Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tropical ecosystem types. The field component is designed to allow students to work
with a team, be given a restoration problem and come up with a solution, become fa-
miliar with restoration field methods, and learn about local plant material (species,
forms, time limitations, costs, ease of planting, likelihood of success). The class has
done grassland, oak woodland, wetland, and forest restoration projects. Because it is
taught in the winter quarter, it also functions as a kind of restoration boot camp; stu-
dents must work together to meet a deadline, out of doors, in lots of cold, rainy, windy
weather. Many of the projects are adjacent to a major neighborhood walking trail, so
there has been abundant opportunity for interpretive signage and interaction with
community members. The consensus of community opinion about our management
of the natural area has gone from one of suspicion about what we were doing to total
support. This past year a group of students from the class was invited to make a short
presentation at the annual meeting of the community association of the adjacent resi-
dential neighborhood. The neighborhood meetings generally discuss community
problems, but they said they wanted us there because they wanted one good thing on
the agenda.
Facilities: Campus Natural Areas
Like many universities in the United States, the University of Washington owns and
manages largely undeveloped areas that are used for teaching, research, and recre-
ational purposes. In this section, we describe two such areas—Union Bay Natural
Area and the North Creek Floodplain Wetlands—and how they have become part of
the UW-REN educational effort.
Union Bay Natural Area
The University of Washington was given the responsibility of managing what at one
time was a fifty-six-acre landfill adjacent to the Seattle campus. Closed and capped in
1968, the old landfill seemed like a good place for further development of the univer-
sity infrastructure of parking lots and playfields. Several characteristics of the site,
however, made it less suitable for these purposes: it began subsiding rapidly (the land-
fill sat on a substrate of clay and peat), it produced methane (which still accumulates
under buildings around it), and it became the finest birding location in the city, mak-
ing it a very popular spot for that recreational use. Because of a near-prohibition of
building on the site, its development as a teaching and research area, and its evolution
into a community amenity were more easily conceived than might otherwise have
been the case had the land been valued as a building site.
Development into a natural research and teaching area for ecological restoration
has been a slow process, but a good learning process for both the land managers and
the neighbors. Because there was no initial budget to improve or manage the site, the
UWwas not initially perceived as a good manager, nor was it trusted. Initial forays into
restoration on the site were seen as being “counter to natural development” by the
neighbors and by the birders who were frequent visitors. Initial restoration was in
