Recently in Water Conservation in Landscaping Category
pamalex effects tree table collection
A completely original category of outdoor furnishing, perfect for both the urban garden or estate setting, and useful everywhere from the tiniest terrace (26” bistro) to the most expansive pool deck (50” x 78” Leaf). The jardin tree table is perfect for areas covered by awnings or in naturally shady spots, as it uses lower growing plant material. bistro tree table Perfect for those small terraces, or just outside a door. The slightly taller profile makes it just right for resting a drink during the cool pool party.
Table overall dimensions: 32" h x 26" dia.
Table shown features a sturdy galvanized steel armature on round ceramic container base. The table top is ground glass, 26" diameter, accommodates 4"-6" caliper tree in 6" round hole Price for table as shown: $720.00 plus tax and delivery
So Innovative!
What a great way to add trees to urban landscapes. Flower to the People in Los Angeles provides a variety of "tree tables" on their website, as well as living roofs and other sustainable outdoor living solutions. Check them out!
Flower to the People
PIVOT's interactive graphics, maps and photos are designed to help users better understand the issues and visually track progress toward achieving habitat restoration goals in the 28 National Estuary Programs.
An interactive graphic shows how everyday human activities along the coast increase pressures on natural habitat and can impact the health of our estuaries in other ways as well.
Links are provided to information about watersheds, maps, and performance measures useful for reporting progress toward improving the health of coastal watersheds.
The National Estuary Program works with local communities to improve the health of our nation's estuaries. Community support and involvement is fundamental to the success of these efforts. Through an extensive stakeholder planning process, NEP communities develop comprehensive conservation and management plans, or CCMPs. These plans serve as documentation of the communities' environmental goals for their estuaries and watersheds as well as blueprints for achieving those goals. As this is a long-term process, keeping the community well informed and connected with plan activities and progress is critical to keeping the plan a vital, living process for the community.
Performance reporting is not only essential for garnering and maintaining community support, it is often mandated. Enabling legislation or other laws—federal or local—may require responsible agencies to report on what progress they are making toward established goals. For the National Estuary Program, several pieces of federal legislation weigh in on performance reporting.
28 National Estuary Programs
Each of the 28 National Estuary Programs was charged with developing and implementing a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) which establishes priorities for activities, research, and funding for the estuary. The CCMP serves as a blueprint to guide future decisions and actions and addresses a wide range of environmental protection issues including water quality, habitat, fish and wildlife, pathogens, land use, and introduced species to name a few. The CCMP is based on a scientific characterization of the estuary and is developed and approved by a broad-based coalition of stakeholders.
This interview by Golf Digest with Robert Wood, the deputy director of the Wetlands Division, the EPA's representative in the Golf & the Environment Initiative, and an 18-handicap golfer.
Why do wetlands matter on golf courses?
Why shouldn't I be able to fill in the wetland on my golf-course project?
Wetlands are a vital part of any aquatic ecosystem. They provide habitat to a wide range of wildlife from fish, shellfish, all the way down to insect communities. Wetlands are the unique habitat for something like 30 percent of all endangered species, and 50 percent of endangered species spend at least part of their life cycle in wetlands. They're very ecologically rich.
To most people, endangered species are things like snow leopards and elephants, but there are more than 1,000 endangered species in the U.S. alone.
That's right. People are not thinking about salamanders or vegetation in a wetland. They're critically important as a habitat. And they're critically important as a filter: We build all this infrastructure to keep water clean, and wetlands provide very much that same kind of cleansing capacity in a natural way. And they provide a buffering capacity for storm events. We saw this very much with the Katrina and Rita storms in the Gulf of Mexico.
Is there a figure for the size of America's wetlands? A lot of the wetlands have disappeared.
The first statistical wetlands status-and-trends report in 1983
estimated the rate of wetland loss from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s
at 458,000 acres per year. Wetlands then were largely thought of as a
hindrance to development. In the 1991 report, which covered the
mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, we were still losing wetlands, but the rate
had declined to 290,000 acres a year. The third report, from '86 to
'97, indicated that the rate of loss was down to 58,500 acres per year.
Now the 2006 report, which covers 1998 to 2004, shows that the wetland
area actually increased by an average of 32,000 acres per year. This
was the first report to show that we were in a period of increasing
wetlands. There was, however, some issue with this report over how
wetlands were defined.
[Note: The report states that the total area of wetlands in the
U.S. in 2004 was 107.7 million acres. Wood goes on to explain that the
claim of wetlands growth has been contested. A New York Times story,
for instance, explains that over the study period, 523,500 acres of
true wetlands, swamps and tidal marshes were lost, but this was offset
in the report by gains of 715,300 acres of ponds, including man-made
ornamental ponds -- hardly a fair trade.]
To some golfers, wetlands and wild areas are just a nuisance, places
where you're going to lose your ball. They'd rather see the golf course
mowed from fence line to fence line. What do you say to them?
When you provide a bit of education, you can get a very different
answer. You can say, for example, that not mowing certain areas is
better for wildlife, better for water quality and allows native
vegetation to thrive and maybe prevents an invasive species from moving
in. It might change the look of the course a little bit and the way it
plays a little bit, maybe not. I'm a golfer, and to me what's
intrinsically attractive about the game is that you are essentially in
a natural setting. And it's the restrictions and unique features of
that natural setting that make a particular course challenging, one
that you like and remember and want to go back to. That's been a design
principle of golf courses from the beginning. It's part of the game.
One of the influential landscape architects of the last century was Ian
McHarg, who was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He came
out with a book in 1969 called Design with Nature. The
audience was really urban planners and landscape architects, but it
applies to golf courses, too. It's the tradition of the game, and we're
rediscovering that tradition.
The ecological and societal benefits of river corridor and wetlands restoration are substantial:
Rivers transport water, sediment, and nutrients from the land to the sea, play an important role in building deltas and beaches, and regulate the salinity and fertility of estuaries and coastal zones. Rivers serve as corridors for migratory birds and fish, and provide habitat to many unique species of plants and animals, including federally endangered and threatened aquatic species. According to the 1985 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife -Associated Recreation (U.S. DOI, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1988), 38.4 million fishermen spent $17.8 billion for non-Great Lakes freshwater fishing in 1985, with 45 percent of reported anglers fishing in rivers and streams.
Wetlands provide food, protection from predators, and other vital habitat factors for many of the nation's fish and wildlife species, including endangered and threatened species. In addition, wetland ecotypes have economic value associated with recreational, commercial, and subsistence use of fish and wildlife resources and they remove pollutants from overland flows before they reach our lakes, rivers and bays.
Wetlands intercept storm runoff and release floodwaters gradually to downstream systems. When wetlands are converted to systems without water retention capacity, downstream flooding problems increase.
Learn more about restoration of wetlands:
EPA Wetlands, oceans & Watersheds
Learn! Explore! Take Action!
Celebrate the vital importance of wetlands to the Nation's
ecological, economic, and social health. May, American Wetlands Month is also a great opportunity to discover and teach others about the important role that wetlands play in our environment and the significant benefits they provide - improved water quality, increased water storage and supply, reduced flood and storm surge risk, and critical habitat for plants, fish, and wildlife.
In organizing its activities this year, EPA is placing special emphasis on encouraging Americans to:
- Learn about wetlands. This is a great time to better understand what a wetland is, where wetlands can be found, and the importance of wetlands. Activities may include reading and studying about wetland areas, drawing maps or illustrations of wetlands, and identifying native species found in wetlands. Information on wetlands and the important benefits they provide is available on this website, through EPA's wetland fact sheet series, or by visiting the websites of our partners.
- Explore a wetland near you. Unless you live in the most extreme climate zones, there is a good chance a scenic wetland exists nearby for you to visit and explore during American Wetlands Month and throughout the year. To find a wetland near you, consult your local parks department, state natural resource agency, or the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (http://www.fws.gov/refuges). If you live in the Washington, DC area, a guide has been created to highlight wetlands and wildlife sanctuaries.
- Take action to protect and restore wetlands. Support and promote wetlands informing community members about wetlands' vital roles, "adopting" a wetland, joining a local watershed group, or participating in a wetland monitoring, restoration, or cleanup project. There are many other actions Americans can take to help conserve wetlands.To learn more about what you can do to help protect and restore these valuable natural resources in your state or local area, visit http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/awm/#you.
Web-based Geographic Information System for Water Management
IWRIS is a Web-based Geographic Information System application that allows users to access, integrate, query, and visualize multiple sets of data from diverse sources.Some of the databases currently accessible through IWRIS include DWR’s Water Data Library, California Data Exchange Center (CDEC), United States Geological Survey streamflow data, Local Groundwater Assistance Grants (AB303), and data from local agencies. The system will be expanded with additional data sets and functionality in the future.
Improve Water Data Management for Integrated Regional Water Management
DWR developed IWRIS to improve water data management and scientific understanding in support of Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM).The California Water Plan Update 2005 identifies IRWM as a key initiative to ensure reliable water supplies through the year 2030.
The Department of Water Resources operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs.
RESOURCE:
Integrated Water Resources Information System
Department of Water Resources
Division of Planning and Local Assistance
901 P Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
www.iwris.water.ca.gov
Plumbing conservation is widely accepted and routinely called for in federal, state and local legislation, ordinances for new development and agency rebate programs.
These devices are making a measurable difference. For example, Los Angeles saw a 25 percent decrease in demand in the 1990s with a plumbing retrofit program funded by water agencies.
The major benefit of low-flow plumbing device programs is that they can be implemented without requiring a change in the behavior of end users.
Outdoor Water Conservation
Saving water indoors with low-flow plumbing is easy compared to controlling outdoor water waste. Yet the vast majority of household water flows outside.
A study conducted by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) shows that 58 percent of residential water is applied to landscapes. Gardening, recognized as the number one outdoor leisure activity, is growing in popularity as a national pastime.
According to a report published in the journal Environmental Management, some 40 million acres of the U.S. are covered in lawns, making turf the nation’s most irrigated crop.
And according to the American Water Works Association, most landscapes are overwatered by 30% to 300%, accounting for 80% of all landscape damage...and water waste!
SOLUTION: Remove the TURF and replace it with DROUGHT TOLERANT GARDENS or NATIVE HABITAT, etc. that reduces water use.
SOURCE: WeatherTRAK.com
Map of below normal 7-day average streamflow compared to historical streamflow for the day of year (United States)
This interactive map is available at the This map shows the 7-day average streamflow conditions in hydrologic units of the United States and Puerto Rico for the day of year. The colors represent 7-day average streamflow percentiles based on historical streamflow for the day of the year.
The Importance of Landscaping and Streamflow
Streams feed and pull from the groundwater supply, the water table. When streams in a region are low, landscaping is also vulnerable to drought conditions. Some regions are more susceptible to low streamflow conditions on a seasonal basis, but some areas have increasing population stresses put on a normally healthy ecosystem. Landscaping professionals and conscientious landowners can play an important role in the health of their ecosystem and their longterm water supply by applying conservation practices in selection of plant species that require minimal water, and using protective devices such as cisterns, swales and raingardens to protect the groundwater system from contaminants and pollution.
