Hydrology (Wayne Peterson, Urban Conservationist)
Can the past provide the key to the future of water quality? Get Wayne Petersen's take on "green development."
TRANSCRIPT:
To me the hydrology of a site is very very important because having water moving through the system properly in a sustainable way is kind of like the foundation of an ecosystem and if you've got a bad foundation on a building its probably going to crumple over time. And if you don't manage water properly which is the foundation of the ecosystem, then I believe all the other aspects of that ecosystem will tend to unravel. So a real first and foremost a real focus on managing water during and after construction, is to me real critical to doing good development. I like to use that the model of the native ecosystem, the landscape a couple hundred years ago, and I know we're not going to turn the whole world back into prairie of course but I do think we can understand how water might once have moved through this natural or native ecosystem and I think we can design new developments that will mimic the way that landscape functioned - even if it doesn't look like it once did I think it can behave or function very similar to that.
Tags: Explore More viewpoints water water pollution water quality
