine advertisers can submit their product data. The ASLA Corporate Member Committee is providing support to landscape architecture product manufacturers and suppliers that have questions on how to provide new data.

The hub also outlines other primary sources of EPDs and product data.

Landscape architects and product manufacturers can learn more about environmental product data through a resource released last year – Navigating Environmental Product Data: A Guide for Landscape Architects, Specifiers, and Industry Partners.

Navigating Environmental Product Data / ASLA

The guide was developed by Amy Syverson-Shaffer, ASLA, Landscape Forms and Sasha Anemone, ASLA, Salt Landscape Architects.

It outlines how EPDs and other environmental reporting can be used to understand the environmental impacts of landscape materials and products and make decisions to reduce those impacts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A New Plaza in Denver Shows the Beauty of Local Design

June 23, 2025 by Jared Green

Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

A plaza in downtown Denver, Colorado was a “harsh place,” a “terrible concrete plaza,” explained Kasey Toomey, PLA, landscape architect, artist, and senior project manager at Terremoto. “We decided to create a habitat, a green space for all these creatures” — not just people.

The new 18,000-square foot plaza purposefully creates space for insects and birds but also significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. All material, except for some Black Locust wood lumber and a few metal tables and chairs, was sourced within 100 miles. “We’re pretty fluid — we respond to local materials and product manufacturers’ expertise.”

Aerial view of the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Courtesy of Terremoto

Terremoto usually designs projects close to their home turf in southern California. With this opportunity, they wanted to see if they could apply their highly local, low-carbon design approach in another state.

Danielle VanLehe, landscape designer at Terremoto, said when they arrived in Denver they intentionally stayed in a hotel far from downtown. “We spent time hiking and immersing ourselves in the natural environment, which became our guide and helped us make decisions about plants and boulders.” Terremoto started the design process this way to ensure they were “respecting native ecosystems.”

They also partnered with Kevin Philip Williams, a local botanist and plant designer, to help them think through the native plant communities for the new plaza. The team curated a mix of plants that connect to foothill and short grass prairie ecosystems.

Plan for the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Courtesy of Terremoto

The designers also ran their plant selections by the local Audubon Society. They advised which plants would provide habitat for local bird species missing from downtown Denver. “We looked at plant structure, type, when they bloom, and which would provide nesting space and protective cover,” VonLehe said.

Diverse plantings at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto
Diverse plantings at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto
Diverse plantings at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

Given the tight budget of $1.3 million, there wasn’t enough for a fountain or basin for the plaza, which sits on top of the basement of the surrounding buildings. This led the team to design in boulders with natural depressions, which the team then set next to irrigation systems. The indents in the boulders catch water, providing a water source for insects and birds.

A bird drinks water from a boulder with a depression at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

With a conceptual design in place, Terremoto took their client out on a multi-day tour of nearby native plant nurseries, material suppliers, and product manufacturers. “In all our projects, we develop intimate relationships with materials and manufacturers. That process influenced the design of the plaza.”

They selected Lyons Sandstone for boulders, pavers, and decomposed granite, because they agreed to work with them in a collaborative way. “We started a dialogue with the quarry — exploring their stone yard to find those boulders with the depressions.” This approach also demonstrates their fluid approach to design: “In our first drawings, the plaza definitely wasn’t pink, but then we found this source,” Toomey said.

Pink stone pavers at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto
Pink stone pavers at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto
Pink stone pavers at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

They undertook a similar process to find a manufacturer that could transform old trees into sculptural benches. Terremoto selected Where Wood Meets Steel because the company could take a light touch to processing benches. “We usually only do one or two moves to an object or material — to keep it closest to its natural state.” Beyond the beauty of these natural materials, there are added benefits. Materials with little processing have much lower embodied carbon emissions and are often more economical.

Custom benches crafted from found local wood at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

The only material not from the local area is the Black Locust wood used for the decks, some benches, and other custom furniture. Toomey said it’s a strong, durable wood that is grown and processed in many parts of the U.S. It’s also a far better alternative to tropical hardwoods like Ipe. Extraction of Ipe causes immense harm to rainforest ecosystems.

Custom Black Locust benches and local boulders and decomposed granite at the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

Toomey thinks creating an “‘ecosystem’ with the developer, local builder and product manufacturers” is key to making authentic places that are connected to people and ecosystems. “It’s important to focus on local relationships and materials that build and deepen community.”

And it’s possible to forge these relationships in another place while minimizing travel emissions. Terremoto’s team took fewer but longer trips to Denver. “We inserted ourselves only when necessary.” To maximize efficiencies, they also participated in the construction process over five days, choreographing the placement of plants, benches, and boulders. “We were part of the team as it was being built.”

Construction of the Denver 17th Street Corner Plaza, Denver, Colorado / Danielle VonLehe, Courtesy of Terremoto

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Climate and Biodiversity News (June 2025)

June 17, 2025 by Jared Green

ASLA 2018 Student General Design Honor Award. Songs From The Ocean, Dancers From The Land: Rendering An Ecological Choreography of Coastal Habitats in Phuket, Thailand. Kate Jirasiritham, Student ASLA | Faculty Advisors: Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, ASLA; Matthew Seibert, Associate ASLA. The City College of New York

UN Ocean Summit in Nice Closes with Wave of Commitments, UN News, June 13
The conference was viewed as a major win for ocean conservation. It yielded new progress on making the High Seas Treaty international law and resulted in the Nice Ocean Action Plan, which is supported by a declaration by over 170 countries and more than 800 commitments by governments, scientists, and UN and other organizations.

Vietnam Launches First Phase of Emissions Trading Scheme, Reuters, June 11
Vietnam aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. To hit that goal, the country has required its concrete, steel, and power sectors — which account for approximately 50 percent of its emissions — to join an emissions trading scheme. Commercial buildings and cargo transportation will be added in later phases.

New Zealand Government Sued over ‘Inadequate’ Plan to Reduce Emissions, CNN, June 11
“This will be one of the first legal cases in the world challenging a government’s pursuit of a climate strategy that relies so heavily on offsetting rather than emissions reductions at source,” said one of the organizations suing the New Zealand government.

How Restored Wetlands Can Protect Europe from Russian Invasion, Yale Environment 360, June 10
The flooding of the Irpin Valley in Ukraine stopped a Russian advance. Scientists from Ukraine, Germany, and Poland are now looking at a broader European “natural defense” strategy that would include protecting and restoring thousands of miles of wetlands and forests, turning them into nature-based barriers that also provide climate and biodiversity benefits.

New Initiative Aims to Turn Vacant, Abandoned Lots into Parks, Spectrum News – NY1, May 27
The New York City government has committed a total of $80 million to purchasing abandoned lots, focusing on underserved communities that lack access to parks within a 10-minute walk. The City also plans on opening more schoolyards to the community after school, on the weekends, and during the summer.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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