Soil Ecology Web: Design Guidelines for Protecting
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SOIL ECOLOGY WEB: DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR PROTECTING AND GROWING YOUR RESOURCE by ANNETTE JAEGER GRIFFIN (Under the Direction of C. Scott Nesbit) ABSTRACT The foundation of healthy landscapes lies just below the surface. The subterranean ecology of our backyards helps determine how water moves across our land, which plants we can grow, and how nutrient-rich our edibles will be, among other things. There is a direct link between caring for our soil and caring for ourselves; and yet, the most serious natural disaster that Georgia has faced is the loss of its topsoil. This study outlines patterns of amendment via a digital humanities counterpart, Soil Ecology Web (SEW), which recommends design guidelines derived from the study of soil ecology that anyone with a plot of land can follow to protect and grow their resource. INDEX WORDS: Georgia, southern outer piedmont, soil, soil ecology, soil protection, soil growth, soil health, landscape architecture, design, ecological design, topsoil, topsoil regeneration, planting, hardscape, circulation, grading, Soil Ecology Web, SEW, digital humanities, interdisciplinary design SOIL ECOLOGY WEB: DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR PROTECTING AND GROWING YOUR RESOURCE By ANNETTE JAEGER GRIFFIN B.F.A., The University of the Arts, 2010 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE ATHENS, GEORGIA 2016 © 2016 Annette Jaeger Griffin All Rights Reserved SOIL ECOLOGY WEB: DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR PROTECTING AND GROWING YOUR RESOURCE by ANNETTE JAEGER GRIFFIN Major Professor: C. Scott Nesbit Committee: Ronald Sawhill Dorcas Franklin Stephen Brooks Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2016 DEDICATION For Bill and Florence, who taught my primer on the blessings of Georgia. "iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is the result of the support and inspiration I received from teachers, friends, and family. I am continually astonished and delighted by the great luck of their company: Scott Nesbit is not only a poetic historian and witty conversationalist, but also one of the most supportive people I know. Ron Sawhill’s sincere engagement and kindness with his students is an example of how to best give one’s energy to the community. Marianne Cramer instills heart into each lecture she gives, and galvanized the beat of this research. Stephen Brooks joined my committee two weeks before I was scheduled to defend, and seems always ready with excellent advice. Dory Franklin offers sweetness and insight with every breath. Alfie Vick has a wonderful knack for showing me new places to love. Melissa Tufts makes everything seem interesting, and does so with a heck of a lot of humor and grace. Donna Gabriel saves me from my disorganized self. There are many other professors and faculty who have made hugely positive impacts upon my work, and I thank each of them sincerely, with my best wishes for their continued success and happiness. My friends and family have traced innumerable paths over the maps of experience, and I keep their atlas beside me always. Bruce is so annoying and so dear to me that I think we must be related. Genna is a spark in the night, and her sweetness is my favorite campfire. The cousins are simply my best people, and Sis is my best sis: brilliant, beautiful, and expertly fun. Mom’s talent for adaptation is a constant source of inspiration. Dad gets me, and consequently worries for me, like no one else (though I love him all the more for that). Jackie clears the way and shows me how to do it. Lynn, who was Wyoming’s best premium prickly pear and a klutz who could fly a plane, is missed every day. ! "v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V CHAPTER 1: OUR LAYERED EXISTENCE 1 INTRODUCTION 1 PROBLEMATIC 1 RESEARCH QUESTION 5 VI SECONDARY QUESTIONS 5 ARGUMENT 6 CONTEXT 6 SIGNIFICANCE 7 PURPOSE 7 TERMS AND DEFINITIONS 8 LITERATURE REVIEW 9 LIMITATIONS 15 DELIMITATIONS 15 RESEARCH METHODS 16 CHAPTER 2: SOIL IN GEORGIA’S SOUTHERN OUTER PIEDMONT 17 FORMATION 17 VI EVOLUTION 18 GROWING A LABYRINTH 19 LOSING PASSAGE 20 HERITAGE IS WHAT WE HAVE LEFT 21 CHAPTER 3: THE LIVING LABYRINTH 23 PRIORITIES 23 THEORY OF FLOW 23 THEORY OF HABITAT 28 THEORY OF PROTECTION 30 THEORY OF DECOMPOSITION 32 THEORY OF RESILIENCE 33 THEORY OF HERITAGE 35 CHAPTER 4: SOIL ECOLOGY WEB 41 ANYONE CAN DESIGN FOR SOIL PROTECTION AND GROWTH 41 BEFORE YOU BEGIN 43 DESIGN FOR FLOW 43 DESIGN FOR HABITAT 47 DESIGN FOR PROTECTION 49 DESIGN FOR DECOMPOSITION 51 DESIGN FOR RESILIENCE 53 VII DESIGN FOR HERITAGE 56 CHAPTER 5: SOIL ECOLOGY WEB, A RESOURCE FOR EVERYONE 59 EASY ACCESS 59 INTENDED USERS 60 DESIGN AND LAYOUT 61 FEATURES 61 OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT 125 CONCLUSION 125 BIBLIOGRAPHY 127 VIII CHAPTER 1: OUR LAYERED EXISTENCE INTRODUCTION As a Piedmont native returned from over a decade of living outside of Georgia, I have become devoted to the ecologies of this region. Upon my homecoming, I saw the forests and hills with nostalgia, without realizing how much they have been compromised over the past two hundred years. I have since begun to see them differently; with just as much reverence, but also with an understanding that these are systems in need of repair. When I learned that almost all of Georgia’s topsoil has been washed from the uplands to the coast, I was astounded by the sheer volume of physical loss. Later conversations with landscape architects and horticulturalists clued me in to the full extent of the disaster; not only are ecosystem services such as water infiltration, carbon sequestration, and energy and nutrient storage impacted, but the welfare of systems above ground is as well (Wall 2004). As a practicing landscape architect, my responsibilities will lie in cultivating the expression, development, and function of ecosystems within the built environment. I believe in dealing with the accompanying issues through longterm approaches that create opportunities for experimentation, and hope that these will lead to fundamental changes that benefit the health of my home. PROBLEMATIC Throughout our planet’s history, ecological networks have developed, thrived, flickered, and disappeared. We know of, and have even witnessed, many such occurrences; however, there are probably billions more that we shall never see. Many of these invisible communities lie "1 not just on the surface of the earth, but also beneath it in a complex, living labyrinth that lays the foundation for everything above solid ground. They have wrapped our planet in a resource that is as much a living entity as it is an object and place. The soil is alive and when healthy, soil fauna eat and drink what we lay down for them, and we eat and drink what they send up to us. This is not science fiction, this is soil ecology. Although we dwell in layered spaces, these layers separate us only visually. It is easy to sigh over the strange circumstance of our life above the soil and dismiss it as too complex or inconsequential to consider when designing our world. This is a mistake. Our lives are inextricably entwined with the existence of these communities, and even our smallest movements impact them. When simply raking the leaves on a cloudy afternoon can lead to a microscopic diaspora, it is in our best interest to understand what effects this can have on our lives and how we might address them in order to ensure personal benefit. How, though, a soil’s optimum potential provides a number of ecosystem services. As the basis of biodiversity on our planet, it impacts the overall health, resilience, fertility, and quality of our land. It provides habitat and food for organisms that live in and around it. It regulates our water quality and filtration, it helps to regulate greenhouse gases and stores carbon, is the largest bank or reserve of fresh water on our planer, and decontaminates waste products. Soil also provides a surface for our picnics and walks, structural support for our homes, and a place for our ancestors to rest. It has the potential to heighten both the beauty of our surroundings and our understanding of the systems that we live in. As with any ecosystem service, it is difficult to estimate the monetary value of our inherited benefit. Although we know that soil provides numerous services, categorized by cultural, regulatory, supporting, and provisioning characteristics, much of the value of this resource is most often measured in conjunction with specific terrestrial ecosystems (Comerford "2 and Morris 2013). Currently, there is no estimation as to how much capital soil directly saves and generates worldwide. Of course, this resource’s value lies in a gradient along macro- and micro-economic lines. Soil is a form of heritage and a living record of our history. It is sweet to think that in a few hundred years bragging rights could be attached to the length of a particular tract’s preservation; that someone might say to a guest at their house, “Our family has been growing that soil for years. My great-grandmother began restoring it when she was a girl.”1 Any benefit here would lie in accordance with the concept of vertical wealth, a rich personal and familial accrual of resources developed over time through the care and maintenance of a single place (Falk 2013). Despite its value, and the fact that soil scientists and agriculturalists have been trying for centuries to improve general understanding of this material, soil is frequently taken for granted. Both the resource’s vastness and its relative invisibility have contributed to the dearth of our understanding of it, and although it is encouraging that soil science and its ecology is steadily gaining recognition as a discipline to be applied to the development of built environments, there is little information on how to go about doing this.