Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN) Green Infrastructure, Climate, and Cities Seminar Series
Assessing Green Infrastructure with Urban Vegetation
Wednesday, March 4th at 4pm (EST)
Drexel University – Hill Seminar Room – Lebow Engineering Room 240 – 31st and Market Sts, Phila, PA
webinar option also available
RSVP links:
http://whoozin.com/CAA-ETD-DPF3 (in person)
http://whoozin.com/P4H-YDR-RGEN (web attendance)
This session’s presenters will discuss the effectiveness of the green infrastructure (GI) initiatives based on plants’ performances. Recognizing environmental and system stressors has enabled Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) to problem-solve and develop landscape design guidelines and plant palettes for this infrastructure. Blaustein will give an overview of Greenland Nursery, focusing specifically on interfaces between the nurseries’ programs and municipal projects in the city of Philadelphia, including GI projects. Ahern will discuss PWD design guidelines, maintenance procedures, and types of plants that PWD uses in its implementation of the 400+ stormwater management systems that it maintains.
DiGiovanni will present her research on evapotranspiration rates in engineered urban green spaces. Vegetation and climate are determining factors in evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is an important hydrologic process linked to stormwater management, microclimate regulation and other ecosystem services which can be provided by engineered urban green spaces. In the studies presented, field based monitoring efforts are complimented with laboratory studies to elucidate the relative importance of meteorological conditions and vegetation type in influencing evapotranspiration. DiGiovanni will also present new monitoring efforts in next generation volume reduction green infrastructure stormwater control measures in support of Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters Initiative.
Kimberly DiGiovanni, PhD is a post-doctoral research fellow and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Villanova University. She is a graduate of Drexel University’s doctoral program in Environmental Engineering and is an alumna of the Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Laboratory at Drexel. Dr. DiGiovanni’s research interests and focus include the eco-hydrology of natural vegetated spaces and engineered urban green spaces.
Rachel Ahern serves as landscape design expert for Philadelphia Water Department (PWD)’s Green City, Clean Waters Program. Ms. Ahern reviews landscape designs and leads surface maintenance operations. She was the primary author of PWD’s GSI Landscape Design Manual. Ms. Ahern has a B.A. in Biology from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR and a Masters in Landscape Architecture and Certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.
Max Blaustein is Nursery Manager for the Philadelphia Department of Parks & Recreation. He has been working since 2009 to restore a previously abandoned Fairmount Park facility and building a program of local provenance native plant production for projects within the city of Philadelphia. Primarily growing plant materials for natural lands restoration sites, the nursery is now also producing container plants for maintenance of green stormwater infrastructure sites.
For more information please visit http://www.ccrun.org/seminars
