Please join ASLA-NY’s biannual 4 CEUs and a Beer event featuring multidisciplinary speakers who will share their experiences expanding and supporting biodiversity. Topics will include preserving and increasing biodiversity within New York City and beyond to support ecosystems and wildlife in both large and small sites. The program will be followed by a happy hour.
Speakers and Sessions:
Kirk Gordon, Associate, SCAPE
New Tools for Managing and Designing for Urban Biodiversity
Enhancing urban biodiversity starts by asking a simple question: What lives here already? Learn about new tools SCAPE and Battery Park City Authority developed for tracking and assessing biodiversity throughout the neighborhood and how these insights are being used to inform biodiversity goals, resilience planning, and design.
Kristy King, Chief of Natural Resources NYC Parks,Marit Larson, Assistant Commissioner, Natural Resources & Planning NYC Parks
Preserving Biodiversity in NYC Parks
NYC Parks has a long history of conservation, including creating a Natural Resources Group, acquiring hundreds of acres of natural areas, and establishing a Forever Wild program that now covers 12,000 acres. NYC Parks has several signature programs and initiatives that support biodiversity and ecological restoration, and help mitigate the on-going threats to biodiversity in the urban environment. Parks’ native plant nursery grows hundreds of species of plants for a wide range of parkland sites, and Parks’ Native Plant Species Guide, informed by observation and restoration experience, serves as reference for practitioners and designers working across public and private property. Several case studies will demonstrate how NYC Parks designs and implements projects in different landscapes to protect and expand habitat for a variety of species, from locally rare plants and wildlife, to migrating birds and fish.
Aiman Duckworth, PLA, Senior Landscape Architect & Ecologist BioHabitats
Biodiversity is Life: Applied Ecology for Regions, Cities, and Sites
Biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental injustices are defining issues of our time and are inextricably linked. Landscape architects, planners, and land managers are uniquely positioned to help address these crises. Aiman will explore these topics through a selection of Biohabitats’ applied ecology approaches with a focus on biodiversity positive outcomes at a variety of scales, ranging from regions to cities to sites. There are vital opportunities for habitat regeneration across the rural to urban gradient, and they are not a luxury. Our inspiration, our health, and our survival are woven to ecosystems and landscapes.
Andi Pettis, Senior Director of Horticulture, The Trust for Governors Island
Renovating Design and Restoring Intent: Building Biodiversity on Governors Island
What happens when maintenance is deferred on a new $40 million public park? Andi Pettis reflects on her experience renovating the West 8 designed landscapes and gardens on Governors Island, the 172 acre former military base now considered the jewel of New York Harbor. Andi will discuss three current restoration projects; a meadow, a young forest, and a coastal grass and shrubland, to illustrate how a team of horticulture and restoration practitioners are collaborating with designers, colleagues, consultants, and volunteers to restore the original design intent of resiliency to these landscapes. Playing with new methods, trials, and scaling, the Governors Island horticulture and landscape team are working to build biodiversity, plant for habitat, and create immersive, naturalistic, beautiful landscapes.
Georgia Silvera Seamans, Urban Community Forester
Engaging New Yorkers around Nature
Georgia Silvera Seamans will present some of the ways in which New Yorkers of all ages experience the diversity of trees and birds in the city through programs developed by Local Nature Lab.
Moderator:
Jeffery Longhenry, Principal, Understory
Reframing: Establishing an ecological design dialogue in private practice
Generously Sponsored by:
