Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009 - (Page 5)

SLDT FINANCE EROSION CONTROL Photos courtesy of Conservation Design Forum except where otherwise noted. Modern Flood Disasters An exploration of their deep-rooted cause and what can be done with innovative control practices. By James Patchett, ASLA, LEED AP Editor’s note: this is the first of a two-part series that focuses on issues directed at the core cause of erosion, namely surface water runoff. eople throughout the Midwest are trying to come to grip with how and why flood events the magnitude of those experienced in 1993 and 2008, as well as other destructive events in between, could occur with such frequency. The probability of two 500-year plus events occurring with this degree of severity in back-to-back decades would defy mathematical logic. That is, of course, if they were truly “natural” occurring disasters as some flood experts suggest. The reality, however, is that these and other chronic flooding events are “cultural” disasters caused by our contemporary urban, suburban, and rural agricultural land-use practices. It is the opinion of my colleagues and I at Conservation Design Forum that problems associated with increased runoff, erosion, sedimentation, flooding, aquifer depletion, water quality degradation, loss of habitat and biodiversity, and even climate change, exist in large part due to a fundamental lack of aware- P ness with respect to historical ecological and cultural processes. It is an unfortunate reality that many contemporary urban, suburban, and rural land-use practices are designed and engineered with little awareness or attention to these realities, or the numerous adverse impacts that are directly or indirectly caused by such practices. This lack of awareness is not limited to the general public. These processes are not well understood by the professional disciplines whose mission it is to protect and preserve our critical natural resources. In fact contemporary engineers, architects, landscape architects, soil scientists, and even biologists and ecologists are actually trained in practices that www.SLDTonline.com 5 Photo courtesy of Dr. Michael Kienzle, University of Iowa Hospitals http://www.SLDTonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009

Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009 Contents Our Voice Modern Flood Disasters Origin of the Sustainability Movement SLDI in Focus Calendar Build Smart Product Innovation Takeoff and Cost Management Industry News Products & Services Advertiser Index Editorial Board SLDT Resources Last Word

Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009

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