Designing the Ultimate Deckside Garden in Lemon Grove

A river with functional (flood preventing) engineering (in Houston, Texas)

A canal design focused on esthetical landscape architecture (in Stockholm, Sweden) for comparison.

Landscape engineering is the application of mathematics and science to shape land and waterscapes. It can also be described as green engineering, but the design professionals best known for landscape engineering are landscape architects. Landscape engineering is the interdisciplinary application of engineering and other applied sciences to the design and creation of anthropogenic landscapes. It differs from, but embraces traditional reclamation. It includes scientific disciplines: agronomy, botany, ecology, forestry, geology, geochemistry, hydrogeology, and wildlife biology. It also draws upon applied sciences: agricultural & horticultural sciences, engineering geomorphology, landscape architecture, and mining, geotechnical, and civil, agricultural & irrigation engineering.

Landscape engineering builds on the engineering strengths of declaring goals, determining initial conditions, iteratively designing, predicting performance based on knowledge of the design, monitoring performance, and adjusting designs to meet the declared goals. It builds on the strengths and history of reclamation practice. Its distinguishing feature is the marriage of landforms, substrates, and vegetation throughout all phases of design and construction, which previously have been kept as separate disciplines.

Though landscape engineering embodies all elements of traditional engineering (planning, investigation, design, construction, operation, assessment, research, management, and training), it is focused on three main areas. The first is closure planning – which includes goal setting and design of the landscape as a whole. The second division is landscape design more focused on the design of individual landforms to reliably meet the goals as set out in the closure planning process. Landscape performance assessment is critical to both of these, and is also important for estimating liability and levels of financial assurance. The iterative process of planning, design, and performance assessment by a multidisciplinary team is the basis of landscape engineering.

Source: McKenna, G.T., 2002. Sustainable mine reclamation and landscape engineering. PhD Thesis, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 661p.

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An example of contemporary landscape engineering and natural resources management related to the Biosphere 2 and seawater farming projects, is the IBTS Greenhouse, formerly the Forest City designed for the Emirate of Ras al Khaimah. The IBTS rests on a thoroughly integrated design with more than 340 different engineering, science and technology disciplines. It was created for desert greening of hot, arid deserts and optimized for fresh water production from saline, or brackish water. The Integrated Biotectural System is based on a wetland, more specifically a mangrove eco-system designed for food and fodder production of 80tons per hectare and year, also called mariculture. The atmosphere inside the IBTS is turned into a potent water source and harvested with a combination of condensation utilities which makes it a more energy efficient desalination facility than industrial plants. It can produce 500.000m3 of distilled water per day while reclaiming 1000ha of hot arid desert lands. The electricity for the desalination is produced by an on-site forest of micro wind turbines located on the same footprint. These numbers are important because the performance data of for-profit engineered landscapes like wetlands for wastewater treatment or agro-ecological farming sites distinguishes technically feasible from financially and ecologically beneficial projects.

The IBTS is an example for sustainable landscape design that reclaims and recreates productive ecosystems including seawater farming, aquaculture, farming, forestry and residence for a human population. It has become feasible because of the design of a Bedouin Greenhouse-shape, automatic construction and maintenance of the vast membrane Sky-roof. The up-front and operational cost could thus be reduced so far that entire landscapes can be covered permanently, not in a common greenhouse fashion, but with an architectural structure that allows for a real-size forest and urban development below the Sky-roof.

The inherent concepts of the IBTS can be used to engineer, terra-form and activate deserts and other landscapes with harsh conditions. In 2015 the governor of Alaska received an offer for a fully self-sufficient multi-residence housing project based on the concepts developed for the IBTS project and adopted for arctic climate by the developer TS Prototype-Creation.

The father of the first irrigation engineering degree in the Americas was Louis George Carpenter (March 28, 1861 – September 12, 1935) He was a college professor and later the Dean of engineering & physics at Colorado State University formerly known as the Colorado Agricultural College.^[1] He was also an engineer, mathematician and an irrigation and consulting engineer.^[2][3]

It was there where Carpenter began the first organized and systematic college program for irrigation engineering starting in 1888. Those completing such instruction were awarded a bachelor of science degree in irrigation engineering.^[4][5][6]

Carpenter was one of the foremost leading experts on irrigation systems. During his life he investigated irrigation systems not only in North America but also in Canada and Europe. This led to his engineering consulting and water law. He became Colorado's state engineer which he held for several years while still teaching.^[6] Carpenter was involved in not only in irrigation engineering but consulting on hydraulic construction projects and the problems associated with such projects.^[6][7]

• Geotextile
• Hard landscape materials

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Landscape planning is a branch of landscape architecture. According to Erv Zube (1931–2002) landscape planning is defined as an activity concerned with developing landscaping amongst competing land uses while protecting natural processes and significant cultural and natural resources. Park systems and greenways of the type designed by Frederick Law Olmsted are key examples of landscape planning. Landscape designers tend to work for clients who wish to commission construction work. Landscape planners analyze broad issues as well as project characteristics which constrain design projects.

Landscape planners may work on projects which are of broad geographical scope, concern many land uses or many clients or are implemented over a long period of time. As an example, the damage caused by unplanned mineral extraction was one of the early reasons for a public demand for landscape planning.

Alberti wrote on the need for town squares for markets and specific implementations to make most use of the space.^[1] In North Europe this developed into the idea that residential squares should be planned around green spaces. The first space of this type was the Place des Vosges. Residential squares were also made in Britain and their planning developed into the idea of incorporating public open space (public parks within towns). Frederick Law Olmsted gave momentum to this idea with his proposal for a park systems in Boston - the famous Emerald Necklace. Patrick Abercrombie took up this idea and incorporated it in his great 1943-4 Open Space Plan for the County of London. An example of landscape planning in use is the plans of RWE in the wake of its mining operations and how they plan to use leftover detritus and soil in their re-cultivation efforts to restore the damaged ecosystems and landscapes created by open pit mines (e.g. Garzweiler surface mine).^[2]

In the United States, landscape architects provide landscape planning services focused on the natural environment along with urban planners. But, unlike Canada and Europe, the US does not have a national land use planning system. Frederick Law Olmsted and Ian McHarg are two influential American landscape architects that also worked as planners. McHarg's work on overlay landscape planning contributed to the development of GIS and to the foundation of ESRI by Jack Dangermond.

The principles of landscape planning are now incorporated in various types of legislation and policy documents. In America, the National Environmental Policy Act was influenced by the work of Ian McHarg on Environmental impact assessment. In Germany, the Federal Nature Conservation Act requires the preparation of landscape plans. For the Europe Union as a whole, the European Landscape Convention has wide-ranging implications for the design and planning of relationships between development and the landscape. In Asia, major development projects are taking place and illustrating the need for good landscape planning. The Three Gorges Dam, for example, will have extensive impacts on the landscape. They have been planned to a degree but future monitoring of the project is likely to show that better landscape planning and design would have been possible.

The conventional planning process is a linear progression of activities. The common steps are:

• Identification of problems and opportunities.
• Establishment of goals.
• Inventory and analysis of the biophysical environment.
• Human community inventory and analysis.
• Development of concepts and the selection of options.
• Adoption of a plan.
• Community involvement and education.
• Detailed design.
• Plan implementation.
• Plan administration.

Landscape planning not always means an ecological planning method, for that it must be considered that "planning is a process that uses the scientific and technical information for considering and reaching consensus on a range of choices. Ecology is the study of the relationship of all living things, including people, to their biological and physical environments. Ecological planning then may be defined as the use of biophysical and sociocultural information to suggest opportunities and constraints for decision making about the use of landscape". (Steiner, 1991) While the common steps are listed above, the process of Landscape planning is adaptable to many situations and is useful in many ways depending on the goals for which it is used.

Results of proper implementations of landscape planning practices are not only limited to more functional landscapes. It can also influence for the better many aspects of the environment and community in which it is used to its potential. While the chief purpose of landscape planning is for ecological reasons it can impact so much more when used effectively as a tool.

Landscape planning is mainly used for ecological purposes and functions best when the result of the planning process is the least amount of interruption of ecological factors from before the implementation ever went into place.^[3] In this practice landscape planning can be used to not only maintain the status of the existing environment, but also can be used to improve aspects of previously under performing ecosystems, for example, designing to increase biodiversity. For example Landscape planning could be used to create additional habitat for endangered species, and reclamation of previously used or depleted lands (e.g. old agricultural spaces) for expansion of natural ecosystems.^[4] This also includes planning in order to reduce the impact of the changes to the environment. with proper landscape planning, a greater speed of recovery for the ecosystems of interrupted spaces is achievable.

Similar to the impacts of healing gardens, the positive healing effects of proper implementations of planned landscapes are of great benefit. When people are exposed to nature, they would find that their overall mood had improved and that they recover from stress and illness at an accelerated rate. With the proper use of landscape planning, health within an urban leaning environment in regards to stress and recovery can be greatly improved above the unplanned alternative.^[5] When landscape planning is used to properly conserve ecological systems that may have been displaced, it makes it so recreational use of the environment is maintained while conserving the systems for people to enjoy.

The development of GIS technology such as those developed by ESRI, have great import to the practice of Landscape planning. Use of assisting technology allows for the conditions and factors existing in a landscape to be easily aggregated and analyzed. Through the use of GIS technology you are able to answer many of the questions about a landscape that is in question. such as, "how functional is this landscape?" or "to what extent do the factors outside of the site affect the planning that needs to be done?"^[6] The use of technology that is developing with greater and greater accuracy has the ability to make sustainable developments easier and more common across the globe.

• Landscape planning education in America: retrospect and prospect
• Ecological design and planning George F. Thompson and Frederick R. Steiner, (Wiley, 1997)
• Landscape planning : an introduction to theory and practice Hackett, Brian (Oriel, 1971)
• Landscape planning and environmental impact design Tom Turner (2nd ed UCL Press, 1998)
• Design with nature Ian L. McHarg ( Wiley, 1992)
• The living landscape: an ecological approach to landscape planning Steiner, Frederick R. (McGraw-Hill College, 1991)

• European Landscape Convention (official statement by the Council of Europe).