Landscape Architecture Commons^™

From Pasture To Pavement: Urban Expansion And Its Environmental Consequences In Perth, Anastasia Charelishvili

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis addresses the pressing issue of ecological problems of urban sprawl and its intricate impacts on urban health, with a particular focus on vulnerable communities in Perth, Australia. Chapter 1 presents the city's historical background and emphasizes the depletion of ecosystem services, underscoring the need for environmental justice. It also introduces the causes and effects of the sprawl in Perth and draws upon a diverse range of environmental problems created by suburbia, such as air pollution, biodiversity loss, water pollution, and runoff. As these threats translate into urban health declines, such as respiratory problems and increased healthcare issues, Chapter …

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Nature As Material, Time As Tool, Chuchu Chen

Masters Theses

No building stands forever. Over time, the natural environment acts upon the outer surface of the building, leading to the failure of materials and the final dissolution of the structure itself, leading to ruin. In order to prevent this or retard its occurrence, we constantly maintain and renew the things we build. Nature seems to stand in opposition to architecture. The passage of time is constantly subtracting from the building. However, what differentiates nature from architecture? This thesis questions whether these two are not opposed, but on a continuous spectrum. Approaching the building as part of the overall environment that …

City As Cemetery, Siqiao Zhao

Masters Theses

The traditional funeral service industry has enormous environmental and financial costs. In contrast, green burial, and Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), accelerate the human body’s degradation and reduce toxic substances in the land, assuming responsibility for our burden on the earth. They provide a gateway between us and the processes of nature and ask us to set aside self-consciousness to accept our oneness with the universe. By gifting our bodies back to the earth, where decomposition enriches soils and nurtures the growth of other life forms, we honor those who have transitioned to another state by continuing the cycle of renewal. …

Unearthing Complexity: Tangible Histories Of Water And Earth, Alexis Violet

Masters Theses

Unearthing Complexity investigates conceptions of time and surface through geological stories of the water and earth. Building on theories of deep time, hydrofeminism, critical zones, and grounding, I hope to foster a deeper awareness of time scales other than our own and a more tangible understanding of the embodied experience of matter in the universe. Working toward a new literacy of the water and earth in which they are recognized as living, changing bodies to which we are inherently tied at a molecular level, the site of this multiscalar inquiry occurs in the coastal zones of the Narragansett Bay where …

On The Edge Of The "Er-Ocean" State, Mariesa Travers

Masters Theses

This thesis will explore how hard coastal infrastructure methods can be redesigned by softening the coastal edge to support the ecosystem and enhance public access to the beach. By referencing and arguing against techniques used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as a solution to deal with coastal erosion, this process will propose a regenerated design system. Through a series of material experiments, this research works with natural processes and flows, to create transitory systems that erode and ebb with the coast.

The End Of Everything: The Physical And Figurative Impacts Of Landscape On American Ideology, Wyatt Alger

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Quantifying The Carbon Stored And Sequestered By The Trees On Pomona College’S Campus, Paola A. Giron-Carson

Scripps Senior Theses

We are experiencing a climate crisis that must be confronted with strategic mitigation. Pomona College contributes to the climate crisis through its emissions for which there is a baseline record. However there is no baseline record of the climate mitigation currently performed by the trees on Pomona’s campus through carbon storage. This study seeks to determine a current baseline quantity of carbon stored and sequestrated by Pomona’s trees as well as possible courses of climate mitigation for Pomona College to take. Initial information gathering was conducted through interviews with several stakeholders. This study was conducted using data collected prior to …

The Evergreen Challenges Of Healing: An Evaluation Of Urban Green Space In Harambee, Kacee Ochalek

Theses and Dissertations

Urban green space initiatives have emerged in low- and middle-income cities as a solution to disinvestment, the production of more positive public health metrics, and a tool of community engagement. While the production of urban greening provides ample room for applause, The City of Milwaukee’s Healing Spaces Initiative model regarding the ongoing construction of green space and the implementation of maintenance creates challenges that perpetuate racist capitalistic notions of the neoliberal project. This paper presents reports from participant observation, document analysis, and 17 qualitative interviews with representatives of the City of Milwaukee, community partners, garden leaders, and residents. The data …

Landscapes Are Cornerstones Of Sustainability Programs, Don Spence

Sustainability Conference

Typical American landscapes are not sustainable in an economic or biological framework. The essence of the idea of sustainable growth and development are centered on the idea that those activities are not degrading natural resources or that they are outstrip budgets. A significant piece of any sustainable management plan is tied to how we manage our landscapes, how we use plants; specifically, how much grass there is, and how many native plants there are. Sustainable landscapes should require less chemical and financial inputs, which in the end, saves money and increases the biological value of the land and creates a …

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

Conserving Water Through Modular Planting Design: Water-Wise Templates For Ogden's Residential Front Yard Landscapes, Jessica Clements

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Due to the arid climate of the Wasatch front and the projected population growth in the next thirty years, water conservation is essential. Consequently, because the landscape consumes 60% of Utah residences’ purified drinking water, water-wise landscaping needs to be a priority. This thesis creates water-wise landscape templates that can be applied to the front yards of Ogden rental properties using a modular planting method. This study determines best practices by researching topics such as water-wise plants for Northern Utah, templates utilized in other areas, modular planting, and existing organizations with similar goals. This results in a user-friendly guide that …

Applying Social Science To Bring Resident Stakeholders Into Pollution Governance: A Rural Environmental Justice Public Health Case Study, Sherrie M. Steiner, Jordan M. Marshall, Atefeh Mohammadpour, Aaron W. Thompson

Department of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture Faculty Publications

The purpose of this engaged public sociology study was to use social science to bring resident stakeholders into the process of governing pollution production in a rural community. The community has cancer clusters. Residents have concerns about direct exposure to pollution production in their neighborhood by a steel recycling plant that has been cited numerous times for environmental violations. The facility has been under voluntary remediation since 2009, but neighborhood residents were marginalized from the governance process. This case study details how social science was used to bring neighborhood residents’ concerns about direct exposure to toxic air pollution into remediation …

Evapotranspiration Of Urban Landscape Trees And Turfgrass In An Arid Environment: Potential Trade-Offs In The Landscape, Tamara Wynne, Dale Devitt

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Irrigation in arid urban landscapes can use significant amounts of water. Water conservation must be based on plant species and the ability to meet plant water requirements while minimizing overirrigation. However, actual evapotranspiration (ET) estimates for landscape trees and turfgrass in arid environments are poorly documented, especially direct comparisons to assess potential trade-offs. We conducted research to quantify ET of 10 common landscape tree species grown in southern Nevada and compared these values with the ET of both a warm season and cool season turfgrass species. The trees were grown in a plot with a high-density planting (256 trees/ha). A …

Usu Equine-Assisted Activities And Therapies Facilities Designed Master Plan, Lindsie C. Smith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Equine-Assisted Activities and Therapies (EAAT) is recognized as a therapeutic approach for persons with disabilities. The USU Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences Department provides EAAT instruction and services; however, they do not have the appropriate facilities to model best-practices in the delivery of these services. This design research entailed the development of a phased masterplan to support the instruction and delivery of equine-assisted activities and therapies in an innovative and accessible environment that supports animal-assisted intervention and natural equine behaviors.

The methodology used to approach the master plan design was derived from Norman K. Booth’s (1990) design process, as described …

Photosynthesizing The Workplace: A Study In Healthy And Holistic Production Spaces, Kaeli Howard

Masters Theses

Throughout time nature has been a prescribed healer of stress on the human condition. Its vital integration into our daily lives has been proven by scientific evidence. The majority of Americans spend approximately 1/3 of their life working, whatever that job may entail. Therefore, it makes sense that the environments that we spend so much of our life in for work at extremely important to our physical and mental health, however, current workplace models are not acknowledging that. Redefining the workplace to integrate nature would start to change work life in this country and how work itself is viewed.

This …

Vincent Van Gogh's Wheatfields And Piet Oudolf's Meadows: Color, Contrast And Change In The Landscape, Erin A. Cox

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone investigates the unique relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and planting designer Piet Oudolf's vibrant use of color and contrast in their work as it relates to their perception of the landscape. The project is mainly a comparison of the two artists, exploring Van Gogh's use of complementary colors and brushstroke techniques to create vivid contrast in his renderings of agrarian landscapes, and Oudolf's parallel approach to creating painterly meadows and prairie gardens. The project focuses on Van Gogh’s study of wheat field landscapes, which are essentially the same in structure and composition but can be used to compare …

Building A Better Batture: A Regional Recreational Enhancement Around The Morganza To The Gulf Levee, Taylor N. Fehmel

LSU Master's Theses

Twenty-five years ago, the existing flood protection levees along the Louisiana coastline were removed and construction was started by Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District on a new project called ‘Morganza to the Gulf’ or MTG. This project was undertaken to construct a new flood protection levee system around Louisiana in the communities in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parish. The MTG Levee is one of the first coastal projects in Louisiana to incorporate a risk-based analysis for a double levee system containing both local parish drainage levees and future storm surge levees of MTG. It was designed to protect approximately 250,000 people …

The Impacts Of Tourism On Subak, Sawah, And The Environment, Reiley Adelson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In this paper I wish to explore the topic of Sawah, Subak, and the impact tourism has on both of these important parts of Balinese culture. By starting with the history of subak, moving into the Green Revolution, then into the start of mass tourism, and coming all the way up until today, I would like to see how subak has changed and developed or how it hasn’t. I would also like to get a sense of what people see for the future of farming in Bali. To go about this, I talked with rice farmers, who are being directly …

Tree Density And Diversity In Hong Kong’S Public Housing Estates: Fromprovision Injustice To Socio-Ecological Inclusiveness., Louis Shing Him Lee, C.Y. Jim, Allen Hao Zhang

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

Socio-economically underprivileged urban communities might suffer from restricted access to urban forests. Environmental injustice research on urban greenery in Asian cities is lacking. Public housing estates in Hong Kong, accommodating low-income households and over half of the 7.45 million population, were investigated for injustice in tree provision. Two clustering schemes used socio-economic and ecological characteristics to classify 93 estates. Factor analysis of 14 socio-economic variables identified four factors related to deprivation, namely ageing population, overcrowding, working poor with high academic qualifications, and marginalised language minorities. Principal component analysis of six ecological indices returned two components related to tree density and …

Tree Distribution, Morphology And Modelled Air Pollution In Urban Parks, Yang Xing, Peter Brimblecombe, Sifeng Wang, Allen Hao Zhang

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

Trees offer a range of ecosystem services and remain important in providing human benefits. However, emerging literature questions the long-accepted view of trees being able to improve air quality in urban parks. The aerodynamic effect of trees was identified as a major reason for the change of pollutant distribution in near-road parks, where trees can act as porous barriers and cause localised concentration increase. Although not yet fully developed, planting strategies aiming to mitigate the negative effect of vegetation on air quality should be encouraged in future park design. In this study, we explored the effect of tree planting design …

From Maintenance To Stewardship: Green Stormwater Infrastructure Capacity In Vermont Towns & Design And Participatory Processes To Provide Cultural Ecosystem Services, Holly Lee Greenleaf

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The impervious surfaces of built landscapes create stormwater runoff that causes water quantity and quality problems downstream, upsetting natural hydrology and harming aquatic ecosystems. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) includes practices that reduce the amount of stormwater runoff and the pollutants it carries utilizing plants, soils, and other materials to capture, store, reuse, infiltrate, evapotranspire, and filter stormwater. GSI helps to restore developed landscapes, mimicking natural hydrologic processes and providing important water treatment functions as well as beneficial green spaces in urban areas. However, there are many challenges associated with the implementation and maintenance of GSI in our communities and cultures. …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Neighborhood Variation Of Sustainable Urban Morphologicalcharacteristics, P. C. Lai, Sissi Si Chen, C. T. Low, Ester Cerin, Robert Stimson, Py Paulina Wong

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

Compact cities and their urban forms have implications on sustainable city development because of high density urban settlement, increased accessibility, and a balanced land use mix. This paper uses quantitative means of understanding urban morphological characteristics with reference to the differing qualities of the urban form (i.e., street patterns, building volumes, land uses and greenery). The results, based on 89 neighborhood communities of Hong Kong, show varying degrees of regional differences in the urban built form supported by numerical statistics and graphical illustrations. This paper offers empirical evidence on some morphological characteristics that can be estimated objectively using modern geospatial …

Occurrence Of Antibiotics And Antibiotic Resistance Genes In Soils Fromwastewater Irrigation Areas In The Pearl River Delta Region, Southernchina, Livia Min Pan, L.M. Chu

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

The occurrence and distribution of tetracycline (TC) and sulfamethazine (SMZ), and the corresponding antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) were investigated in six agricultural sites in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in southern China. Irrigation water and irrigated soils at two different depths (0-10 and 10-20cm) were analyzed. The total concentrations of TC and SMZ in irrigation water ranged from 69.3 to 234ng/L and from 4.00 to 58.2ng/L, respectively, while the total concentrations of TC and SMZ in irrigated soils ranged from 5.00 to 21.9μg/kg and from 1.30 to 4.20μg/kg, respectively. After long-term irrigation with domestic and fishpond wastewater in the …

A Simulated Walk In Nature: Testing Predictions From The Attention Restoration Theory, Corey Crossan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Attention Restoration Theory (ART) predicts that top-down processing during everyday activities can cause attentional fatigue and that bottom-up processing that occurs when people experience nature will be restorative (Kaplan, 1995). The present study examined this prediction by exposing participants to three different conditions using a repeated measures design: a control condition during which participants walked on a typical treadmill, a nature/restorative condition during which participants walked on the same treadmill, experiencing a simulated nature walk, and a perturbation condition that included the same simulated nature scene but also required top-down processing during the walk. The findings supported ART predictions. As …

How Useful Is Gsv As An Environmental Observation Tool? An Analysis Of The Evidence So Far., Katherine Nesse, Leah Airt

SPU Works

Researchers in many disciplines have turned to Google Street View to replace pedestrian- or carbased in-person observation of streetscapes. It is most prevalent within the research literature on the relationship between neighborhood environments and public health but has been used as diverse as disaster recovery, ecology and wildlife habitat, and urban design. Evaluations of the tool have found that the results of GSV-based observation are similar to the results from in-person observation although the similarity depends on the type of characteristic being observed. Larger, permanent and discrete features showed more consistency between the two methods and smaller, transient and judgmental …

Desert Pool {If Every Desert Was Once A Sea}, Karen Miranda Abel

The Goose

Desert Pool {If every desert was once a sea} is a site-specific art project by Canadian artist Karen Miranda Abel completed in 2016 while artist-in-residence at Joya: arte + ecología, an arts-led research centre situated in an alpine desert within a national park in southern Spain. The elemental installation represents an envisioning of the ancient sea that occupied the Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park millions of years before the current desert ecology, a time when its highest mountain peaks may have been islands.

Exploring Policy Options To Combat Illegal Micro-Apartments In Hong Kong, Yung Yau, Daniel Chi Wing Ho

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

Illegal building can take multiple forms, including squatter settlements and illegal building extensions. Among the various forms of illegal building, illegal microapartments (IMAs), which take the form of unauthorised subdivided housing units, have recently aroused wide public concern in Hong Kong. On account of their unlawful nature, IMAs pose serious threats to the safety of local communities by undermining structural stability and fire safety in buildings. They may also adversely affect natural lighting and ventilation for building occupants. Fatal fires in buildings with IMAs in recent years have demonstrated the painful consequence of ignoring this issue in the city. Nonetheless, …

Transfer Of Antibiotics From Wastewater Or Animal Manure To Soil Andedible Crops., Livia Min Pan, L.M. Chu

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

Antibiotics are added to agricultural fields worldwide through wastewater irrigation or manure application, resulting in antibiotic contamination and elevated environmental risks to terrestrial environments and humans. Most studies focused on antibiotic detection in different matrices or were conducted in a hydroponic environment. Little is known about the transfer of antibiotics from antibiotic-contaminated irrigation wastewater and animal manure to agricultural soil and edible crops. In this study, we evaluated the transfer of five different antibiotics (tetracycline, sulfamethazine, norfloxacin, erythromycin, and chloramphenicol) to different crops under two levels of antibiotic-contaminated wastewater irrigation and animal manure fertilization. The final distribution of tetracycline (TC), …