Resource-Balance Design and Monitoring: Assessing Sustainability of FSEEC-LandLab as BSU's First Sustainable Built-site

Abstract

This paper addresses the change from earth as self-managing ecosystem operating within local limits and natural laws, to a human-dominated ecosystem where people falsely believe they live outside natural limits and laws. It reviews the shift from low-technology and regional-economics to advanced technologies and globalization whose impacts exceed nature’s ability to regenerate and that render the earth incapable of self-management. It calls for a shift from the present source-to-waste paradigm to one that promotes system regeneration; and for environmental management essential to a sustainable future. The paper reviews major built-environment impacts; and the absence in the planning and design professions of defensible processes that interconnect decisions to the health and sustainability of local and contextual ecosystems. It also addresses the lack of recognized methodologies to assess whether “sustainable” planning and design decisions facilitate ecosystem regeneration or, conversely, degrade contextual ecosystems. This paper presents a model for designing built-sites that seek to sustain ecobalance; and for monitoring ecosystem indicators to assess whether decisions achieve this goal. It reviews application of this model to the site of Ball State University’s proposed environmental education building and landlab green technology demonstration site (FSEEC-LandLab) as the university’s first proposed green built-site. This application includes: 1) resource-balance as an initial site decision management tool, 2) GIS database development to facilitate design that sustains resource-balance, 3) proposed management systems for the overall site and its built-zone, 4) a decision framework of built-site goals, objectives, and guidelines, 5) a proposed feedback system of ecological indicators, baselines, benchmarks, and monitoring to determine the degree to which site-based management, planning, and design sustain resource-balance, 6) initial indicators, monitoring hierarchy, and monitoring station locations, and 7) proposed initial resource-balancing projects to build and monitor.

Parent Publication

• Monitoring Science and Technology Symposium: Unifying Knowledge for Sustainability in the Western Hemisphere

Citation

Motloch, J. L. 2006. Resource-Balance Design and Monitoring: Assessing Sustainability of FSEEC-LandLab as BSU''s First Sustainable Built-site. In: Aguirre-Bravo, C.; Pellicane, Patrick J.; Burns, Denver P.; and Draggan, Sidney, Eds. 2006. Monitoring Science and Technology Symposium: Unifying Knowledge for Sustainability in the Western Hemisphere Proceedings RMRS-P-42CD. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 521-532