Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
any site in the United States, based on historical records, simply by inserting
the site's longitude and latitude.
Environmental and green rating systems such as LEED, Green Globes, and
Spirit acknowledge the importance of site development in sustainable design.
Selection of the most appropriate site must consider many factors beyond
simply economics. When viewed at the level of community, a project's loca-
tion can minimize reliance on the automobile for transportation and support
existing public transit infrastructure. Benefits include the avoidance of urban
sprawl as well as the economic benefits of returning sites such as brownfields
to productive use.
As land is shaped by humans in the early phases of development, erosion
and sediment control have a significant impact on water and air quality.
Key LEED Site Principles
1. Protect farmland.
2. Develop only sites 5 feet above the floodplane.
3. Protect habitat for any species threatened: habitat preservation.
4. Avoid development within 100 feet of wetlands (we were tragically re-
minded of this in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina along the U.S. Gulf
coast).
5. Choose sites that have already been developed or are adjacent to existing
development.
6. Minimize building footprints.
7. Share site amenities and open space.
8. Maintain density in urban areas as a way of preserving agricultural lands
and greenfields for future generations as well as leveraging existing infras-
tructure for public transportation. Also reduce reliance on automobile
use, with its associated environmental impacts.
Another hypothesis for this rise in temperature is that the presence of certain
gases in the atmosphere is not allowing Earth to reflect enough of the heat
energy from the sun back into space. Earth acts as a reflector to the sun's rays,
receiving radiation from the sun, reflecting some of it into space (called
albedo
),
and adsorbing the rest, only to reradiate this into space as heat. In effect, Earth
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