Restoration Design
University of Washington
Spring Quarter 2008
Learning goals for the course
Restoration Design and the Design Process
- Be able to explain the meaning of the term “restoration design.”
- Be able to list, describe and explain the nature of disturbance and restoration in several different important “ecosystem disturbance sectors.”
- Be able to frame restoration design projects in the “appreciative design” framework.
- Be able to explain how to determine if a design is complete enough to be called “done.”
- Be able to state and explain the “necessary steps” in restoration design projects.
- Be able to list, describe and explain important “ecological functions.”
- Be able to explain how to design producing landscapes to perform ecological functions.
- Be able to specify ecological functions, using the Appreciative Design framework, in a restoration design problem.
Site Assessment
- Be able to list, describe and explain several different “landscape impacts” and the commonly used methods for dealing with them.
- Be able to explain how restoration sites should be assessed for restoration design.
- Be able to perform a restoration field reconnaissance / site assessment that is appropriate for restoration design.
Site Modification and Site Conditioning
- Be able to define “site modification.”
- Be able to describe plant material for restoration, in terms of species mix, available forms, timing and cultural requirement, as appropriate for different ecosystem types.
- Be able to define “site conditioning” and explain how it is different from site modification, its role in restoration, and how to specify it in restoration design.
Installation and Project Management
- Understand important aspects of project implementation / installation and how these elements are dealt with as constraints in a restoration design project.
- Be able set up and use a formal decision matrix with weighted decision criteria to guide and document design decision making.
- Understand and be able to use common project planning and management concepts in restoration design proposals.
- Apply concepts commonly used in project planning and management to a restoration design project proposal.
Post Project Monitoring and Maintenance
- Be able to list and describe reasons for and key attributes of post-project monitoring and maintenance programs.
- Be able to outline a complete post installation management and maintenance plan that includes planned monitoring and assessment, as part of a restoration design project.
Restoration Related to Agricultural, Aquacultural and Forest Production Sectors
- Become familiar with key aspects of the damage and restoration of ecosystems found in the agricultural production sector.
- Develop a preliminary design to partially restore an ecosystem in an agricultural setting.
- Become familiar with key aspects of the damage and restoration of ecosystems found in the water and power production sector(s).
- Become familiar with key aspects of the damage and restoration of natural landscapes damaged by livestock grazing.
- Develop a preliminary design to partially restore an ecosystem that has been damaged by activities related to the livestock production sector.
- Become familiar with key aspects of the damage and restoration of ecosystems modified through production forestry.
- Understand issues methods related to longleaf pine forest restoration
- Become familiar with key aspects of the restoration of marine beds.
Restoration Related to Water, Energy and Transportation Sectors
- Develop a preliminary design to partially restore an ecosystem in a “water and power production mitigation” related setting.
- Become familiar with key aspects of the nature of the disturbance and the restoration of natural landscapes damaged by dredging and filling of wetlands and waterways.
- Develop a preliminary design to partially restore a wetlands ecosystem as might be found in a wetland and waterway damage mitigation project.
- Become familiar with key aspects of damage and how it can be repaired in natural landscapes damaged by mining and related activities.
- Develop a design to restore an area that was once used as a rock quarry.
- Apply some commonly used project planning and management concepts to a restoration design project related to a landscape damaged by the creation of transportation and/or transmission corridors.
Restoration related to Urbanization
- Become familiar with the nature of the impacts of urbanization to natural landscapes and some of the approaches that can be taken to restore some of the ecological functions to those landscapes.
- Become familiar with some of the key aspects of urban brown-field restoration design.
- Review an historical plan to restore an urban landfill and, with the benefit of hindsight, develop an urban landfill restoration plan.
- Become able to use ideas from restoration design to develop guiding principle for prioritizing urban ecological restoration activities.
Restoration Related to Recreation
- Become familiar with key aspects of damage and how it can be repaired in natural landscapes damaged by recreational use.
- Develop a design and an implementation plan for repairing a natural landscape that has been damaged by hiking and camping.
