All Resources

Responsive Landscapes Through Authentic Engagement

heather — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Responsive Landscapes Through Authentic Engagement

teal

Recording from live webinar on April 22, 2026

Responsive Landscapes Through Authentic Engagement: Lessons from the Detroit Collaborative Design Center

As cities like Detroit confront climate change, aging infrastructure, and ever evolving community priorities, landscape design must become more collaborative, measurable, and data driven. In this webinar, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) gives an in-depth look at their participatory, community-based approach that centers residents as co-creators.

Viewers will learn strategies for authentic collaborations, setting clear stakeholder objectives year over year, and building trust through inclusive communication. The webinar examines community-informed site analysis methods, co-creation techniques, workshops, charrettes, and digital platforms that help DCDC build consensus and translate community insight into actionable solutions. Presenters also touch on performance tracking and post-occupancy evaluations to ensure landscapes deliver long-term environmental and social impact. Through Detroit-based case studies and practical tips, this webinar demonstrates how participatory engagement and data-driven processes can shape equitable, responsive landscapes for the future.

DCDC is the 2025 recipient of the LAF Founders’ Award. The multidisciplinary, nonprofit design center is based in the University of Detroit Mercy’s School of Architecture and Community Development and is a leader in the field of public interest design. The webinar begins with a brief award recognition.

Sponsor

Learning Objectives

Explain how authentic, community‑centered collaboration shapes responsive landscapes and builds consensus and trust over time
Identify effective engagement tools and co-creation methods to translate community input into design decisions
Understand how performance tracking and post‑occupancy evaluation are used in participatory landscape projects to support long‑term environmental and social goals

Continuing Education Credits

This course is approved for 1.0 Professional Development Hour (PDH) through the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) and meets the health, safety and welfare requirements (HSW). To earn 1.0 PDH (LA CES/HSW):

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Speakers

Charles Cross
Director of Landscape and Urban Design, Detroit Collaborative Design Center
Adjunct Professor, School of Architecture and Community Development
University of Detroit Mercy

Wil Marquez
Co-Executive Director
Detroit Collaborative Design Center
University of Detroit Mercy

Investigating Forced Labor in Landscape Architecture Material Supply Chains

heather — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:40:44 +0000

Investigating Forced Labor in Landscape Architecture Material Supply Chains

olive

Recording from webinar on January 29, 2026

Ethically Sourcing the Ground: Investigating Forced Labor in Landscape Architecture Material Supply Chains

An estimated 28 million people worldwide are ensnared in forced labor today. While the United States Customs and Border Protection bans products made with forced labor, the lack of supply chain transparency and the disaggregated nature of the building material industry allow for products made with forced labor to inadvertently infiltrate the US market. As a result, the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is one of the most at risk of unwittingly supporting forced labor practices through its material specification and procurement processes.

The fifth LAF Research Grant in Honor of Deb Mitchell was awarded to “Ethically Sourcing the Ground: Investigating Forced Labor in Landscape Architecture Material Supply Chains,” a project led by Noriko Maeda and a team at MNLA and Franca Trubiano, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. This 16-month research project investigated commonly specified products in landscape architecture such as permeable pavers, geotextile filter fabric, synthetic turf, rubber safety surface, and recycled plastic lumber to develop analytical methods for evaluating the forced labor risk for these products.

In this webinar, the Principal Investigators and research team will share their research process and present their findings, exploring these questions: How can the field of landscape architecture evaluate its exposure risk to materials produced through forced labor? Can more conscientious sourcing of construction materials address this important question of social equity? Their findings will illuminate how landscape architects can use project specifications and procurement processes to address these critical issues and help to advance fair labor practices.

Resources

Ethically Sourcing Final Research Report [PDF, 40.3MB]

Learning Objectives

Explain the relevance of forced labor to landscape architecture practice, including why the AEC industry faces elevated exposure risk due to opaque global supply chains.
Identify commonly specified landscape materials that carry higher forced labor risk.
Describe emerging approaches within the AEC industry that can be used to address forced labor.

Continuing Education Credits

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Presenters

Noriko Maeda, RLA
Senior Associate
MNLA
With over 30 years of experience in practice, Noriko is an advocate for fostering design stewardship to advance social equity and quality of life.

Franca Trubiano, PhD
Associate Professor of Architecture and Graduate Group Chair of the PhD Program in Architecture
University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design
Franca's research focuses on building materials including forced labor.

Research Team

Signe Nielsen, RLA, FASLA, Founding Principal, MNLA
Amy Arato, RLA, ASLA, ISA, WEDG, Senior Landscape Architect, MNLA
Jeb Polstein, WEDG, Senior Landscape Designer, MNLA
Emily Silber, RLA, ASLA, Landscape Architect, MNLA
Lee Williams, RLA, WEDG, Landscape Architect, MNLA
Ivanna Dudych, Architecture and Fine Arts student (senior), University of Pennsylvania

LAF's 2025 CSI Program, Part 2

heather — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 19:00:00 +0000

LAF's 2025 CSI Program, Part 2

olive

Recording from live webinar on Nov 21, 2025

Part 2: Measuring Landscape Performance with LAF’s 2025 CSI Program

The Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Study Investigation (CSI) program supports faculty-student research teams who work with designers to assess and document the performance of exemplary landscape projects as Case Study Briefs. In this second of two webinars, three teams from the 2025 CSI program present the projects they evaluated.

For each built landscape, a representative from the design firm will share background information about the project and design, followed by the CSI academic team presenting their research process and most compelling findings from their efforts to quantify the environmental, social, and economic benefits.

Want to see more of the 2025 CSI research?
Watch the other webinar in the series LAF's 2025 CSI Program, Part 1 held on Nov 17.

Learning Objectives

Understand how the Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Study Investigation program is furthering landscape performance research.
Explore specific metrics and methods used to evaluate the environmental and social performance of landscape projects.
Learn about the goals and sustainable features of exemplary landscapes.

Continuing Education Credits

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Presenters and Projects

Española Healing Foods Oasis, Española, NM
CSI Research Fellow: Anthony Fettes, PLA, PDC, University of New Mexico
Student Research Assistant: Kailani Gorman
Firm representative: Christie Green, radicle

Earvin "Magic" Johnson Park, Los Angeles, CA
CSI Research Fellow: Esther Margulies, PLA, University of Southern California
Student Research Assistants: Ashley Stephens and Jordan Fucci
Firm representatives: Evan Mather and Jose Gutierrez, MIG

Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands, Seattle, WA
CSI Research Fellow: Vincent Javet, University of Washington
Student Research Assistant: Piper Sallquist
Firm representative: Jason Henry, Berger Partnership

Landscape Performance Series Sponsors

LAF's landscape performance work, including the CSI program, is supported by these generous sponsors.

Founding Partner
Lead Sponsor
Lead Sponsor
Lead Sponsor
Annual Sponsor
Annual Sponsor

LAF hosts live webinars in which guest presenters share innovative work and discuss timely issues. The recorded webinars are archived on LAF's website, and many can be viewed on demand to earn continuing education credits through LA CES. To learn about upcoming webinars, subscribe to LAF communications.

LAF's 2025 CSI Program, Part 1

heather — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 17:36:31 +0000

LAF's 2025 CSI Program, Part 1

olive

Recording from live webinar on Nov 17, 2025

Part 1: Measuring Landscape Performance with LAF’s 2025 CSI Program

The Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Study Investigation (CSI) program supports faculty-student research teams who work with designers to assess and document the performance of exemplary landscape projects as Case Study Briefs. In this first of two webinars, three teams from the 2025 CSI program present the projects they evaluated.

Want to see more of the 2025 CSI research?
Watch the other webinar in the series LAF's 2025 CSI Program, Part 2 held on Nov 21.

Learning Objectives

Understand how the Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Study Investigation program is furthering landscape performance research.
Explore specific metrics and methods used to evaluate the environmental and social performance of landscape projects.
Learn about the goals and sustainable features of exemplary landscapes.

Continuing Education Credits

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Presenters and Projects

Grand Junction, Westfield, IN
CSI Research Fellow: Yiwei Huang, PhD, Purdue University
Student Research Assistant: Serine Kao
Firm representative: Lindsey Tabor, DAVID RUBIN Land Collective

Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, Atlanta, GA
CSI Research Fellow: Alfie Vick, PLA, University of Georgia
Student Research Assistant: Jabari A.S. Lottie
Firm representatives: Jose Almiñana and Abigail Long, Andropogon

Town Branch Commons, Lexington, KY
CSI Research Fellow: Jordan Phemister, University of Kentucky
Student Research Assistant: Mitchell Kubera
Firm representative: Erin Masterson, Gresham Smith

Landscape Performance Series Sponsors

LAF's landscape performance work, including the CSI program, is supported by these generous sponsors.

Founding Partner
Lead Sponsor
Lead Sponsor
Lead Sponsor
Annual Sponsor
Annual Sponsor

Research 101 for Landscape Architecture Practitioners

heather — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:46:17 +0000

Research 101 for Landscape Architecture Practitioners

teal

Recording from live webinar on Nov 5, 2025

Research 101 for Landscape Architecture Practitioners

Curious about how to bring research into your design firm's work? Interested in collaborating with academics, subconsultants, or clients on research-informed projects? Whether your office formally engages in research or you’re simply interested in grounding your design process in evidence and inquiry, this webinar introduces core research concepts tailored to landscape architecture practitioners — especially those who never received formal research training or who have not revisited research methods since their schooling.

Presenters explore how designers can transition from production-focused ways of thinking to more inquiry-driven, research-oriented approaches. Viewers will gain an understanding of different types of research (from basic to applied to advocacy research), how to ask researchable questions, and what makes practice-based research rigorous and credible. The presenters also touch on conducting literature reviews, collaborating with partners, communicating findings effectively, and translating the concept of peer review outside of an academic context.

Partners and Sponsors

This webinar is part of the Landscape Architecture Research Exchange, an initiative of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), designed to connect landscape architecture professionals and academics around shared research interests. The initiative is sponsored by Maglin.

Partner
Partner
Sponsor

Resources

Compiled research resources for practitioners [PDF]

Learning Objectives

Identify and describe key types of research relevant to the professional practice of landscape architecture and understand how each can inform design and decision-making.
Recognize and apply strategies for integrating research into professional practice, including conducting literature reviews, framing researchable questions, and collaborating with academic or professional partners.
Evaluate the rigor and credibility of research efforts within design practice by understanding principles of peer review, ethical considerations, and effective communication of findings.

Continuing Education Credits

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Presenters

James A. LaGro, Jr, PhD, PLA
Editor-in-Chief, Landscape Journal
Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Jim is a landscape architect and scholar whose work explores land use dynamics, community livability, and sustainable urban redevelopment. Since 2021, he has served as Editor-in-Chief of Landscape Journal, the official journal of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA).

Megan Barnes
Sr Program Manager for Research
Landscape Architecture Foundation

Megan was trained in landscape architecture and manages LAF’s research programs. She speaks and writes to advocate for the importance of landscape performance and research in the landscape architecture discipline.

Landscape Architecture Research Exchange

heather — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:42:51 +0000

Landscape Architecture Research Exchange

green

The Landscape Architecture Research Exchange is an initiative of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), designed to connect landscape architecture professionals and academics around shared research interests. Key goals are to:

Improve shared understanding of the importance of research and how knowledge is generated, shared, utilized, and disseminated in landscape architecture
Create opportunities and dialogue across academic and professional practice to foster research partnerships and knowledge exchange while building community
Identify research areas, interests, and questions along with potential action items for collaboration between academic and professional practitioners

Participate in one of our upcoming activities or learn more about our past events.

Current and UPComing ACTIVITIES

Videos: Voice Your Research Needs

December 2025 - March 2026
LAF invites landscape architecture professionals to submit short videos describing the research questions or knowledge gaps they'd like to see addressed to have real-world impact. If you could direct a research team for a year, what would you ask them to explore?
How to Participate

Past Activities

Webinar: Research 101 for Practitioners

November 5, 2025
Whether your office formally engages in research or you’re simply interested in grounding your design process in evidence and inquiry, this webinar introduces core research concepts tailored to landscape architecture practitioners. Attendees will gain an understanding of different types of research, how to ask researchable questions, and what makes practice-based research rigorous and credible.
Watch the Recording

Virtual Event: The Research Exchange

January 22, 2026
This first-of-its-kind virtual gathering was an interactive opportunity for academic and professional practitioners to identify shared research interests, explore opportunities for collaboration, and begin to shape a responsive research agenda for landscape architecture.
Learn More

Partners and Sponsors

Partner
Partner
Sponsor

How to Start a Collaborative Research Conversation

heather — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 16:00:00 +0000

How to Start a Collaborative Research Conversation

olive

Strengthening connections between academic and professional practice in landscape architecture has long been a priority for LAF, particularly with respect to research. LAF envisions a discipline in which knowledge created in academia increasingly responds to the needs of real-world landscape architecture practice, and where professional practice is supported by a substantial and growing evidence base emerging from academic research.

Increasingly, professional and academic practitioners are pursuing direct research together to combine their skills and approaches and pursue shared topics of interest. When a collaboration is successful, the resulting insights, knowledge, or innovation can be transformative — as is the experience of collaborating across the perceived boundaries between the academy and practice.

But working together is not always easy. Professional and academic practitioners face widely varying norms and expectations, terminology, motivations, and resource realities that can cause disconnects and significant challenges to collaboration. For example in academia, rigor and generalizability take precedence, whereas in professional practice, pragmatism and actionable insights are the priority.

Direct conversations among academics and professionals can help set the stage for effective research partnerships. Based on LAF's observations and experience facilitating collaboration through our Case Study Investigation program and LAF Research Grant in Honor of Deb Mitchell, we've developed a guide to begin those discussions.

This guide is intended to be used in the early stages of a potential partnership. LAF offers it as a resource for our prospective research program participants as well as the wider discipline of landscape architecture to facilitate honest, direct conversations that lay the groundwork for productive and successful research collaborations between academic and professional practitioners.

View/Download Guide

Presentations from the 2025 LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium

heather — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 19:09:43 +0000

Presentations from the 2025 LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium

dark-blue

On June 5, 2025, the 2024-25 cohort from the yearlong LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership presented their projects at a symposium in Washington, DC. This unique fellowship program provides a $25,000 award that supports working professionals as they develop and test new ideas to bring about impactful change to the environment and humanity and increase the visibility and leadership role of landscape architecture.

If you view the full recording of the symposium or watch all six presentations below, you can earn 2.0 PDH (LA CES/HSW) following successful completion of a short quiz. More on earning CEUs.

Fellow Presentations

Infrastructure, Rescripted: The Public Realm on a Mass Scale

Anya Domlesky, Director of Research, SWA Group

Transportation space dominates the public realm in the United States. But in a moment of transition, much of our port, river, rail, and road infrastructure is obsolescing or misaligned with needs. Since transportation land is often publicly held, it may be adapted for a broader set of benefits, more reflective of public values. Anya argues for a renewed focus on infrastructure adaptation projects as an urban design strategy to build low carbon, economically vibrant cities.

Additional Information and Resources:
SWA XL Lab: Infrastructure Adaptation

Landscapes Are Learning Labs

Brad Howe, Principal, SCAPE

This project explores how landscape architects can collaborate with community partners and educators to develop a curriculum for their projects that provides youth with hands-on learning experiences, unlocking the landscape as a teaching tool. Drawing from successful case studies, Brad identifies key components of a successful partnership and shares strategies for integrating these efforts into practice. This research aims to advance this model of landscape participation that empowers youth to become environmental stewards and advocates in their communities.

Additional Information and Resources:
LandscapesAreLearningLabs.org
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Harnessing the Power of Landscapes as Learning Labs

Toronto Policy Atlas: A Graphic Guide for Living Landscapes

Aaron Hernandez, Associate, Reed Hilderbrand

The Toronto Policy Atlas starts with a question: How did we get here? Cascading environmental crises signal a need for transformative change to laws and policies that govern our relationship with the Earth. Transformative change requires grappling with the past. Using the tools of design visualization and storytelling, this project aims to illuminate how cultural values shape policy, how policy shapes land, and asks: How might the living landscape shape policy for a sustainable future?

Emergent Mutualism: Closing the Interdisciplinary Science-Communication Gap

David Buckley Borden, Senior Advisor of Creative Practice and Innovation, Center for the Future of Forests and Society, Oregon State University; Associate Research Professor, University of Oregon College of Design

Using recent collaborations as case studies, this project seeks to identify, develop, and articulate creative environmental-communication methods, models, and frameworks to answer the question: How can interdisciplinary science-communication be re-imagined as a collaborative design process between landscape architects and ecologists? The case studies serve as a prompt for the development of a series of accessible project-specific, how-to booklets that combine design thinking, communication theory, experiential design, and public-engagement practice into a free publication.

Toward a National Agroforest

Amy Whitesides, Design Critic, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Agroforestry is the intentional integration of agriculture and tree crops into a productive system with economic, social, and ecological benefits. These layered interactions between people, plants, animals, and fungi create multi-scalar reciprocities that can support profitability alongside environmental stewardship, soil quality improvements, and reduced carbon emissions in the agriculture industry. This project imagines an expansive future for agroforestry through a field guide to collaborative opportunities with plants, policies, and marginal lands across America.

Feral Farms: Midwestern Recipes for Land Justice

Forbes Lipschitz, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University

In response to the urgent need for sustainable, biodiverse, and just food systems, Feral Farms centers Indigenous conservation as a guiding force for reimagining agriculture. The project asks: How can we modify our diets and de-domesticate our landscapes in ways that honor cultural sovereignty and mitigate climate change? Weaving together case studies and traditional foodways, this research illustrates how rewilding agriculture can be both a reparative practice and a regional reality—culminating in a collection of recipes rooted in Midwestern tradition.

Continuing Education Credits

The symposium is approved for 2.0 Professional Development Hours (PDH) through the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) and meets the health, safety and welfare requirements (HSW).

Learning Objectives

Understand the role of landscape architects and opportunities for action with issues such as rewilding agriculture, landscapes as learning labs, closing the science-communication gap, illuminating policy, expanding agroforestry, and infrastructure adaptation.
Learn about the research and process that landscape architects have experienced over the course of their fellowship year in making transformational steps in the development of project work that contributes to innovation and leadership in the profession, the environment, and humanity.
Gain inspiration for how to work toward transformative change in your own work.

To earn 2.0 PDH (LA CES/HSW):

View the six recordings above or watch the full symposium recording.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

FULL Symposium

The 2025 LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium can be viewed in its entirety. (Runtime 2:25:02)

Symposium Program

Welcome + Opening Remarks
Presentations: Anya Domlesky, Brad Howe, Aaron Hernandez + Moderated Audience Q&A
Presentations: David Buckley Borden, Amy Whitesides, Forbes Lipschitz + Moderated Audience Q&A
Closing Remarks

Prescribing Nature: Designing for Health, Equity, and Connection

heather — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:47:14 +0000

Prescribing Nature: Designing for Health, Equity, and Connection

teal

Recording from live webinar on May 29, 2025

Prescribing Nature: Designing for Health, Equity, and Connection

Zip code is one of the strongest predictors of life expectancy, but why? The research indicates that this is less about proximity to health care facilities and more about access to environmental and social infrastructure: safe streets, clean air, quality housing, and nearby parks. In short, it’s about the built and natural environments — and how they are planned, designed, managed, and maintained.

This webinar, presented in partnership with The Learning Network of the Nature and Health Alliance, is a conversation about the intersection of public health, landscape architecture, and equity. Together, the panelists explore how nature can be part of a systemic solution to health issues and disparities and how urban design and public health can become integrated practices.

Dr. Robert Zarr brings the perspective of a physician working within the transactional norms of the healthcare system but advocating for a new approach: prescriptions that connect people to nature as a core part of wellness. His work explores how the absence of nature contributes to poor health outcomes and what implementation of nature-based “prescriptions” might look like in real life.

Chelina Odbert complements this with a designer’s view. It’s not enough to prescribe nature if the built environment itself is unsafe, unequal, or inaccessible. Her firm’s work insists that for anyone to benefit from their surroundings, those spaces must first meet baseline standards of inclusion, equity, and dignity.

Sponsor

Resources

List of resources mentioned [PDF]

Learning Objectives

Understand how health is more about parks, public space, and housing than medicine alone and how nature can be part of a systemic solution to disconnection and chronic illness.
Recognize how medical professionals see the role of design in their efforts to prescribe nature to patients.
View the future of design and public health as collaborative, not separate, practices.

Continuing Education Credits

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Panelists

Dr. Robert Zarr, MD, MPH
Founder & Medical Director
Park Rx America

Robert is a physician researcher and public health pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. He was formerly at Unity Health Care, Inc. Robert has provided medical attention to BIPOC and immigrant populations for more than 20 years. He is also a certified nature and forest therapy guide.

Chelina Odbert
CEO & Founding Principal
Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)

Chelina has built an award-winning practice that brings good design to places where it is not often found and that connects localized design interventions to large-scale policy change. An urban planner by training, Chelina’s experience and expertise cover a range of topics from participatory planning to gender-inclusive design. She has written extensively about KDI’s community-engaged approach to planning in the U.S. and abroad.

Amy Wagenfeld, PhD (Moderator)
Co-Director
The Learning Network of the Nature and Health Alliance

Amy’s roles as an occupational therapist include therapeutic and universal design consultant, educator, researcher, and author. With a strong background in human development, Amy is passionate about providing people of all ages, abilities, and cultures equitable, inclusive, and safe access to therapeutic environments. She recognizes that successful design must, at its core, support mental health and foster resilience.

LAF hosts live webinars in which guest presenters share innovative work and discuss timely issues. The recorded webinars are archived on LAF's website, and many can be viewed on demand to earn continuing education credits through LA CES. LAF is able to make these resources freely available thanks to the financial support of individuals like you. If you find this webinar valuable, please consider making a donation to help us cover hosting and administrative costs. To learn about upcoming webinars, sign up for our emails.

Energy Landscapes: The Potential of Transmission Corridors

heather — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 16:16:50 +0000

Energy Landscapes: The Potential of Transmission Corridors

teal

Recording from live webinar on April 9, 2025

Energy Landscapes: The Potential of Transmission Corridors for Recreation, Resilience, and Ecology

The U.S. power grid includes more than 150,000 miles of high-voltage power lines to transport electricity from power stations to substations where it enters the distribution system to consumers. These transmission corridors — often overhead power lines on lattice-type metal towers — are a common sight. Yet even as they dominate the landscape, they are often overlooked due to their ubiquity.

These corridors, which cross political and ecological boundaries, can serve as spaces for much more than energy transmission, providing significant value for the communities and environments they pass through and serve. Designing and managing transmission corridors for multiple benefits includes possibilities like greenways, parks, trails, wildfire management areas, and more.

This webinar begins with a brief overview of the fundamentals of energy transmission systems and the physical aspects of transmission corridors. Then, each panelist shares new thinking and case study examples of multifunctional transmission line corridors from three distinct but integrated perspectives: recreational use, wildfire resilience, and ecosystem restoration and management. The panel then discusses emerging areas for future enterprise and new cross-disciplinary efforts to enable multi-functional transmission with a particular focus on existing and potential roles for landscape architects and planners.

Interested in more energy landscapes?
Check out the recording from LAF's August 2024 webinar Renewable Energy: A Crash Course for Landscape Architects.

Sponsor

Resources

Learning Objectives

Understand the basics of energy transmission corridors.
Consider the potential role of landscape architects in safely harnessing transmission corridors to provide multiple benefits with value for the communities they pass through and serve.
Explore examples of projects that integrate corridors with landscape solutions for recreational use, wildfire resilience, and ecosystem restoration.

Continuing Education Credits

View the full webinar above.
Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.

Quiz for CEUs

By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

Panelists

Chris Henderson
Research Scientist
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Chris specializes in applied human dimensions research related to climate and community resilience, natural resources, and impacts of energy development. Chris is passionate about connecting people to the outdoors, and his dissertation research focused on nature-based recreationists, their motivations and values, and their support for conservation initiatives.

Katie Morrice
Earth Scientist
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Katie has a background in coastal oceanography and marine science with a BA in biology, a MS in marine science, and a PhD in environmental science and engineering. In the last five years, she has worked in offshore renewable energy across government and industry. She is passionate about nature-based solutions, environmental and socially responsible renewable energy development, and meaningful engagement with communities.

Jonah Susskind
Director of Climate Strategy
SWA Group

Jonah directs the firm-wide climate strategy for a global design firm and oversees research on climate change, decarbonization, and the future of cities. He has taught at Harvard and MIT and published critical essays on urban development, climate adaptation, and community resilience with a special focus on wildfire risk and resilience.

Yekang Ko, PhD (Moderator)
Associate Professor
University of Oregon

Yekang teaches landscape planning and design studios, design for climate action, global sustainability, and landscape planning and analysis. Her research focuses on sustainable energy landscapes, green infrastructure, and climate change mitigation and adaptation planning. With expertise in renewable energy landscapes, she also holds a joint appointment as a Senior Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.