Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Impact Statements and environmental management documents are also accessible.
Sitting in class with laptop computers and an Internet connection, student groups are
able to compile a substantial amount of information that is pertinent to restoration
design.
The projects presented in one year included the following restoration problems
(disturbance type): a salt marsh diked for farming (agriculture), shrub-steppe that
contains vernal pools (grazing), a filled lacustrine wetland (wetland dredge and fill),
a gravel pit in a reservoir riparian zone used by elk (water storage), a capped fifty-
six-acre landfill (brownfields or solid waste disposal), old camping sites at a five-
thousand-foot mountain pass (recreation), and sites along a seventeen-mile urban
creek (urban).
As in the other team-based courses in this program, student projects are given a ju-
ried grade, but student teams are allowed to assess a peer grade for each member of
their group, including themselves. Based upon the peer grade, the project grade is ad-
justed up or down depending upon the deviation from the mean grade for each stu-
dent. This method was introduced at the UW in the Health Sciences Department; be-
fore its introduction there was a great deal of complaining about team members who
did not carry their weight. Now the underachieving team members are usually the
ones complaining at grade report time.
Ecosystem-Based Restoration
This course is taught in winter and has always had a field restoration component in
the university natural area. During the last fifteen years we have started about fifteen
acres of the former landfill on the road toward restoration. The lecture component of
the course is much like a survey of North American ecosystems, except with examples
of typical restoration projects added to each of the ecosystem types. Because of inter-
est in tropical systems, and because there is quite a bit of student and faculty research
being done in the tropics, examples of tropical moist and dry forest restoration are also
included. Ecosystem types covered include grasslands, woodlands, coastal and fresh-
water wetlands, eelgrass and kelp marine beds, arctic, alpine, aridlands, thornscrub,
savanna, and riparian systems. A serendipitous element in this course is that students
are taught that restoration is local, but they can begin to see techniques that might be
transferable among similar climatic regimes, or even across climate types. Lectures in-
clude images of typical locations, a discussion of climate and species makeup, and a
review of restoration case studies in each system. Historical and cultural elements are
also discussed.
EXAMPLE OF A PROJECT
This is the oldest restoration course that is taught at the university, and it has been the
initial taste of team project work that many students have encountered. The course
lecture component touches on restoration in many different North American and
