Treesearch

We are all potentially connected to an unwanted disaster situation since no region is immune from some adverse risk. Most Americans live in areas that are exposed to hazards whether naturally occurring or through involvement with humankind. Natural hazards may be in the form of wild fires, heat waves, volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes, while human intervention awakens hazards such as oil rig accidents, the physical neglect of buildings and infrastructure, or acts of terrorism. A disaster occurs when a hazard has a high degree of harm to human life, its shelter, or to...

Rather than being abandoned, a waterfront garden was upgraded and expanded after Hurricane Sandy damaged much of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York City in 2012. While the garden transformation was undertaken by the landscape architecture practice Till Design, and coordinated by a larger team called Landscapes of Resilience, the role of the gardeners is equally important to bring forward. We are a landscape architect and educator (Marshall, principal of Till Design) and a project coordinator and urbanist (Reynolds) and we participated with gardeners during a recovery process...

Over the past several decades, wildfire has become an increasingly costly and destructive natural hazard as a result of a combination of ecological and social factors, including climate change, decades of wildfire suppression on the landscape, and residential expansion into fire-prone vegetation (Fischer et al. 2016, Flannigan et al. 2013, Moritz et al. 2014). From 1999 to 2016, an average 1,449 residences were destroyed annually by wildland fire and billions of dollars spent on fire suppression. In response to the challenges of wildfire management, the National Cohesive Wildland Fire...

An interview with Karen Zumach, Tree Trust, St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

In 2008, an invasive insect, the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) was discovered in Worcester, Massachusetts, the second largest city in New England. For the previous 12 to 15 years the beetles had quietly spread in the dense maple canopy in the Greendale and Burncoat neighborhoods and likely piggy-backed on firewood and vehicles to other nearby towns. Trees were weakened and the health of the urban forest compromised. The insect, a native of China, had most probably arrived in Worcester on wooden shipping pallets at the end of the last century before regulations requiring treatment of...

An interview with Rick Magder.

As the impacts of climate change continue to manifest throughout the world with greater frequency, addressing the question of how to best prepare for and recover from disasters is more crucial than ever. Evidence shows that beyond ripping through physical infrastructure and claiming lives, disasters also damage social networks and community bonds, making the impacts perceptible long after houses are rebuilt. The importance of social infrastructure in disaster planning is becoming more widely researched and considered, and it is consistently shown that communities with strong social ties...

Landscape architects are professionals who design, plan, and manage the land, and so it is a profession that is essential to defining the character of our National Forests and Grasslands. There are key points of entry and engagement where we have a chance to make a first and lasting impression for the public when they come to visit their public lands. Providing quality recreation experiences is perhaps one of the most relevant, as many people come to understand the value and meaning of their landscapes through recreational visits (Figure 1). Outdoor recreation activities occur in numerous...

Research and experience have demonstrated that environmental stewardship, including a wide variety of community greening efforts, can play a key role in helping communities recover from disasters and disturbance. These include both natural disturbances—for example, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and wildfire—and human-caused disasters, such as terrorism and other forms of violence. Moreover, we recognize that, now more than ever in the age of the Anthropocene, all disturbances are rooted in both natural and social causes. The immediate aftermath of disturbance events requires a swift...

In "Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience, and Community Greening," Tidball and Krasny (2014a) make the case that creation of and access to green spaces promotes individual human health and community healing, especially in therapeutic contexts among those suffering traumatic events, asserting that making and being in green spaces confers resilience and recovery in social-ecological systems disrupted by violent conflict or disaster. To make this case, and to understand the broader implications of humans turning to nature in times of disaster or crisis, the authors proposed working...