Sustainability in urban water resources management – some notes from the field

Abstract:

Urban development has radically transformed landscapes, and along with it, how our cities and suburbs cycle energy and water. One unfortunate outcome of urbanization is the production of massive volumes of uncontrolled runoff volume. Our civic infrastructure is sometimes marginally capable of handling even dry-weather fluxes without wastewater system overflows, much less the challenges of wet-weather events. The predominance of runoff volume in urban water balance has had serious ramifications for regulatory activity, municipal financial matters, and public health. In the interest of protecting human health and the environment, my group’s research has primarily addressed the integration of social equity, economic stabilization, and environmental management to underpin the development of sustainable urban water cycles. In this talk, I will present on: 1) the Shepherd Creek Stormwater Management project wherein an economic incentive was used to recruit citizen stormwater managers and distribute parcel-level, green infrastructure-based stormwater control measures; and 2) our urban soil pedologic-hydrologic assessment protocol that we use as a way of understanding the capacity for urban soils to provide ecosystem services, and in cities representing each of the major soil orders.