ecology – Page 2 – Hidden Hydrology

13 December 2016 23 January 2017

Beyond the LA River

Jason Kingcity, ecology, history, landscape, los angeles, maps, places, precedents, streams2 Comments

The typical news story from Los Angeles that often emerges concerning rivers tends to focus on the LA River and it’s future and fate. Countless stories of the latest master plans or rehabilitation efforts, Army Corps efforts, or just plain ire at the fact that Frank Gehry was involved have been flying around for years. One of my favorite takes is documented in the fantastic 2008 publication ‘The Infrastructural City‘, which breaks down LA into a number of systems including a good amount of focus on the River. And while no one would dispute the importance of the river to the city (and to countless movie chase scenes) there is a broad and complex hydrology and at work in the City of Los Angeles.

The folks at LA Creak Freak offer a slightly different and broader take, and while they do offer plenty of discussion on the LA River, they explore some of the other tangents of hidden hydrology. As mentioned in their About summary the site is both “… a way to share information about LA’s historical ecology – the rivers and streams that were once here – and to update people on relevant watery news and events with a mostly local focus…” and “…that we believe our rivers and creeks are vital to our communities and our planet. Though degraded and forgotten, they’re worth saving.” This information and activism role is similar in nature to much of my inspirations, so it was interesting to dig into their site. The main players are landscape architect Jessica Hall and Joe Linton, an artist, author and activist with a long involvement in the community. The site links to maps, stories, resources, and some transcribed interviews as well. It’s somewhat free-form, with a few helpful summaries like ‘getting started‘ and ‘recommendations‘ but like many sites, is chock full of place specific info that you just have to spend time digging in to.

Some of the links led to a map from the Rumsey collection of the topography of Los Angeles from 1880 by William Hammond Hall shows another “Beautiful hand drawn map of the Los Angles-San Bernardino Basin. Pen-and-ink and pencil. Relief shown by hachures. It appears to be a base map on a scale of two miles to an inch, probably preliminary (several of Hall’s notations on the edges indicate corrections needed to the topography) and earlier than the 1888 Report titled “Irrigation in California” that had 15 maps that may have been derived from this map. It may also have served as the base for “Drainage area map to accompany report on irrigation and water supply in California” by Wm. Ham. Hall, State Engineer. (188-?). Hall was a famous engineer who was the first state engineer and was responsible for many of the early state water projects (see California Water Atlas). This map does not have any names drawn in except for a few towns, rivers, or railroads lightly penciled in. All the land divisions and city plats are indicated, with mountains, rivers, railroads, roads, arroyos and shorelines shown.”

A link to a map of the North Branch of the Arroyo Seco offers some commentary on the mapping: “I am fascinated by the messiness of the historical landscape before it was flattened and filled, with water confined to neatly linear paths. There are so many notations mapmakers used to depict the ways water manifested in the historical landscape. William Hammond Hall’s maps go beyond mere notation, into the realm of artistic representation. In contrast, USGS maps of contemporary Los Angeles use a limited and inflexible set of icons to depict water: blue lines for waterways (thin or thick, solid or dashed), and blue amoebas for lakes. Does the simplicity of these icons reflect what we’ve done to our surface water; or has what we’ve done to our surface water reflect our simplistic cultural idea about how a water body is supposed to look like and behave?”

While the USGS maps of modern day (or at least 1975 from above) may have evolved be more more generic, but the old ones had some beauty, as shown here in a map from 1896 snapped from the great USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer.

I love the scale of the monumentally awesome Historical Creek & Wetlands Map of the lower Lost Angeles River and environs map below shows a range of buried creeks, sandy washes, historic wetlands, as well as existing creeks, concrete channels and drains (key to left) from around 1902. Not sure who was the author of this map although the copyright shows 2003 from North East Trees. The original orientation of the LA River and tributaries is interesting to see, along with the other hydrologic elements and topography. There are a number of other excerpt maps from areas around LA as well.

Obviously the LA River is the major drainage, but there are plenty of tributaries and other side drainage weaving through the urban realm. A Google map created by the LA Creek Freak folks provides a bit more context beyond the main LA River channel, showing historic drainages woven through the City such as Ballona Creek much of which is buried and/or channelized.

A great example of online resource in that same basin is the Ballona Historical Ecology web site, an interactive exploration created by multiple sources including the San Francisco Estuary Institute, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, and the Santa Monica Bay Foundation, along with CSU Northridge, CSU Chico, and USC. For more information you can also download a report for the project here.

Another link to a map show at the LA Central Library called L.A. Unfolded (awesome idea), which led to some more historical maps shows this gem from the Online Archive of California for a Map of the City of Los Angeles from 1884.

A side trip to Jane Tsong’s Myriad Unnamed Streams is a worthy diversion, with stories and maps focusing on Northeast Los Angeles. Various snippets of water history like “Where the Creeks Ran Underground” offer some place specific notes, maps and history for a small segment of LA around Eagle Rock Creek. This series of key maps shows the area with streams only.

And with the overlay with modern sewer system, “Street map showing storm drains/1888 water courses as mapped by State Engineer William Hammond Hall, overlaid onto modern topographical data. Street, stormdrain and topographical data: Bureau of Engineering.”

Also worth checking out is a Curbed LA story “25 Photos of the Los Angeles River Before It Was Paved in 1938″ shows a different, softer side to the river, such as it meandering near Boyle Heights in the 1880s:

And from 1931, “The then-new Fourth Street Bridge” showing a natural river bed and although channelized, softer edges to the river.

This one, from 1938, indicates the plans for channelization: “Shown is an artist’s sketch which graphically portrays the system of dams, underground storage basins, etc., that were set up by the Los Angeles County engineers to prevent floods and to conserve hitherto wasted rain water for domestic purposes.”

The end came after floods in spring of 1938, as described in a book The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth: (Blake Gumprecht, 2001): “The first Los Angeles River projects paid for by the federal government and built under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were completed a few months after the flood. Work was finished in October 1938 on three projects to lower the river’s bed twenty feet, widen its channel and pave its banks for a little over four miles upstream from Elysian Park. Three months later, construction was completed on the first segment of what would eventually be a continuous trapezoidal concrete channel to carry the river from Elysian Park to Long Beach.”

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02 December 2016 12 December 2016

Case: Town Branch Commons – Lexington, Kentucky

Jason Kingcase study, city, creeks, ecology, geology, history, landscape, lexington, outreach, places, precedents, projects, soundscapeLeave a Comment

I had the opportunity to see Kate Orff from SCAPE speak a few weeks back at University of Washington, and it was inspiring to see the mix of project work and activism that is the mark of this creative firm. This project aligns nicely as it is featured in her new book, Toward an Urban Ecology and is another example of ecological design in an urban context. She focused on some of the older projects in her talk, but this is one I’ve been waiting to explore here at Hidden Hydrology, the Town Branch Commons in Lexington, Kentucky.

The project unique example of using the historical hydrology and geology as design inspiration – not a true daylighting but falling somewhere in the middle of the continuum from art to restoration. From Architect’s Newspaper, a recent post SCAPE turns Lexington, Kentucky’s long-buried water into an asset provides a pretty extensive visual overview and some description into the project that complements the overview in the book.

“Town Branch Commons weaves a linear network of public space along the 2.5 mile path of the historic Town Branch creek in downtown Lexington, Kentucky. Once a waste canal, sewer, and water conduit for the city, the buried stream channel of Town Branch is an opportunity to reconnect the city with its Bluegrass identity and build a legacy public space network for the 21^st century. Rather than introducing a single daylit stream channel into the city fabric, the design uses the local limestone (karst) geology as inspiration for a series of pools, pockets, water windows, and stream channels that brings water into the public realm.”

The renderings show the movement of water and the use of stone to embody the conceptual ideas of the Karst geology, which is responsible for the landscape of disappearing and reappearing springs. A more expansive overview of the landscape type from the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) site describes it as: “A landscape formed by the erosion of bedrock, characterized by sinkholes, caves, and underground drainage systems. Many of the surface features are due to underground processes of the weak acids of groundwater dissolving the rock and creating a varied topography.”

This is seen in the design concepts for the spaces that are woven through the corridor, an approach referenced in Toward an Urban Ecology as a ‘Geology as Materiality’ (p.38). The Karst metaphor is incorporated with orderly frames, referencing with geology within a semi-formal urban context that softens the spaces while maintaining functionality. This is where the design-centric approach would differ from the more formal restoration, referencing a key hydro-geological precedent in an urban context. As mentioned in the book ‘Towards an Urban Ecology’: “Town Branch is recast as hybrid hydrological and urban infrastructure, creating defined and safe spaces for water, pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles along its path. In the downtown core, streets are realigned to make way for an extended public realm, where water is expressed not at the surface, but underground, as rainwater-fed filtration gardens clean the waters of Town Branch before entering the culvert below.” (p.36)

The concept of the sunken areas allow for an immersive experience within an urban realm. The separation of grade and edges of formal and natural provide variety of experiences that provide a model for ‘daylighting’ and applied urban ecology that is both functional and artistic, aesthetic but with some ecological rigor. As mentioned in A/N: “To create freshwater pools—SCAPE calls them “karst windows,” in reference to similar naturally occurring formations—the design will tap old culverts (essentially large pipes) that previously kept Lexington’s karst water out of sight.“

And more dramatically enveloping in a recreation of the Karst geology and incorporation of moving, dynamic water, while also allowing for physical access to the water, a rare treat in urban areas. This image shows waterfalls near Rupp Arena, a high-visibility area adjacent to more formal plaza spaces at surface.

The nature/culture connection is strong, and a unique model that is about the landscape of Lexington. As mentioned in A/N: “Here it’s all about finding a unique identity framed around a cultural and geological history of a place,” said Gena Wirth, SCAPE design principal. “What’s replicable is the multipurpose infrastructure that unites the city, its story, and its systems.”

Water Walks

An interesting part of the narrative is not just the project design, but the generative strategy used by SCAPE to develop the project. Those already familiar with another SCAPE project, the fantastic Safari 7, (which will get some documentation here soon) will note some similarities of the use of place-based audio and mapping, They documented a public outreach process Town Branch Water Walk which aimed to connect residents to the local landscape. From their site:

“The result, Town Branch Water Walk, is a self-guided tour of downtown Lexington’s formerly hidden water body, Town Branch Creek, with content developed together with University of Kentucky students. The design intervention is not a physical landscape, but a communication tool– using podcasts, maps, and walks for the interpretation of urban systems. The Water Walk gives a broad understanding of the biophysical area around the Town Branch, reveals the invisible waters that run beneath the city, and demonstrates some of the impacts each resident of Lexington can have on the river and its water quality. By sharing how water systems and people are interrelated—both locally and globally—the Town Branch Water Walk makes stormwater quality relevant, linking it with the history, culture, and ecology of the city.”

The walking tour is accompanied by audio that can be used in situ as podcasts, and as more formal walking or bike tours – and this model/map was also used at events along to provide listening stations for the various stories.

There’s more on this process worthy of additional exploration and future posts, and check out the audio and links at www.townbranchwaterwalk.com

All images via SCAPE

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17 November 2016 12 December 2016

Seattle: The Waterlines Project

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, ecology, history, landscape, language, maps, places, precedents, seattle1 Comment

Many precedents and projects from the around the globe, being slowly populated in the Resources section. These will all get some more in-depth attention, and starting it off locally, I wanted to highlight The Waterlines Project. The ability to ‘Discover and Explore Seattle’s Past Landscapes’ is hosted by the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and offers a densely researched and vibrant picture of the historic cultural and ecology of Seattle prior to the significant engineering that has subsequently taken place.

“Founded on Indian ground by American settlers in 1851, Seattle is one of the most dramatically engineered cities in the United States. Its shorelines have been extended, lagoons filled, hills flattened and rivers re-routed. Built on an active geological fault near a large volcano, Seattle has also been jolted by huge earthquakes, washed by tsunamis, covered by volcanic mud and ash, fluted by glaciers and edged by rising seas.”

The project is historical in nature, using the shorelines as a datum for use and reconfiguration over time, which the creators offer as”an appropriate and compelling framework for viewing the city’s history–one that will engage public audiences and raise themes that are important in American history.” Synthesis of documentary info (maps, photos) alongside oral histories and other archaeological and geological study weaves a mosaic visual that is more accessible to the public.

The main product of the project is the large Waterlines Project Map, which available in a number of places around Seattle, as well as graphic and PDF download on the site. The front illustrates the mid-19th Century landscape, before settlement by non-native peoples, including keyed places that reference Coast Salish terms, many of which are evocative and descriptive of function, such as The Growing Place and Water Falling Over an Edge. The ecology is also evident, with a range of forest, prairie, wetland, rivers and creeks.

There’s also a very faint outline of the modern shoreline, which doesn’t dominate but gives a feel for the adjustment of these Waterlines the significant filling, straightening, and flattening that occurred. This is highly evident in the mouth of the Duwamish River seen below, with the creation of Harbor Island and industrial lands south of downtown, as well as the channelization of the previously bendy river.

The back side of the map shows more information in the form of tours of significant historical stories, such as the lakes, glaciation, and rivers, as well as the original settlement location in current Pioneer Square, which was also an indigenous village named The Crossing Over Place. There’s also a timeline of the most recent 20,000 years of geology and development for a bit of long context.

The background for the map is immense, drawing from the previous work of the the Puget Sound River History Project, and involves multiple disciplines. yet it’s simple and effective, somewhat similar to the Mannahatta 2D visuals. The site offers additional source materials, such as maps, photographs and links to resources. Some interesting juxtaposition occurs when paired with recent aerial photos at similar scale – both as a way to emphasis erasure and addition, but also to show traces of what still remains.

The iterations of time between the two time intervals above are indicative of the Seattle penchant for ‘making land’ (matched in intensity with ‘taking land’ perhaps). The story of the filling of the Duwamish and colonization of tideflats and water from 1875 through 2008 in the series below and reinforces the significant alteration that both radically shifted the ecology of Seattles only river, but also provided land to grow the city and industrial base.

The core team includes Peter Lape, Amir Sheikh, and Donald Fels, and a host of collaborators listed here. While referential, the focus is not on the buried streams and creeks, so my work is complementary and draws much in terms of inspiration and information from this project as well as possible collaborations and resources in Seattle.

For a bit more context surrounding the Little Crossing Over Place, this video made by the team shows the transformation of the Pioneer Square area of Seattle “a bird’s eye glimpse at some of the social, economic, and landscape histories of the neighborhood through time.”

# all images via Waterlines

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15 November 2016 14 November 2016

Lost Rivers

Jason Kingcreeks, cultural, ecology, film, maps, places, reviews, streamsLeave a Comment

p9784174_p_v8_aa I finally had a chance to view the Lost Rivers documentary thanks to a co-worker picking up a copy of the DVD. The log line sums it up: “Once upon a time, in almost every city, many rivers flowed. Why did they disappear? How? And could we see them again? This documentary tries to find answers by meeting visionary urban thinkers, activists and artists from around the world.”

The films highlight a bit of the multifarious of the hidden hydrology paradigm, that of the explorers, or ‘drainers’ that crawl through pipes in search of photos, and adventure, cities daylighting streams for economic development, urban archeologists with a penchant for maps and popping manhole covers, and designers proposing integrated strategies for flood control and stormwater management. The common thread of these stories, including Montreal and Toronto in Toronto, European examples in London, Brescia, Italy, and some daylighting projects in both Seoul, South Korea and Yonkers, New York.

“We built our cities on the shores of rivers. Over time we pushed rivers away, out of sight and out of reach. But they’re still there. Hidden, everywhere. And around the world city dwellers are on a quest to reconnect to this lost nature.”

We first meet the explorers, or “drainers”, as they are referenced by Danielle Plamondon, one of these explorers that regularly appears throughout the documentary. All around the world folks don hip waders and backpacks of gear, then crawl, rappel, and slog through sewers. The reasons are varied, some with a bent for history, others for the joy of revealing that which is hidden. The illegality of it is also a draw, moving into these as she mentions in the beginning, of people who know what she does, “They don’t realize how forbidden it is.”

I had the distinct feeling that the adventure/illegal paradigm might be the only draw, and wondered, beyond the thrill, what the point of these explorations would be. Having traced a few creeks, it’s been many years since the desire to crawl through pipes passed my mind, although I have to admit this piqued my curiosity for sure. One creative output was photography of the tunnels – which is excellent and perhaps the only view most people will have of these places. Lost Rivers includes the work of Andrew Emond, exploring Montreal’s Saint Pierre River, which starts as a trickle near a golf course and leads to a subterranean labyrinth. His photographs are pretty amazing, and the documentary features some bonus tracks with more of his art installations.

Beyond the purely adventuresome, the film does delve into the history to a degree, and what better city to do this than London, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The rapid development of the city meant that London was one of the first. As described by Tom Bolton, author of London’s Lost Rivers, there are 15-20 buried rivers that used to flow on the surface into the Thames, with around two-thirds of the original tributaries either partially or completely buried.

The rivers grew cities, providing hydropower for mills, inputs for tanneries and manufacturing, clean drinking water for residents, all were the engine of industrial development. The same processes which grew cities also led to the downfall of these waterways, with population growth these creeks and rivers became polluted and often deadly. The ‘Great Stink‘ in London in 1858 caused the city to virtually shut down due to smells, and rampant cholera, which quickly led to the modernization and sanitation of these creeks underground in sewers.

This happened in virtually every city in various forms and expresses itself in many ways today, including basement flooding or sewer backups, or even sinking houses, such as those in Toronto that are located atop the former route of Garrison Creek.

Cities that used creeks to drive industrialization were also quick to close them up for progress. Yonkers, New York took the working Saw Mill River, which is a tributary of the Hudson River, and installed a flume, which was buried under a parking lot. As seen in the photos below, the river was channelized, and then eventually capped and filled, a fate that tens of thousands of urban creeks fell to in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Driven by a need for economic development to revitalize downtown, the daylighting of the Saw Mill River was seen not just as an ecological plus, but as an economic driver. Ninety years after it was capped, and at considerable cost, the restoration of the river has restored vitality to a depressed downtown core.

The efforts have also been coupled with habitat plans, and followed by environmental education of school kids, who are helping study the ecological impacts of the restoration, particularly on creating new habitat for the American Eel.

London also has taken an active approach to using the routes of lost rivers to aid in resilience to flood control, which has been estimated to potentially cost billions. The River Quaggy, which had been culverted for over 100 years, and because a testing ground for a green approach to flood protection. By removing concrete, daylighting creeks, and using open space, ecologists were able to restore wetland vegetation in Sudcliff Park, creating an urban natural reserve that provides protection from flood waters now and into the future. An additional 15 kilometers of river restoration is planned in the future.

The film also points to some of the misses, such as the strategies brought forth by designers in Toronto, even back in the mid 1990s, to utilize open space of the former Garrison Creek basin for a similar type of flood control. Unfortunately, what could have been a new nature-based paradigm was not implemented, the city choosing to use more technological engineering approaches such as storage tunnels.

I really appreciated learning about the Brescia Underground, a group of Italian urban drainers that were given the official status as a historical society, where they lead tours of underground rivers and continue to explore the unique history of their place, including Roman-era marble bridges built almost 1000 years ago.

The public nature of their tours is impressive, not just walking along the surface but leading the public down into the guts of the city. As one of the explorers mentions, “in every city we dream of doing this.”

The final project discussed is one known to many, the amazing and controversial Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. In addition to finally learning how to pronounce the name, it was interesting to learn more about the additional history of this project, which removed an urban elevated highway and restored six kilometers of river to the urban center.

The newly restored river has had over 123 million visitors, and is focused both as an ecological and cultural system. This is not however, without some costs to both. In the process of removing the highway and restoring the river, a large number of merchants were displaced, taking a social and economic toll, as they were relocated from their lucrative high-traffic locations to a new spot where they now struggle to make ends meet. In addition, the ecology of the site is artificial, due to the nature of the hydrology, the water needs to be continually recirculated through the system, with over 100 million cubic meters of water per day pumped from the Han River, which expends enormous amounts of electricity. As mentioned in the film, “authenticity and illusion may be blurred, but people are drawn to it.”

The artificiality of the system and displacement aside, there were some appreciable benefits beyond the human. The diversity of wildlife has been documented, and over 800 new species have been welcomed back into this urban ecosystem, which is impressive. The remnants of the highway structures were a nice touch as well, sort of a post-apocalyptic homage to the new, novel ecosystem created from the detritus of the past.

The conundrum of pure natural systems versus pumping and manipulation of hydrological systems is evident in all of these projects, as we will talk often in hidden hydrology, there is a continuum that spans from the abstract and artistic to weaving through the designed and engineered to the opposite poles of the true ecological and hydrological restoration. There’s no perfect answer, between painting a blue line on the surface to painstakingly mimicking the natural reference ecology – all are valid approaches.

This sort of topic lends itself to multiple types of media, and a documentary offers a unique way to delve into the experiential qualities of lost rivers, especially urban explorations and the sights and sounds of nature buried and also that restored. The structure of the film jumped back and forth between multiple narratives, which inevitably . And while there was an ecological narrative and implications of resilience and climate change, these themes were not always evident, which had the good side of not seeming preachy, but also made the film seem to lack some substance and impact about the potential. It didn’t try to gloss over some of the critical elements, like the failure of plans in Toronto, and some of the artificiality and social impact in Seoul,

Because the film was released a few years ago so screenings are a bit scarce, but you can purchase the DVD here. It is also available for academic use so set up a screening at your school… its worth a look.

Now, where’s a big pipe I can crawl into around here… ?

# All images are screen grabs from the documentary, copyright to the makers, unless otherwise noted.

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10 November 2016 12 December 2016

Origin Stories: Mannahatta

Jason Kingcity, ecology, history, new york, streamsLeave a Comment

Perhaps the final of the Origin Stories, the Mannahatta Project first came to my attention in around 2008, and expanded via a 2007 article in the New Yorker entitled The Mannahatta Project: What did New York Look Like Before We Arrived. They’ve evolved th from the island of Manhattan to a broader metro area under the banner of The Welikia Project and Sanderson has been immortalized in a great TED Talk as well. For me this project took me beyond the love of historic maps and connected these maps with ecology of place. The book Mannahatta, published in 2009 is a great resource on process still today. Here’s my original post from Landscape+Urbanism from May, 2008.

Past Forward: Mannahatta I may have mentioned my love of historic urban maps. If not, then I will plead guilty here, and offer up Strange Maps as a vital modern contribution to our historical heritage, and let slip fact that I’ve read most of the written works of Mark Monmonier. As objects, maps are fascinating artifacts. Even more interesting is using these remnants of history to attempt to visualize and recreate a baseline, whether that be social, ecological, or other. A small past project started to delve into this in Portland – looking at maps of historical and ‘disappeared’ streams to evokes some of the cities hidden hydrology. I’m currently evolving this idea in an essay, so look forward to more on this in the future.

The work of Dr. Eric Sanderson and the Mannahatta Project takes this concept to a whole new level. The introduction to this project for me came while reading ‘The World Without Us’ towards the end of 2007. My reactions to the schizophrenic nature of the book notwithstanding, I was totally drawn into the chapter on Mannahatta, in method and vision. Today, Treehugger profiled this project, featuring a talk by Sanderson and a range of visuals to provide a vision for what is now New York City – of over 400 years ago. The study begins with analysis of historical maps:

:: 1782 British Headquarters Map Detail – image via the New Yorker

:: 1819 Farm Maps – image via the New Yorker

Mannahatta, which is derived from the indigenous Lenni Lenape tribal name for the land, seemed historically to burst with diversity. As Treehugger mentions in the lecture, Sanderson equated the beauty of Mannahatta as equal or greater than that of Yellowstone or Yosemite, and that it: “…was more biologically diverse than either of those two areas, and with its hardwood forests, freshwater, and estuarine environments, Mannahatta’s 54 different ecological communities (that is, interacting species living in the same place, bound together by a network of influences) and lush greenery would have dazzled any nature lover.”

:: Mannahatta, circa 1609 (with current landform outline) – image via the New Yorker

:: Collect Pond (now Foley Square) – image via the New Yorker

Another resource is an audio interview with Sanderson on the Wildlife Conservation Society site, as well as some fact sheets and link to a fascinating paper authored by Sanderson and Marianne Brown entitled ‘Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson’.

:: Lower Manhattan – image via the New Yorker

Sanderson took the early mapping, along with a computer program named ‘Muir webs’ to piece together the hidden puzzle of the geology, topography, hydrology and ecology of early 1600’s Manhattan. Quoted via Treehugger:

“Sanderson is using his program to map what would have existed on each city block in Mannahatta 400 years ago. The program works through a process of matching animals to their habitats and vice-versa. By knowing that a certain animal species existed in an area of Manhattan and knowing what that animal ate, Sanderson can predict through the Muir webs program what plants or soils would have been there as well, or conversely can use knowledge of plants and soils to discover what animals would have found a habitat in any specific area.”

One issue with the visuals is a lack of immediate context – kind of a vagueness of ‘nature shot’s without seeing the ‘before and after’ shots of landscape and city together. Plans are in the works to provide the ability to juxtapose old and new maps, and the entire endeavor will be well documented in time for the 400 year anniversary of Hudson’s voyage to the area in 2009. Here’s an example of this:

:: Mannahatta + Manhattan (Times Square then and now) – image via the New Yorker

As I mentioned, it’s interesting to see the major changes in our urbanism – as well as to see the fact that the inherent nature of place is difficult if not impossible to erase. Coming full circle, back to a bit later date in history – is the map that I first encountered – the Survey Map of 1852 shows an early pioneer Portland in it’s fledgling, even pre-Stumptown days. Focussing on waterways and topography, it’s interesting to see what was hidden, yet how much still remains of this hydrology.

:: Survey Map of Portland (1852) – image via Portland BES

From a pure restoration point-of-view – there’s little hope in recreated Mannahatta (or even less dense more verdant Pioneer Portland for that matter). Our challenge is to learn from these studies – what was there, what was the predevelopment baseline for water, habitat, and tree cover, then aim to recreate these functions. This can be physically (through selected ecological restoration), functionally (through green roofs, nature parks, habitat gardens, streettree canopy, green streets), and metaphorically (through art, interpretation, poetry and beauty).

This is our way of taking the past, learning from it, and moving forward a little more wise than when we began.

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