Monitoring, managing Texas landscape focus of wide-ranging DoLA symposium
By: Norman Martin
Texas Tech University's Department of Landscape Architecture hosted a special symposium, titled "After Design: Monitoring and Managing the Texas Landscape." The program, which featured a range of scholars and practitioners addressing management in contemporary landscapes, was held on Friday (April 5) in the university's College of Architecture's Gallery and Room 102.
Jason Sowell, associate professor and symposium organizer in Tech's Department of Landscape Architecture, said the keynote lecture was presented by Andrew Russell, Dean of State University of New York Polytechnic College of Arts and Sciences. The focus of his talk was The Maintenance Mindset.
Management for landscape performance is often conceived as a set of procedures undertaken after construction or when a landscape fails. Less understood is management's ongoing role in design and planning as a series of operations that monitor, assess and direct the landscape's transformation. Examining design through management therefore emphasizes not only how a landscape is measured relative to other systems, but how it is sustained in specific contexts over time.
Sowell explained that the symposium united scholars and practitioners working in and
around the issue of management across a range of landscapes. Its primary objective
was to explore the role of management in landscape architecture and planning through
three related concerns.
• Evaluate emerging methods and techniques to collect and calibrate data for making
management decisions.
• Assess how we experiment or test management innovations to foster sustainable outcomes
long-term.
• Examine obduracy of approaches or organizational structures that prevent the implementation
of best management practices.
Panel 1: Calibration (10:45 am-12:15 pm)
Melissa Currie, Assistant Professor, Texas Tech Department of Landscape Architecture
• Precision Soil and Crop Management Using Sensor Data; Wenxuan Guo, Assistant Professor of Crop Ecophysiology and Precision Agriculture, Texas Tech
Department of Plant and Soil Science
• Interpreting Landscapes: A Process-Oriented Approach Towards Functioning Landscapes; Matt O'Toole, Director, Ecosystem Research and Design, University of Texas at Austin Lady Bird
Johnson Wildflower Center
• The City of Austin's Functional Assessment: From Regulatory Mechanism to Design Tool; Kristin Pipkin, Waller Creek District Program Manager, City of Austin Watershed Protection Department
Panel 2: Experimentation (1:15 pm-2:45 pm)
Kristine Stiphany, Texas Tech College of Architecture
• U.S. Energy Infrastructure: "What's Past Is Prologue" Fred Beach, Assistant Director for Energy and Technology Policy, University of Texas-Austin
Energy Institute
• Landscape-Scale Ecological Services Markets; Jim Blackburn, Co-Director for the Rice University Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation
from Disasters Center
• Water Decline and Climatic Stress Impacts Agricultural Land Use in the Texas High
Plains; Chuck West, Thornton Distinguished Chair, Texas Tech Department of Plant and Soil Science
Panel 3: Obduracy (3 pm-4:30 pm)
John Davis, Texas Tech College of Architecture
• Managing Change: Framing Landscape at the McDonald Observatory; Jason Sowell, Registered Architect and Associate Professor, Texas Tech Department of Landscape
Architecture
• Lost Behind the Wall: Seizing Property and Sacrificing Land Along the Rio Grande; Marianna Trevino-Wright, Director, National Butterfly Center
• Replanting the Lost Pines: Forest Ecology, Novel Systems and Cultural Identity; Claire Williams, Research Professor-Environmental Sciences, American University American University,
Washington D.C Department of Environmental Sciences
CONTACT: Eric Bernard, Professor and Chairperson, Department of Landscape Architecture, Texas Tech University at (806) 834-3482 or eric.bernard@ttu.edu
0405NM19
Davis College NewsCenter
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Address
P.O. Box 42123, Lubbock, Texas 79409-2123, Dean's Office Location:Goddard Building, Room 108 -
Phone
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Email
kris.allen@ttu.edu