The Preliminary Standards and Guidelines for Sustainable Landscape Design & Architecture
The report, a standards and guidelines report from the Sustainable Sites Initiative, lists more than 200 ways to improve the ecosystem services that landscapes of all sizes and in all regions of the country can provide.
Ecosystem services — a way of describing the benefits of a naturally functioning ecosystem, such as the ways bees, birds or bats pollinate crops; wetlands provide flood protection; or how plants and soils filter water — are increasingly applied to urban, commercial or other human habitats as well, as a way of restoring natural processes to every landscape.
The report from the Sustainable Sites Initiative follows from the nine guiding principles of the organization, which are:
- Do No Harm
- Precautionary Principle
- Design with Nature and Culture
- Use a Decision-Making Hierarchy of Preservation, Conservation, and Regeneration
- Provide Regenerative Systems as Intergenerational Equity
- Support a Living Process
- Use a Systems Thinking Approach
- Use a Collaborative and Ethical Approach
- Maintain Integrity in Leadership and Research
The report is divided into five chapters, first outlining the mission and goals of the Initiative, and then discussing in-depth the ways that ecosystem services improve the environment and laying out strategies to achieve goals that landscape architects should keep in mind for each of five necessary elements of the ecosystems: soils, hydrology, vegetation, materials and human well-being.
This report is the first stage of the development of a Sustainable Sites element of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System. The group is seeking comment from landscape and design professionals through January 2008 at SustainableSites.org.
