"The old drain-age is now being replaced by the new retain-age"
Brock Dolman, Watershed Institute | Basin of Relations, 2007
The Project
The American West is defined by extreme landscapes and an arid climate. As populations of western towns and cities surge, water quantity is a critical concern, compounded in recent years by increased severity of drought and elevated temperatures. The Colorado River, which sustains over 40 million people across the West and supports 15 percent of the nation’s food supply, is overcommitted, and runs dry where it meets the Gulf of California. In the last century, irrigation ditches, dams and water reservoirs have replaced wetlands and the wide range of flora and fauna they sustained. Today, many communities, ranchers and farmers realize the impacts of the loss of wetlands on local water supply, and find ways to address water scarcity by re-wilding watersheds through small-scale living landscape design, even collaborating with beavers to construct dams and ponds. To explore these emerging practices, this project will focus on the role of the American beaver (Castor canadensis) in wetland management through case study research on three beaver-engineered wetlands. An illustrated catalog of wetland typologies will be derived from this research and explore the relationships between wildlife, communities, and political forces at play in these landscapes.
New Page
“Water, water, water….there is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.”
Edward Abby | Desert Solitaire
1968
New Page
“Water, water, water….there is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.”
Edward Abby | Desert Solitaire
1968
Ride
"The Colorado River... has more people, more industry, and a more significant economy dependent on it than any comparable river in the entire world. If the Colorado River suddenly stopped flowing, you would have two years of carryover capacity in the reservoirs before you had to evacuate most of Southern California and Arizona and a good portion of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The river system provides over half the water of greater Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix; it grows much of America's domestic production of fresh winter vegetables; it illuminates the neon city of Las Vegas...The Colorado is so used up on its way to the sea that only a burbling trickle reaches its dried-up delta at the head of the Gulf of California, and then only in wet years. "
Marc Reisner | Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
1986
Ride
"The Colorado River... has more people, more industry, and a more significant economy dependent on it than any comparable river in the entire world. If the Colorado River suddenly stopped flowing, you would have two years of carryover capacity in the reservoirs before you had to evacuate most of Southern California and Arizona and a good portion of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The river system provides over half the water of greater Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix; it grows much of America's domestic production of fresh winter vegetables; it illuminates the neon city of Las Vegas...The Colorado is so used up on its way to the sea that only a burbling trickle reaches its dried-up delta at the head of the Gulf of California, and then only in wet years. "
Marc Reisner | Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
1986
Story
"Very few other animals have challened our actions and behaviours as much as the beaver has. We plant a tree; beavers cut it down. We build a road; beavers can dig right through the roadbed and turn it into a creek. We drain a landscape; beavers buid a dam and bring the water back. There is something in that persisten drive to sustain water on the landscape that is a clue for our own survial as a species.
Glynnis Hood | The Beaver Manifesto
2011
Story
"Very few other animals have challened our actions and behaviours as much as the beaver has. We plant a tree; beavers cut it down. We build a road; beavers can dig right through the roadbed and turn it into a creek. We drain a landscape; beavers buid a dam and bring the water back. There is something in that persisten drive to sustain water on the landscape that is a clue for our own survial as a species.
Glynnis Hood | The Beaver Manifesto
2011
Hike
"For decades high school biology and ecology has taught—and in some places, still teaches—that ecosystems gradually and steadily succeed into stable “climax” states from which they don’t move unless “disturbed.” Yet we now know that change is not only built into these systems, but in some cases, an ecosystem is actually dependent on change. All ecosystems are constantly evolving and often in ways that are discontinuous and uneven. While some ecosystem states are perceived by us to be stable, this is not strict stability in a mathematical sense; it's just our time-limited perception of stasis"
Nina Marie Lister | ASLA Interview
2010
Hike
"For decades high school biology and ecology has taught—and in some places, still teaches—that ecosystems gradually and steadily succeed into stable “climax” states from which they don’t move unless “disturbed.” Yet we now know that change is not only built into these systems, but in some cases, an ecosystem is actually dependent on change. All ecosystems are constantly evolving and often in ways that are discontinuous and uneven. While some ecosystem states are perceived by us to be stable, this is not strict stability in a mathematical sense; it's just our time-limited perception of stasis"
Nina Marie Lister | ASLA Interview
2010
Th Route
“The arid lands, so far as they can be redeemed by irrigation,
will perennially yield bountiful crops,”
John Wesley Powell | Report on the Lands of the Arid Region
1879
Th Route
“The arid lands, so far as they can be redeemed by irrigation,
will perennially yield bountiful crops,”
John Wesley Powell | Report on the Lands of the Arid Region
1879
End
Over the course of the past three decades, landscape infrastructure has emerged as a key area of research in the design disciplines, while a living systems approach to wetland design and management has been proposed as an effective way to mitigate water scarcity. In this context, design practices harnessing interspecies dynamics can contribute an essential perspective and deeper development of these methods. By exploring the nature of ‘collaboration’ in living landscapes, designers can begin to understand how wildlife and plant species are their own agents in in the construction of water infrastructure, and learn methods for working as partners in design.
End
Over the course of the past three decades, landscape infrastructure has emerged as a key area of research in the design disciplines, while a living systems approach to wetland design and management has been proposed as an effective way to mitigate water scarcity. In this context, design practices harnessing interspecies dynamics can contribute an essential perspective and deeper development of these methods. By exploring the nature of ‘collaboration’ in living landscapes, designers can begin to understand how wildlife and plant species are their own agents in in the construction of water infrastructure, and learn methods for working as partners in design.