Ecological design of an urban meadow informed by contemporary approaches to lower-intensity management
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Date
2023-06
Authors
Dorkina, Natalie
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Green spaces are an essential part of the urban environment. They should provide multiple benefits, including enhancing people’s well-being and
affording ecological benefits. Rapidly changing economic conditions often lead to significant shortages of maintenance funding and skilled labor
resources (Sutton 2022). This promotes a greatly disturbed urban environment due to neglect and climate change, and a decrease in biodiversity.
The design of green spaces in the urban environment becomes more challenging. It was calculated that currently, potentially one hundred sixty-three
thousand and eight hundred (163,800 km2 (± 35,850 km2) of land are cultivated with turf grasses in the continental United States, which is three
times larger than any irrigated crop (Milesi et al., 2005). “A 2017 projection by the California Air Resources Board cautioned that, beginning in 2020,
the most ubiquitous instruments of landscape care—gasoline-powered landscape maintenance equipment, —could generate more ozone pollution
than all the cars in the state of California combined”(Sutton, 2022).One of the approaches to these challenges that is gaining more attention is to
incorporate into more urban environment ecological planting with low-intensity management (Dunnett and Hitchmough 2004) such as meadow.
My project seeks to design a pollinator meadow near the new site of the Urban Farm Riverfront as an alternative land cover
type to mown amenities to increase the overall productivity of an ecosystem and create space for activities and exploration.
Description
20 pages
Keywords
ozone pollution, gasoline-powered landscape maintenance equipment, biodiversity