Eco education in the City

There are many opportunities for youth to reconnect with nature.  This movement has grown in leaps and bounds!  Here are some that I have found in my city, with short description taken from their "about" pages:

Forest School (Ottawa): Forest Schools provide nature-based education where children have the opportunities to build an on-going relationship with the land by learning outdoors in a natural environment for at least a half of their day

SEED Educators: (See Environmental Education Differently) helping teachers incorporate environmental education into their classrooms

Ottawa Nature Collaborative: Facebook group organized by the Early Childhood Professional Learning Community to showcase how to integrate nature into learning based on the Take Me Outside principles

EcoLeadership Program: a Catalyst Mind initiative that helps young people connect with the outdoors for learning, restoration and wellbeing.  They design and lead programs for schools and youth groups.

Nature Canada's Nature Hood events: which are organized to help connect people of all ages to nature right where they live — which, in Canada, increasingly means urban centres.

Photos from: Catalyst Mind, ECPLC and Nature Canada

Time to Frog Proof your Yard this Spring (swimming pools and window wells)

From an old 2009 Ottawa Citizen Article worth repeating:

The lives of tens of thousands of frogs, toads and salamanders could be saved each year if homeowners made a few simple changes to their homes and yards, says an Ottawa biologist.  Dan Brunton said backyard swimming pools are particularly deadly, and he has found up to 10 dead amphibians in the filter of his neighbour's pool before.  "The simple thing was they just couldn't get out," Brunton said.  "There's a wonderful commercial opportunity in here. Somebody make a nice little floaty ramp. You just leave it there and the critters climb out of your pool every morning."  A green frog trapped in the filter earlier this week was luckier than most — it was still alive when Brunton visited the pool to demonstrate the problem to a CBC reporter this week. 

While Brunton was renovating his home recently, he discovered another problem for amphibians — window wells. "The day these were put in two toads were found dead the following morning," he said, pointing at his own below-grade basement windows.  Brunton has now built gravel slopes in the wells so toads and other critters can climb out — something he encourages other homeowners to do.  "Since we've put this simple, simple little ramp in there, not one more animal has died in this thing." 

Fraser Veitch, a spokesperson for Benson Pools, a company that sells pool equipment and services, said it's fairly common for frogs to get trapped in pools, but people aren't always sure what to do when it happens.

Someone has now created that device to rescue frogs (and other animals including mice) from pools called the Frog Log. Here is a You Tube video showing the product in action: Frog Log (U.S. Company)

environmental stewarship at golf course (Ottawa)

Just found this online - providing information on the Hunt Club's efforts in environmental stewardship:

In 2008, the Hunt Club was recognized as a fully certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary – the certification by Audubon International bears testament to the Club’s environmental stewardship.  The Club has developed an environmental stewardship plan to help enhance the natural areas and wildlife habitats of its property while minimizing any potentially harmful impacts from golf course operations. The plan encompasses Environmental Planning, Wildlife and Habitat Management, Outreach and Education, Chemical Use Reduction, Water Quality Management, and Water Conservation.

Environmental practices include:

• leaving as much of the property as possible in its natural state;
• maintaining 12 on-site tree nurseries;
• selecting plants native to the Ottawa area where possible to restore and enhance the natural landscape;
• incorporating enhanced food sources, nesting sites or den development for wildlife;
• sponsoring an annual field day for local students that incorporates the Club’s environmental stewardship plan and bird-house building from lumber harvested from golf course trees;
• maintaining over 70 nesting boxes and 3 purple martin houses;
• installing a weather station to determine water requirements for the golf course in support of water conservation;
• recycling over 350 metres of compost, generated by the Club annually, in the tree planting program and other landscape projects;
• using cultural practices to improve turf quality and minimize chemical use;
• significant testing of the watershed to ensure water run-off quality is maintained.

For more information on the Audubon Sanctuary, please visit their website at www.audubonintl.org

green bus shelters (Philadelphia)

My friend mentioned last year that she had seen green roofs on Philadelphia's bus stops and I just got around to find out what they were all about. Here's more information:  

"The 60 square foot bus stop green roof at 15th and Market was based off of Roofmeadow’s idea to create a prefabricated kit that can be used to install a green roof on any standard bus shelter in Philadelphia and is meant to help promote PWD’s efforts to raise awareness around urban storm water issues. Any future replications of this first design will be paid for not by the city but by funds from advertising on the side of the bus shelter where the green roof has been installed."

Found at Inhabitat's website: Philadelphia Gets a Bus Stop Green Roof

"In Philadelphia alone, 52 green roofs have sprung up, totaling 10.6 acres by the count of the Water Department, which is tracking them as part of its effort to amass data on storm water.

Storm water is a historic problem for Philadelphia because most of the city's underground pipes combine rainwater and sewage. During storms, the system becomes overwhelmed and water polluted with raw sewage and road dirt overflows into streams and basements.

"Every acre manages or eliminates roughly a million gallons of storm-water runoff a year in the city," said Chris Crockett, acting deputy commissioner of environmental services for the Water Department."

From Philly Dot Com.

2016 Update: I've also heard about green bus stops in Sheffield (U.K.) by Groundwork Sheffield and the TTC Finch West Station is going to have a green roof!

P.S. Check out my latest "urban wild" nature blog: Wild. Here. (2016 update)

forward to nature

This movement isn’t about “going back to nature,” but going forward to nature.

Participants include: traditional conservationists; proponents and producers of alternative energy; physicians (particularly pediatricians) who prescribe time in natural areas and green exercise to patients; ecopsychologists and wilderness therapy professionals; park professionals who help families fulfill their “park prescriptions”; public health professionals and urban designers who work to increase the number of natural amenities near where we live.

Other participants are citizen naturalists salvaging threatened natural habitats and creating new ones; community gardeners and urban farmers; organic farmers and “vanguard ranchers” who restore as they harvest; urban wildscapers replacing suburban yards with native species; nature-aware champions of walkable cities and active living; deep green design professionals, including biophilic architects, developers, urban planners and therapeutic landscapers who transform homes, workplaces, suburbs and city neighborhoods – potentially whole cities and their transportation systems – into restorative regions that reconnect us to nature.

Quote by Richard Louv from Ontario Urban Forest Council

Image from: A Better World By Design

sea tree

"Waterstudio has designed a new concept for high density green spots in a city, the sea tree. This sea tree is a floating structure that hold in many layers green habitats for only animals. Under water the sea tree provides a habitat for small water creatures or even when the climate allows it for artificial coral reefs. The cost for the shown Sea Tree design is estimated at 4.5 million dollar." 

More on their website.

Biocentric Cities: constructed (sewage treatment) wetlands

In my first semester Ecology and Environment text book, this picture of John Todd's "neighborhood sewage treatment facility" is an incredible design for a biocentric city.  I love that it's shown right against a sidewalk in between pedestrians and the street.

The description reads: "Water trickling through the containers of aquatic plants is cleaned and purified by biological processes.  Under optimal conditions, both odours and costs are minimal."  John Todd and his partner Nancy Jack Todd run Ocean Arks International.  Some of their other design concepts show how these systems "harnesses the biological processes that operate in nature within the form of an engineered treatment system to successfully meet discharge standards and permitting requirements"  and they are easily integrated into cityscapes.  Follow the link to see the concepts: "sustainable water management".

Here's an article on these living eco- machines: "Clean Green Waste-water Recycling" from Inhabit:

"Converting sewer sludge to fresh water is no easy job; traditional treatment plants consume massive amounts of money, energy, and resources. John Todd’s innovative solutions for waste-water management re-envision the process as an eco-conscious endeavor, conserving water and reducing overall treatment costs with minimal sludge disposal, water purchases, sewer surcharges, and chemical use."

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D & C's Biocentric Cities post is a monthly post that features options for energy and heating systems that would reduce our demand on natural and non-renewable resources outside the city (or in this one case - save energy).  A city's consumption is many times its city limit size and impacts nature that we don't even see. My hope is that a city can produce its own energy, heat and clean water within its city boundaries.

Nature Careers

 
NEW NATURE-SMART CAREERS: 11 for the Future and for Right Now

from The New Nature Movement by Richard Louv

Two of the new careers that sound interesting are:

•Nature-smart workplace architect or designer. Studies of workplaces that have been created or retrofitted through biophilic (love of nature) design show improved product quality, customer satisfaction and innovation. Successful models include the Herman Miller headquarters building, designed for abundant natural light, indoor plants, and outdoor views, including views of a restored wetlands and prairie on company grounds. After moving into the building, 75 percent of day-shift office workers said they considered the building healthier and 38 percent said their job satisfaction had improved.

• Urban wildscaper. Urban designers, landscape architects, and other professionals who develop or redevelop private yards and/or neighborhoods that connect people to nature through the creation of biophilically-designed buildings and preservation of natural land will be increasingly in demand. They will design and establish biodiverse parks, urban forests and community gardens, wildlife corridors and other wild lands. Seattle recently announced plans for a massive urban forest that will produce free food. Wildscapers will also manage wildlife populations.

Read more about it here.  (Image from NNM website.)

My Street Has No Trees (Toronto)

"My Street Has No Trees (MSHNT) is a public and participatory installation that utilizes the vestigial design of Toronto’s Post and Ring bike stands as armatures for micro-gardens. The intent of the project is to raise awareness about the imbalance between the hardscapes and softscapes of our streets, to encourage people to think critically about the transformative possibilities of our everyday environments, and to increase the beauty and joy of our neighbourhoods."

(From the website MSHNT)

depaving and daylighting (Berkeley)

Founded in 1992, Ecocity Builders is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reshaping cities for the long-term health of human and natural systems.

I really like a couple of their on the ground projects where they daylit a stream and "depaved" a parking lot. From their website:

Codornices Creek Daylighting at University Village
Berkeley/Albany Urban Creek Revival

Grassroots Urban Creek Revival: Cordornices Creek daylighting and restoration project began in 1995. In the first year 375 volunteers contributed to opening the creek and landscaping the restored meander of the water — an important factor in regulating speed and controlling floods — and the area saw a gradual increase in the population of species like crayfish, damselflies, garter snakes, mallards, and egrets.

This section of the city was once a little used parking lot, a street that had been closed, a sidewalk, and a flat earth-filled area covered with fennel. The daylighting project was a satisfying collaboration with Urban Creeks Council, who applied for and got $25,000 from the Department of Water Resources Board and hired a semi-volunteer bulldozer operator, who happily volunteered to work for half pay – said he’d never had the chance to “make a creek” before.

Volunteers took cuttings from willow trees, cut them into stakes about an inch thick (none thicker), sliced the trunk side of the branch at a sharp angle and the end toward the leaves square, and drove them with a hammer into the banks of the creek. Now we have forty foot high willows and alders. Watercress, cattails, horestails and bulrushes showed up on their own. Along the banks, nasturtiums, wild grapes, mint, chicory and plantain, California glory, ceanothis, native grasses, lupine, red and blue flax, clarcia and the ever present California poppy.

Codornices Creek daylighting is a paradise to all sorts of critters: butterflies, dozens of birds, steelhead trout, sticklebacks, crawdads, water snails, frogs, garter snakes, water striders and lots of insects including sulfer-blue damselfies and vermillion dragonflies as brilliantly colored as tiny red flying neon lights.

The planting philosophy was to plant natives along with an orchard. Within a few months volunteers had donated fruit trees of all sorts: apples, plums, apricots, figs, oranges, lemons, nectarines, peaches, cherries, persimmons, and Asian pears.

Image from Ecocity Builders

green cover versus grey ashphalt...(Ottawa)

Vert Design in Ottawa consulted on a very interesting Urban Forest project in Ottawa: New Edinburgh Urban Forest Inventory and Plan

Scope of Work: Urban Planning and Neighbourhood Design

Project Description: The New Edinburgh Urban Forest Inventory and Plan was undertaken to illustrate the curent voids within the neighbourhood's urban forest and recommends areas for future plantings. A public awareness campaign including community newspaper articles, a public information session and a neighbourhood tree planting day is ongoing to encourage plantings on private property. Strategic discussions regarding prospective sites managed by the municipal and federal governments is also being undertaken to establish priorities for forestation of those areas of special significance.

Trees can provide so much to an urban setting. They are not only aesthetic, they also provide shade and green cover (helping to lower the urban heat island), increase biodiversity, absorb carbon dioxide, retain water at the same time lessening storm water runoff and even improve water quality.

* Image from the City of Ottawa website.

Vertical Garden City projects (by Mori)

Urban Design Consultant: Mori (Japan)

From their website:

Adopting the “Vertical Garden Cities” as our redevelopment concept, one of our primary missions is to build environmentally friendly cities rich in greenery, striving to maximize open space and “green” the cityscape. Through intelligent consolidation and redevelopment of densely developed areas and the building of high-rise buildings to free surface land for greenery and by taking proactive steps to “green” the buildings with roof gardens, we are able to create numerous corners of nature within the city.