Post #6: The Treasure Hunt Part II: Physical Conditions Survey

Kevin Caldwell
Post #6:  The Treasure Hunt Part II:  Physical Conditions Survey This is installment #5 for ecological, site-specific considerations for siting Green Built structures on undeveloped, forested land.   This post highlights physical characteristics of the land that are essential to understand for a truly ecologically based structure. Landforms:  The overall terrain...

READ ARTICLE

Post #4: The Treasure Hunt: Natural Resources Survey

Kevin Caldwell
  This is installment #4 for ecological, site-specific considerations for siting Green Built structure on undeveloped, forested land.   This posting will focus primarily on the living resources of the land:  natural communities, native plants, and wildlife.  Post #5 will focus on the non-living resources of the land, all of which...

READ ARTICLE

Preconstruction Land Planning

Kevin Caldwell
In my previous blog, I discussed the concept of protecting, and incorporating the ecology of a building site into the green-building process on raw land.  To clarify, this process is largely focused on protection of rural and semi-rural forested areas that will be impacted rather than urban sites. Forest ecosystems,...

READ ARTICLE

Green Building and the Land We Build On

Kevin Caldwell
The Green Building concept is based on creating (and adding onto) structures with materials that are low-impact to acquire and manufacture, and that are energy efficient over the life of the structure so that we reduce our impacts to the Environment. But what about the actual lands that we clear...

READ ARTICLE