Go See DC: Dumbarton Oaks

(NOTE: This is re-purposed from an old post, in honor of the RU LA Fall Field Trip to DC)

A while back,  Harvard Magazine featured one of Harvard's finest properties, Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown, DC. As detailed in the article, Dumbarton Oaks is both a phenomenally historic house and one of the classic American landscapes. Designed by Beatrix Farrand, Dumbarton Oaks is maintained by Harvard as a key home for the humanities. The house was home to John C. Calhoun, has been modified by Phillip Johnson, hosted a meeting where the UN was essentially created and holds a fabulous library of LA history works and pre-Columbian art.

Every time we take our LA students to DC we stop to visit Farrand's incredible gardens, which function as an interconnected series of rooms. The structure of the spaces and the incredible grace with which the gardens have aged are a testimony to Farrand's deserved place in the annals of American landscape architecture. These photos are all from the most recent Fall Field Trip.

databending

Do you think Photoshop will add a DataBending option anytime soon?

Go See DC: Pentagon 9/11 Memorial

(NOTE: This is re-purposed from an old post to celebrate out upcoming DC trip.)

The 9-11 Memorial at the Pentagon is open 24/7 which makes dusk an interesting time for a visit.
Regrettably, the last lines of Witold Rybczynski's Slate piece on the memorial rang very true.  Some of trees are already failing and a few light bulbs were temporarily out.  Hopefully these can be addressed, because this is an important memorial at an important place.  Reading reviews like this and then visiting the place in person is an important design experience for students.  The Fall Field Trip is a great time to try it - just take the Metro to the Pentagon stop.

Another St Croix

Having looked at the postcard St Croix, I thought we could look briefly at a different St Croix. The weather there can be fairly intense with some spots on the island (and the MREC site) having some pretty high winds, plenty of humidity, add in some salt, and then lots of direct sun and maybe the occasional hurricane, and things might get beat up in spots.

Not many of the signs had been wiped clean like this one, but it shows how the weather treats some places.

The weathered buildings also give the place its unique feel. 

Outside of the the tourist areas, some of the stores weren't as adorned as we are used to in New Jersey.

The other St Croix isn't all rusted, some of it is institutional or just unexpected.

Chain link fencing is used a a visible marker too.  Especially in parts of the island that have a little more rural character.

Go See DC: Painful Reminders

(NOTE: This is the first in a series of re-postings about DC)

While visiting DC this past weekend, we stopped for a while at The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. One of the most notable features of the memorial is a series of panels with the names of fallen officers inscribed. But, with 17,500 names it becomes detached and impersonal. Technically, you know they had parents, spouses, kids, and friends and are missed in deeply meaningful ways. Similarly you know that those names represent valiant deaths and decades of service. But, unless you are there with someone already in mind, you just see the large white walls and don't identify the individuals.

I encouraged our students to get a paper and pencil a do a rubbing. I looked for one that was close to home and recent. I found Dwayne Reeves who was a Newark Schools Police Officer.
Dwayne Reeves was a father. He was a hero. The trials that followed revealed the sorts of problems that continue to plague Newark:

Dwayne Reeves, a 35-year-old father, was shot in the head at close range because Kahlil Tutt's teenage sister, Jalisa, got in a fight with some girls at Weequahic summer school and her brother went looking for revenge. A man died because of a high school catfight, no matter who pulled the trigger.

It has an unpredictability and senselessness that makes it so hard to prevent. And it has a gravity that can't be accessed on your first stroll through the monument. Remembering Dwayne Reeves makes the other 17,500 names seem more real too.


If you go to DC this fall, I would strongly encourage you to  take the short walk over to this wall and make a rubbing.  When you get home, look up the fallen officer's story.  As an aside, the original posting of this back in 2007 has remained a regularly visited story - clearly Officer Reeve's story remains important so some.

The St Croix you see on postcards

One of the things I hope our students get to see is how complex the island of St. Croix is. It is naturally beautiful in some spots, artificially aestheticized in others and still outwardly run down in other areas. While it appears tropical to guests (it is really the subtropics), it has both natural and altered areas that would surprise them.  We talked about this some last year with Cape May, but I was struck even more by the extremes on this tiny little island.

On the western end of the island is the small city of Frederiksted, which has an absolutely huge pier for cruise ships to land at.  At the end of the pier is a section of the city that is clearly meant to be seen by tourists.  You can see the early colonial look that has been formalized for these well maintained areas with a strolling promenade, clock tower, lots of palms.

Those are so beautiful that you might not think the town was really a few hundred years old.  So they made some fake old stuff to convince you.

Over in Christiansted the Fort and Government building dominate another charming little city.

And the bars look like some sort of Jimmy Buffet dream landscape.

The churches looked the part too.

While I hope our students enjoy seeing the postcard side of the island, make sure that you understand it as that. What elements give St Croix its own feel? What just signals that an area is for tourists?

Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge

Hidden in plain sight, down near the shore is the beautiful Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.  But the Star-Ledger's Mark Di Ionno is trying to help people notice it more.

High Line vs. The Law of the Indies

It is hard to imagine trying to compare New York's High Line with King Phillip's 1573 rules for where to develop, but somehow the Top 20 Urban Planning Successes of All Time sorted it out.

Rural roads are nice and dangerous

Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that rural roads relaxed people, but that they also made people feel more comfortable taking dangerous risks.

World's Strangest Gardens

Popular Mechanics has listed 18 of the World's Strangest Gardens.  This is a follow-up to their 10 gardens in the US to visit.

A little more on Doc Reich

From the Advocate.

RiverFest volunteers

I recently bumped into a professional who hired our students every so often and asked what they were looking for when they had to sort through piles of resumes.  He said that aside from the basics of good student, hard worker, etc. that they were looking for someone who was interested and engaged in things.  One marker for this is volunteering. 

Here's one chance: The weekend before classes start, the Cohansey RiverFest is looking for volunteers.  If you are interested in water issues, it might be an especially good way to meet other folks of similar interest.

Vote for you favorite park

Coke is going to give away $100,000 to America's Favorite Park.    I don't know how Bear Head Lake State Park got so far ahead of Valley Forge and the Smokies, but you have until August 31st to help change it.  In NJ, you can see that Edison's Menlo Park site and Washington Crossing are #1 and #2.

Reading about St Croix

For our seniors, I hope you are reading as much as you can before you visit your site...
The St Croix Source has a fun picture of 1000 barrels of rum.
The New York Times looks at St Croix as a place to visit.
The Virgin Islands Daily News talks about how Hovensa dominated a recent environmental hearing.

Good design

...can make life better.

Closer things to see

Since junior studio is going to be looking at the Great Swamp Watershed, this might be a special time to get out and see some interesting sites in and near the watershed.

• Take a hike at Jockey Hollow.
• Grab a sandwich at a local deli and picnic in a little neighborhood park.
• Bike the Loantaka.
• Go talk to Jake the Raven at the NJ Raptor Center.
• Take the nature walk at the Environmental Education Center at Lord Stirling Park.
• Finish the day with a scoop of strawberry.
• Look for the ridges that are the edges of the watershed.
• Try to find a farmstand for some fresh veggies.
• Meet people at a local hardware store.
• Hang out at a coffee place.

Whatever you do, take lots and lots of pictures and find the time to sketch a little.

Something to go see

Summer is running out.  What is there to go see? 

Daily Dose is highlighting some sites in NYC that our students could easily hop in to visit.  One example would be taking a new look at the the Bank of America building.  Get out there while you can.

Spatial ability

Are you spatial? What is your strongest trait: Sense of Direction, Object Spatial, Verbal? Take the Spatial Ability survey and get a hint at where you stand.

What does a city need as part of its civic infrastructure?

Camden is going to go without public libraries.

Fighting over trees

Some Mayors along the NJ Turnpike are getting upset that the DEP isn't giving them their trees.  Politics and money aside, it is nice to see that some officials think trees are worth getting upset over.

LI town uses Google Earth to catch lawbreakers

It is hard to hide a swimming poll that isn't supposed to be there. Riverside just uses the Internet to find them.

Hyperminimalism

With all of the talk about integrating natural elements into formal design, I keep wondering if we'll ever see something like this Hyperminimalist design:

Upright Citizens Brigade
Woodsy Office
www.comedycentral.com
Roast of David Hasselhoff Big Lake It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Big Loss for LA Education

On Saturday July 31st, Landscape Architecture lost one of its most durable leaders in education, Robert 'Doc" Reich, FASLA.  As founder of LSU's LA program in 1946, and a teacher there until quite recently, "Doc" spent decades building and shaping the profession in Louisiana and throughout the South.  He won the ASLA Award and Dot Carpenter Award, and had the School of Landscape Architecture named after him. 

Many programs have notable leaders who grew them in the post-WWII era and helped shape the ASLA as it solidified the profession, but "Doc" really stood out as one of the special members of that group.  The loyalty he got from LSU grads was remarkable and their financial support of his program helped make it one of the largest in the country.

Christo exhibit in DC

For those of you considering going to DC for ASLA, or still later this summer for fun, here is an interesting exhibit.  The Smithsonian;s Renwick Gallery has an exhibit called Remembering the Running Fence with artifacts and stories from Christo and Jean Claude's 1970's installation of Running Fence in California

1906 map production

Based on this explanation from the Bartholomew Archive, It was pretty hard to make good maps back in 1906.

Photo maps

If you poke around a little on the internet you'll  find that the photos people post on sites like Flickr are often cluster around some very busy, very popular spots. Sure there are lots of photos of the Statue of Liberty, but there are also plenty of pictures of storefronts on Fifth Avenue and only a few of W 158th.  Rather than map out the points, like Flickr, Eric Fischer decided to map the streets. Naturally, he posted his maps on Flickr.


h/t Cindy C

Fall Festival

This will fit well into the fall studio:

The Lord Stirling 1770s Festival

Colonial history lives at the Somerset County Park Commission's annual 1770s Festival when Lord Stirling's grand manor house and estate come to life in Lord Stirling Park in Basking Ridge, NJ. Colonial craftspeople ply their trades and a Revolutionary War military detachment camp on the former estate lawns and conduct maneuvers. The event promotes historical and environmental education by familiarizing people with the rich local history of Basking Ridge, highlighting an unsung Revolutionary War hero, demonstrating the colonial heritage of New Jersey, and recreating a typical autumn afternoon in 1770. In 2006, the Lord Stirling 1770s Festival won the Cultural and History Commission of Somerset County History Award for Education. Period re-enactors attired in replicas of 1770s clothing participate in the festival demonstrating their trades and crafts (no crafts are sold). These crafts people make articles such as buttons, rifles, brooms, furniture, lace, stained glass, redware pottery, and powder horns. Other trades and crafts include a blacksmith, tinsmith, wool spinning, decoy carving, and colonial herbs. Children of all ages enjoy the hayrides, clay crafts using Stirling clay, stenciling, and toy making. Visitors may try on colonial costumes and have their photograph taken while restrained to the Somerset Gaoler's wooden stock. $4 per person suggested donation

Sunday, October 3, 2010
10:30am - 4:30pm

A pretty Great Swamp and its watershed

Just a few miles south of Morristown is a bowl-shaped valley called the Great Swamp Watershed.  This fall our junior studio will be working with locals, particularly the Great Swamp Watershed Association, to investigate and envision alternative futures for these landscapes as part of the Regional Design Studio.  Within the context of North Jersey, it looks a little small. 

The unusual shape of the valley, and the severity of the hills surrounding it are important to the history of the valley.  After the Wisconsin glacier it was the site of the Glacial Lake Passaic and it is still easy to pick out on satellite images.  It was also hard to reach so has avoided highways and crossroads of any serious size, adding to its rural character.

Upon closer examination, you can see that the watershed is large enough to include the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.  You can see that it also includes most of the Jockey Hollow NPS site.  And, the Passaic makes a complete U-turn to get back to its better-known urban environment.

The watershed includes parts of 10 different towns, which used to be represented on the 10 Towns Committee (and the Jersey Jetport Site Association).  In 2000, the total population  of the 10 towns was under 125,000.  While there have been teardowns, add-ons and new commercial sites, it doesn't seem likely that the 2010 census will show this as an area of significant growth relative to its neighbors.  The one town with the largest land area in the watershed is Harding Township, which has been working to retain its rural feel for decades.

Several of the remaining towns are very small and sit atop the ridges that constrict the valley and help keep it swampy.  The ridgetops have good views and create a special sense of character for the communities.

The location of the watershed places it on or near 2 major commuting highways - I-78 and I-287 - with additional service by NJ Transit.  The small towns with great access to Newark and New York include some prestigious, wealthy bedroom communities.  But, the Great Swamp itself remains a a little bit of a pain to get to, so the area's residents can feel safe in thinking that future development in the valley is less likely than in other parts of New Jersey. 

What is the true Great Swamp watershed like?  And what sort of future does it have?

A good year

The NJDA reports that in the ongoing struggle between man and Gypsy moth, this is a bad year for the moths.

Age friendly maps

New York City has some maps assessing different "age friendly" factors around the city.  Some, like the distance to ADA-accessible subway stations, reveal some interesting patterns in the outer boroughs.

Brooklyn Bridge Park award

MVVs' Brooklyn Bridge Park was mentioned in the earlier post as being seen in a recent ad.  But we failed to acknowledge their notable win in the National Park Service's new Designing the Parks.  New Jerseyans may also want to peek at the PEEC.  ASLA's DIRT has the complete rundown. 

Levi's ad

So, is the new Walk Across America Levi's commercial the first major ad to use Brooklyn Bridge Park as a location?

Prairie Crossing

Grist takes a closer look at Prairie Crossing, which is a sort of hybrid between a new urbanist community and an old farm town near the Illinois/Wisconsin border.

HMF tour

Since the Hutcheson Memorial Forest is not open to the public on a daily basis, the Sunday tours are one of the best ways to see this specially protected site.  Here is the announcement for this weekend's tour if you are in the area:
_________________________

Hutcheson Memorial Forest Tour
Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 2:00 p.m.
Tour Leader:
Dr. Peter Morin (Community Ecologist) Summer in the Forest: Plants, Insects, and Interactions.

The Hutcheson Memorial Forest (HMF) is a unique area consisting of one of the last uncut forests in the Mid-Atlantic States, along with the surrounding lands devoted to protection of the old forest and research into ecological interactions necessary to understand the forest. The tract is administered and protected by Rutgers University.

It is apparently the only uncut upland forest in the Piedmont of New Jersey, and appears on the National Park Service Register of Natural Landmarks.

Tours leave from the entrance of the woods on 2150 Amwell Road (Rt. 514) in Somerset. From New Brunswick, follow Hamilton Street west past JFK Blvd, Cedar Grove Lane and Elizabeth St.  HMF is on the left past The Gardeners Nook. The driveway is located just past the guardrail over the brook.
 
The trail may be muddy in places so come prepared.

The tour through the woods and fields takes between one and two hours.

Tours are free and reservations are not required for these guided tours.** Groups of more than ten persons may not attend the guided tours. Such groups are invited to arrange special tours.

To make special arrangements please contact:
Land Manager, Hutcheson Memorial Forest Center,
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources,
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
732-932-9349x16,
hmfdirector@aesop.rutgers.edu 
For more information and a complete tour schedule for 2010 visit:  http://rci.rutgers.edu/~hmforest/

**HMF is not open to the public on a daily basis.

 

Moving graphics

WNYC has collected nearly 1700 responses of listeners describing their moves over the last 10 years.  Now they are releasing these as a giant database and giving listeners until August 22nd to make something of it.  Between our spatial skills and our graphic skills and our understanding of people, I would expect that some underemployed EP&D students or grads might be able to make quite a splash with this.

1:1 mapping

This GPS Drawing from Warwick required 238 miles of walking.

Alexander Graham Bell Awards

The National Geographic Society announced that they would be recognizing 2 GIS pioneers with the Alexander Graham Bell Award: Jack Dangermond and Roger Tomlinson.  As a sign of how much they stand out, this award has only been given once before, in 1980.

Hexagon buys Intergraph

What's good GIS package worth?  $2.18 billion.

A new GeoDesign tool

Directions Magazine reports on a new GeoDesign Tool.

Map of secrets

It is easy to think that most intelligence work is just done in DC (or Montclair).  But the Washington Post has created a pretty fascinating map of what they called Top Secret America.  If you zoom in, you can see that Central New Jersey has a fair amount private contractors in the area.  NPR's The Takeaway had on Dana Priest to talk about the reporting associated with it.

A sustainability design challenge

An interesting challenge that is popping up more and more is the ability to elegantly integrate some of the less elegant elements of sustainability in the working landscapes of daily life.  One example of this was highlighted (indirectly) in the NY Times blog this week: solar panels.  The video shows one way people are starting to integrate them into parking lots, but the truth is that as panel prices drop there will be plenty of other interesting alternatives to solar farms that will create visual and aesthetic challenges for designers.

Jan Gehl's Cities for People

Daily Dose of Achitecture has a nice post this morning highlighting the release of Danish architect Jan Gehl's new book, Cities for People.

ESRI UC 2010

While I am simmering in NJ, I am getting plenty of emails and calls from San Diego, site of the 2010 ESRI User Conference.  I think it is generally considered to be the largest GIS conference in the world.

• The Penn State Geospatial Revolution showed up.
• James Fee makes sure you know what happened between 10:45 and 10:52.
• Very Spatial blog tells us that the plenary ended with a metadata reference and Johnny Cash.
• A Flickr stream lets you see some photos

None of it is as good as being there.

MERC site in Salt River Bay

Yesterday's post offered a few thoughts about the larger context of the MERC site, but what I really wanted to do when I visited was see the site and its soil and its plants.  Down by the shore, where coastal erosion works its magic, you can see what some of the soils likes like.  Just a random mix of parent materials, perhaps stability would be a concern.

Parts of the coastline are fairly rough and hardened, creating a coastal environment with tidal pools and rock hopping.  And trash.


Inside the site are some old dirt roads,  This one gives a sense of how enclosed you quickly become as the plants are going about 10 or 15 feet high in some of the lower areas.  The vegetation looks impenetrable, and it seems like it too.  There is a reason people carry machetes in places like this.

The new entry to the site will be from the South.  Here, at the base of the central peninsula of the site you can see the entry that has been laid down.  At this point, it is still pretty high on the hill, and the road drops down, creating an instant effect of getting away from the ordinary world of St Croix.

From the bottom, looking up at the large hill on the site, you can see both the taller scrub down low and the grassy areas as you climb the hill.  This was pretty common around the site.

The flatter coastal areas on the site, transitioned pretty quickly from sea grape to other scrub.  Simlarly, the scrub pushed pretty close to the lagoon and salt pond before finally giving way to a thin but dense strip of mangroves.

MERC Site - a wider view

It is easy to visit the Salt River Bay in St Croix and see it simply as a great place to park a sailboat, but there is more to it than that.

Seen from a distance, the proposed site for the Marine Education and Research Center is fairly isolated on a peninsula. Stepping back like this makes it seem farily simple, but there is a lot going on in this picture.  You can barely seem the remains of the ruins of the old hotel, even though it still had its tower at the time the photo was taken.

Zoomed out, the site looks pretty lush, but on site you see that the concrete materials from the old resort take up a pretty large area.  The NPS plans to reuse as much of the material as possible.

While the concrete makes an interesting transition along the shore, you can also imagine how this will look when cleaned up and can be used as a place to learn about coastal processes. But, while it looks like a natural beach, the old maps show clearly that this wasn't here a few decades ago. It has been a dynamic place.

Across the bay is the new orientation center for visitors (not yet completed) that towers over the Christopher Columbus Landing site.

The most important photo might this one which looks down from the current entrance to the site, across this scrubby slope, down to the bio-luminescent lagoon, and across to where the old hotel was. It seems likely that the new construction on the site would happen near where the photographer was standing and this would be a few that visiting public, local students, and marine researchers would encounter every day.

Where is the Lorax then you need him?

Who will speak for the trees?  Especially the centuries-year-old "massive oak" in Teaneck that may get cut down? According to the Record, the tree will.  Rabbi Price said, "After the tree spoke for itself, we felt we could not wait any longer to deal with this."

Maturity is beautiful

IJES has a new study that finds old forests are more beautiful than young forests.

Age old question

Prospect Park vs. Central Park

Fences

List lovers with more of an interest in landscape industry might want to peruse of 10 Most Common Residential Fences.

“Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power and to withhold from them information, without which power is abused. A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

- James Madison

LAF announces Olmsted Scholars

Congrats to Ed Krafcik!

Ed made the LAF's list of 2010 University Olmsted Scholars.  I would encourage current and propspective students to read several of the bios and consider how their activities and interests could continue to advance like these.

On NPR

While I haven't listened yet, local academic celebrities Frank and Deborah Popper make an appearance on NPR's On Point focusing on the Great Plains.  The whole thing seems to be sparked by Joel Kotkin's recent piece in Newsweek, "Why the Great Plains are Great Once Again."

Also on NPR, the Anecdotal Census of Middlesex County.

Build a Better Burb

A design competition is close to wrapping up out on Long Island.  Build a Better Burb has been juried and has three finalists for the public choice portion.  I would encourage our Juniors to study the gallery since the finalists represent a highly varied and imaginative approach to visioning a future for a specific area without getting very site specific.

Dockside Green

Dockside Green is a new eco-friendly housing project in Victoria, BC.

Quote

"Eighty percent of success is showing up."

- Woody Allen

(It is worth pointing out that the Internet is filled with other versions of this quote - 70%, 85%, 90% - and almost none of them mention when/where he said it.)

(Readers are discouraged from associating this quote with this morning's post.)

Looking for a few good teachers

Studio, construction, related areas.  Job description here.

A new way to fight growth?

The state is moving close to a 2% cap on the growth of municipal budgets with a few special exceptions like capital improvements and pensions.  Since I am not privy to the details, I can only speculate.  But this seems like it makes it easier for towns to reinvest in crumbling infrastructure and community centers but harder to deal with population growth that will require more services, policemen and teachers.  That could disincentivize the generosity of planning boards that used to encourage growth as a way to improve ratables.  Am I missing something?

Planting Fields

The NY Times offers a compelling review of the recently reopened gardens at Planting Fields Arboretum on Long Island.

Cool class: Landscape Studies

Landscape Architecture 101
Landscape Studies

11:550:101, Fall 2010, Department of Landscape Architecture, open to all majors, fulfills SEBS Arts and Humanities requirement

Dr. Wolfram Hoefer

Overview: Tools for Interpreting Place

“… a little acute observation of ordinary things like power lines, railroad rights-of-way, post office equipment, back roads and shopping districts, alleys and the interstate highway system, fences and revitalized main streets, even motels and highway interchanges opens up larger issues that invigorate the mind, that entice understanding, that flex mental muscle, that fit the explorer for further exploring. [It is] about awareness in ordinary surroundings…. awareness that builds into mindfulness, into the enduring pleasures of noticing and thinking about what one notices.”
(John R. Stilgoe, “Outside Lies Magic”, p. 18)


This broad-ranging course is an introduction to the idea of landscape as cultural phenomenon and the role of the term landscape as a representation of how society views the built world. The goal of this course is to:

• Improve the student’s perception of the built and un-built environments.
• Establish vocabularies to describe, and analytical frameworks to assess natural and cultural aspects of the environment.
• Determine some of the forces and values that are shaping the landscape and determining its organization and order
• Discover the relation between the idea of landscape and the physical object landscape.
• Consider the role of the landscape in not only satisfying society's needs, but also in expressing society's aspirations.
• Introduction of aspects of the historic, political, and economic context of landscape as cultural symbol

By orchestrating diverse resources (film, lectures, field trips, and general audience books by research scientists), this introductory class presents a variety of landscape interpretations in terms of natural processes and cultural history.

Several broad landscape categories provide a framework for looking at the landscape: local town; beach (wilderness—the moving beach); landscape infrastructure (water--dams and carrying capacity of the land); agriculture (ways of farming and the social and environmental impacts); carscape (the strip and the landscape of mobility); post-industrial landscapes (brownfields as elements of the public realm); city (people and parks).

History, video narrative, and scientific literature are presented to allow students to determine for themselves some of the forces shaping the landscape while considering its role in expressing society’s aspirations and satisfying society’s needs. Scientific readings and documentary films act as case studies and help to explain field trip observations. Films serve the secondary role of virtual field trips and provide cultural history background. Lectures will provide a historic and cultural context for the class discussions.

Readings, written responses, and class discussions will help the student to think differently about landscape in order to see landscape in a different way. Journal assignments are intended to provide a mechanism for recording thoughts and observations in an organized manner and provide a permanent record of individual experience that can be shared in class.

This course develops landscape observation skills; it also requires students to integrate their knowledge of science with visible landscape processes and uses. The ability to read one’s surroundings is an essential part of environmental literacy. The assignments are designed to give an introduction into methods of analysis and research in the humanities.