Architecture Commons^™

Digital Cultural Heritage And Rural Landscapes: Preserving The Histories Of Landscape Conservation In The United States, Sarah Karle, Richard Carman

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

ultural landscape in the United States. Due to the size and scope of rural landscapes, large-scale documentation methods are critical to advancing landscape conservation and preservation initiatives. Using an in-progress online project to document a 1935 US federally sponsored program, the Prairie States Forestry Project (PSFP), the authors show how diverse visual and textual data can be spatialised to construct a map reading of landscape change over time. To date, the PSFP is one of the largest afforestation projects in the history of the United States; the United States Forest Service and thousands of landowners undertook a series of cooperative …

Recycled Substrates: Plant Biomass And Plant Cover Correlation, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Green roofs extend roof membrane life and reduce waste to landfills. However, green roof costs must be reduced if their benefits are to accrue more widely. Use of recycled materials may reduce costs and also keep those materials out of landfills. Some work has been done on use of local recycled materials for green roof substrates, but none describe the characteristics, proportions and results of using an entire suite of blended recycled materials in admixtures (i.e., mixtures of very different materials) such as crumb rubber (CR), crushed used brick (CB) and compost (CPT) in concert with greens grade sand (#10), …

Aesthetics For Green Roofs And Green Walls, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Do green roofs and green walls have aesthetic benefits? Most green roof proponents would say so. But what are they and how do they relate to green roof design in terms of species selection, planting arrangement, viewable context, access, maintenance and other factors? Aesthetics according to the Green Roof Design 101 Manual 2^nd Ed (GRHC 2006) provides “pleasure- and psycho-physiologically-oriented benefits” but, this narrow understanding suggests that the aesthetic potential of green roofs is limited to what one might experience looking upon any garden. We suggest other ways that need exploring to make aesthetics more relevant and understandable to …

Seeding Green Roofs With Native Grasses, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

During six years of native grass establishment and growth on four green roofs, we sought to understand appropriate seeding seasons and spacing, the amount of time to reach the industry 80% coverage threshold (FLL 2008), the seed yield projections for volunteer plant infill. We also produced and tested methods for successfully and inexpensively seeding and determined “as needed” irrigation protocols. The suite of techniques examined improves and enhances the use, establishment, and management of native grasses on green roofs and reduces green roof costs.

Rethinking Extensive Green Roofs To Lessen Emphasis On Above-Ground Biomass, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

In the future, most green roof applications will not be highly visible, yet these roofs will still provide the benefits of heat island reduction, stormwater control and biodiversity for hard-surfaced cities. However, human bias in wanting more biomass and visible blooms leads green roof horticulturalists and their approach of maximizing those aspects down a slippery slope that, in turn, leads to increased hours of labor, over-watering and fertilizing and specifying too many cultivars

Ecology Of Scale In Visual Landscape Assessments, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Background readings on scale plus twenty-three visual landscape assessment studies from 1968 to 2006 were examined to understand the nature and use of scale and its relationship to the visual environment. The objectives of this study were to: 1) describe the concept of scale as applied to visual assessments, 2) review scale use in selected visual assessments, and 3) identify issues that need further research to better integrate scale into visual landscape assessments and landscape ecological theory.

Basic concepts and features relating observers with landscape and scale required defining scale, bounding visibility, perceiving scale, seeing hierarchically, and visualizing grain and …

Media Modifications For Native Plant Asemblages On Extensive Green Roofs, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Great Plains and Midwestern regions might profit from selecting species representing nearby mid and short grass prairies, not the tall grass prairie. Such assemblages should exhibit needed characteristics desirable on low-input extensive green roofs to withstand stresses of: drought, heat, cold, nutrient deficiencies and wind before providing expected benefits. While published research, and its recommendations are inconclusive or negative regarding efficacy of native prairie species for extensive green roofs, establishment data gathered in this study demonstrates placing native plant assemblages for extensive green roofs into modified media significantly improves their establishment and growth.

In the short-term soil doughtiness limits plant …

Selfish Form, Selfless Nature, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Tension exists between the use of technology and human connection to nature. While architectural design begins in the imitation of nature and attempts to solve human/nature problems, its final forms too often have more to do with technology than with nature. So much so the natural conditions at building sites are too often ignored, minimized or trivialized, The culprit in all this is the human ego a master that must be served an becomes memorialized in built form.

Comments On Plan View Visual Assessment, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Plan view visual assessments ignore human horizontal orientation to the landscape.

Visual Impacts On The Westward Vista At Nine-Mile Prairie And The Inadequacy Of The Les Power Line Siting Criteria To Address Them, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

The criteria utilized by the Lincoln Electric System (LES) do not account for impact to the historical, cultural, biological and aesthetic settings traversed by large high-voltage power lines. This paper describes the impacts of such a proposed line at Nine-mile prairie near Lincoln, Nebraska.

Hedgerow Management Plan, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This document and accompanying files describe the existing Osage-orange (Maclura pomifera) hedgerow at Homestead National Monument of America near Beatrice, Nebraska. Analysis of the living pioneer artifact found most trees in good to very good condition and sprouts near 75-80 years of age. A management plan and directs the propagation and prunning of the hedge for interpretation and natural resource value.

Aesthetics Of Urban Streams, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This is a power point summary of an research study. Scenes of urban and urbanizing streams were rate by paired semantic differentials and subjected to factor analysis. Four categories were recognized: Man-made hard surfaced, Man-made soft surface, Park-like, and Natural.

Landscape Ecology Of Hedgerows And Fencerows In Panama Township, Lancaster County, Nebraska, Richard K. Sutton

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This study investigated woody plant composition, structure, and biomass of hedgerows and fencerows, and for effects between human attitudes and managemnet practices. Fencerows arise as narrow strips of woody and herbaceous plants at feild margins and property boundaries. Hedgerows grow from intentional linear plantings. Exotic species wer more important in fencerow composition. Hackberry, Missouri goosberry, American plum, and white mulberry readily inhabited both fencerows and hedgerows. Woody plant exhibited clumped distribution in both hedgerows and fencerows. A moisture gradient emerged as a factor in distribution of species. Management caused a significant difference in speicies richness and biomass in both hedgerows …

Some Foreign Botanical Gardens And Parks, Charles E. Bessey

Landscape Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Last summer I had the privilege of visiting a number of botanical gardens and parks in different parts of Europe. The American visitor abroad is constantly reminded of the abundance of parks and botanical gardens in not only the larger cities but even in the small cities and towns. Hyde Park, Regent's Park, St. James Park and Green Park, London; Kew Gardens; Thiergarten, Berlin; Prater Park, Vienna; Moscow; Kislovodsk; Vladikavkaz, Tiflis; Erivan; Batum; Odessa.

Coming now to our own city of Lincoln, a city which has many things about it which are very attractive, one'is made to drop his head …