2008

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College of Natural Resources

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2008 SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPES CONFERENCE THEME

Issues of preservation and sustainability have concerned societies throughout time. Responses to these issues have often succeeded but some have failed. As a result of various failures, our planet may be spiraling towards ecological instability.

Despite our past mistakes as a civilization, a new trend is emerging towards renewable energy, sustainable agricultural, engineering, and architectural practices. Continuing this momentum and learning from the successes and failures of our past will help to ensure a prolonged and secure future.

The Sustainable Landscapes Conference is organized by Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning students at Utah State University.

This year’s conference will focus on bettering the issues facing our society today by examining sustainable practices of the past, present, and future.

2008 SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPES CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

8:30 - 9:00: Breakfast & Registration

9:00 – 9:25: Introduction of the conference & Opening reading by Chris Cokinos

SESSION 19:30 – 10:20: Past Speaker, Dr. Tim Murtha; Professor of Landscape Architecture at Penn State

SESSION 210:30 – 11:20: Past Speaker, Dr. Joseph Tainter; Department Head of Environment & Society at Utah State University

SESSION 311:30 – 12:20: Past Speaker, Dr. Steve Simms; Professor of Anthropology at Utah State University

12:30 – 1:20: Lunch

SESSION 4 - CONCURRENT1:30 – 2:20: Present Speakers, Tim Watkins; Cache County Trails Coordinator and contractual planner at Envision Utah & Dr. Phil Rasmussen; Director of the Western Region SARE

SESSION 5 - CONCURRENT2:25 – 3:20: Present Speakers, Jamie Houle; University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center & Sumner Swaner; President of the Center for Green Space Design

SESSION 63:25 – 4:20: Present Speaker, Dr. Rob Gillies; Director of the Utah Climate Center

SESSION 7 - KEYNOTE 4:30 – 5:20: Future Speaker, Jeff Hohensee; CEO of Natural Capitalism Solutions

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Tim Murtha received his Ph.D in Anthropology from Penn State in 2002. His research topically covers several headings, including landscape archaeology, anthropological archaeology, and anthropology of the environment. He has dedicated his career research to study-ing long term human focused environmental change. Because of this focus, he returned to Penn State in 2004 as a faculty member in the landscape architecture department. While his dissertation and the majority of his research has been focused on the Ancient Maya, he is now actively engaged in funded projects in many parts of the world, including Guatemala, the Gulf Coast of Mexico, and Orkney, Scotland. Regardless of the geographical setting or time period he is interested in using advanced geo-spatial technologies to better understand long term environmental change on a landscape scale. The topic of his presentation is the focus of a new book he is writing titled “Beneath the Canopy: Deciphering the Narrative of the Ancient Maya Landscape.”

Dr. Murtha’s presentation discusses the 2,000 years of direct and indirect human action that led to the form and structure of the modern tropical forest in Peten, Guatemala.

TIM MURTHA PH.D Penn State

Christopher Cokinos is the author of the critically acclaimed book “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds” and the soon to be pub-lished book “The Fallen Sky: A Private His-tory of Shooting Stars” for which he spent a month collecting meteorites in Antarctica, in the name of research. He has received grants from the NSF, as well as winning several awards for his writing. His writings have appeared in several publications and journals. He currently has appointments in the English department and the college of Natural Resources at Utah State University, as well as serving as editor of Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature & Science Writing. Chris earned his M.F.A. at Washington Uni-versity in St. Louis and his B.A. from Indiana. When not working or writing Chris relaxes by backpacking watching Canadian league football and tending his four acres along the Blacksmith Fork river.

He will be reading his essay “The Consola-tions of Extinction: We do what we can without going crazy, but is it ever enough?”

CHRIS COKINOSThe Consolation of Extinction: We do what we can without going crazy, but is it ever enough?

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Jeff Hohensee is the CEO of Natural Capitalism Solutions and a change management expert who has been working in business, education and sustainability for over twenty-five years. Jeff has facilitated change management in academic institutions, business, nonprofits and government agencies to internally evaluate effectiveness, bring on board new initiatives, undertake and implement strategic planning and organizational development, instigate strategic partnership development and overcome barriers to innovation. He is an inspiring speaker whose interviews and presentations include print media, television, DVD movie featurette, universities, professional associations, business, government agencies and community groups. He has keynoted such conferences as California Youth Service, Lake Tahoe Environmental Education Consortium annual meeting and the U.S. EPA Community Leadership Conference.

Jeff Hohensee will talk about NCS’ work guiding companies, communities and countries on the path to authentic sustainability. He will share best practices from leaders around the world who are all responding to global drivers of change such as declining ecosystems and rising energy costs. Jeff will highlight the principles of Natural Capitalism: buying time with radical efficiency, redesigning all processes and products with nature as a model and restoring human and natural capital. With a decade of experience in urban forestry, Jeff will then overlay these principles with sustainable landscape architecture, linking best practices and integrated planning to make the business case for large scale implementation.

JEFF HOHENSEE - Keynote SpeakerNatural Capitalism Solutions

Joseph Tainter received his Ph.D. in Anthropol-ogy from Northwestern University in 1975. He authored the highly-acclaimed book “The Collapse of Complex Societies”, co-edited the book of “The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action”, and co-wrote the book “Supply-Side Sustainability”. Dr. Tainter has taught at the University of New Mexico and Arizona State University as well as serving as director of the Cultural Heritage Research Project in Rocky Mountain Research Station. He is currently Professor and Head of the Depart-ment of Environment and Society at Utah State University. Dr. Tainter’s sustainability research has been used in more than 40 countries, and in many scientific and applied fields from econom-ic development to the challenges of security in response to terrorism. He appears in the film The 11th Hour, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, Leila Conners Petersen, Brian Gerber, and Chuck Castleberry.

While the term globalization is much used to-day, the processes and consequences of global-ization have been evident in human history for some time.

Dr. Tainter’s talk presents a case study of the effects of globalization on the landscapes of southern Gaul (France) during the period of the Roman Empire (ca. 1st century B.C. to 5th cen-tury A.D.). Disjunctures in scaling between the flows of information, goods, and power reduced local resiliency and sustainability, leading to major episodes of erosion and overall environ-ment degradation.

JOSEPH TAINTER PH.DUtah State University

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Steve R. Simms received his Ph.D. in Anthropol-ogy in 1984 from the University of Utah. He is an archaeologist and paleoecologist working under the theoretical umbrella of human evolutionary ecology. He has practiced archaeology since 1972 across the western U.S., and in the Southeast, as well as ethnoarchaeology with Bedouin tribes in Jordan from 1986-1994. He has authored more than 50 refereed publications, over 80 technical reports, and three major monographs. His general readership book “Ancient Peoples of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau” will be released in April 2008. He is currently teaches at Utah State University.

In the spirit of a “conference,” Dr. Simms presen-tation is an interactive discussion rather than a lecture which will explore the following notions and issues:

• Wildernessasahumanlandscape• Thetemporaldimensionof sustainability• Theroleofhumansinachievingany level of sustainability

He will present some guiding propositions, some of them polemic. Archaeological examples will enable the discussion to engage the abstract issues with specific cases.

“All environmental visioning is cross-cultural, and the inclusion of the past allows us to ensnare a great deal of cultural variability on time scales that transcend the lives, motives, and beliefs of indi-vidual humans.”

STEVE SIMMS PH.DThe past is with us in the present

Robert R. Gillies is the Director of the Utah Climate Center at Utah State University (USU) and State Climatologist for the State of Utah. He is an associate professor in meteorology in the Department of Plants, Soils and Climate (PSC), College of Agricultural Sciences at USU. Prior to the position of Director, he held a joint position in PSC and the Department of Watershed Sciences in the College of Natural Resources at USU. Dr. Gillies came to USU from The Pennsylvania State University. After completing his PhD in meteorology and remote sensing, Dr. Gillies continued his research as a research associate in the Department of Meteorology and the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. Dr Gillies was a member of Gov. Jon Huntsman’s scientific panel that compiled a report on climate change as it pertains to Utah for the Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel.

A presentation of (1) a summary of the present scientific understanding of climate change and its potential impacts on temperature and precipitation in Utah and the western United States as detailed in the scientific document prepared for Governor Jon Huntsman’s Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change (BRAC) and (2) the implications of recent projections of climate changes for western water resources with a focus on Utah.

ROBERT R. GILLIES PH.DClimate Change – Inquiring Minds Think Globally however Concern also Lies Locally

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Tim Earned a Master’s in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from Utah State in 2001, where he focused his thesis studies on “Transferable Development Rights.” Tim currently provides contractual services to Envision Utah, a nonprofit planning organization dedicated to supporting regional & community visioning, long range planning research, and community education. He also serves as the part-time Cache County Trails Coordinator, where he has created a draft county-wide trail and parkway master plan that encourages a coordinated trail and green space network between 15 communities, public land agencies and private utility companies.

The “R” word is becoming less and less threatening to local governments in Utah that have long viewed regional planning as an imposition and loss of local control. Yet, consequences of uncoordinated planning between communities have become more pervasive, including traffic congestion, air quality degradation, loss of highway function, and loss of important open spaces. Negative growth impacts to local communities seem to be a motivating force to explore change through multi-jurisdictional dialogues, visioning activities, or inter-local policy implementation.Tim Watkins reports that regional growth challenges are being identified and discussed by collective jurisdictions and stakeholders in regions throughout the state of Utah. Tim encourages discussions of sustainable growth and preservation patterns by providing 3D computer illustration of growth alternatives, and by modeling fiscal impacts of growth. He recognizes that decisions made by elected officials, developers, and land owners are not always influenced by sound planning principles, and often result in unsustainable and unattractive growth to be inherited by future generations. Tim’s ambition is to provide communities and developers with important visuals, creative zoning strategies, and growth cost projections to inform policy adoption and development approval processes.

TIM WATKINS Regional templates for more sustainable growth patterns

Sumner Swaner is the president of the Center for Green Space Design. The Center for Green Space Design is committed to providing an open forum for the discussion of open space preservation issues. Because we understand that a broad range of individuals with varied interests ultimately determines a community’s open space future, we seek to bring these individuals together to discuss, debate and arrive at solutions that will ensure open space preservation for community residents while accommodating the inevitable growth.

Sumner Swaner will speak about his Plantinum LEED certified building, the Swaner Eco Center located on the Swaner Nature Preserve.

SUMNER SWANERClimate Change – Inquiring Minds Think Globally however Concern also Lies Locally

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Phil has been the coordinator of the Western Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program since 1994. As part of his Western SARE assignment, he is also an assistant director in both the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station and the Utah State University Cooperative Extension Service. In 1999, Phil was appointed as the first NASA geospatial extension specialist in the nation.

Dr. Rasmussen will introduce the Western Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program that is headquartered at USU. The Western Region includes 13 states and four Pacific Island protectorates: Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Micronesia, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.Since 1988, the USDA-CSREES (Land-grant) Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education program has been breathing life into agricultural profitability, environmental integrity and community strength. For twenty years we have administered a competitive grants program that has invested over 42 million dollars in the Western Region alone. Our current annual budget from Congress is over $4.1 million. Further information on our competitive grants program can be found at our website http://wsare.usu.edu. A hallmark of SARE is its collaboration with partners from universities, agribusiness, government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

PHIL RASMUSSEN PH.DWestern Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education

James Houle is the Outreach Coordinator and Program Manager for the Stormwater Center. His responsibilities include development of outreach and education products, and supervising the Stormwater Center’s growing body of research projects.

Mr. Houle holds a M.A. in Sustainable Development and a B.S. in Molecular Biology. He has over seven years of experience with water quality related issues in New Hampshire and is a certified professional in storm water quality (C.P.S.W.Q.) In addition to his technical expertise, Mr. Houle is also experienced in environmental systems analysis, systems thinking facilitation, and served three years in the U.S. Peace Corps in Ghana.

JAMES HOULEFuture Goals for Stormwater Management Strategies