Land trusts thrive despite, and because of, the Great Recession — High Country News

• The latest gains bring the total area protected by the nation’s land trusts to 47 million acres — more than twice the area covered by all of the national parks in the Lower 48 states.

• And in recent years, local land trusts have been "saving more land than is lost to development,"

• These trends put California, Colorado and Montana among the top five states nationwide in total private land conserved.

• Jon Christensen is the executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University; Jenny Rempel and Judee Burr are researchers at the Center.

UPNE – Integrated Landscaping: Lauren Chase-Rowell

• “A first-rate model for forward thinking landscapers everywhere. It’s time to bring nature back into our lives, and this book shows us how.”—Richard Louv, author, The Nature Principle and Last Child in the Woods

  “From initial design to plant choice to installation, this book will guide you in the creation of a beautiful, functional, and enriching landscape, regardless of the size of your property or budget.”—Douglas W. Tallamy, author, Bringing Nature Home

   

  A new way of thinking about landscaping home grounds and public spaces, Revised and Expanded

   

  Most landscape manuals describe a linear sequence of processes: design, plant selection, installation, and ongoing maintenance. Integrated Landscaping is different. It uses natural ecosystems as models, taking a nonlinear, holistic approach that addresses these processes simultaneously. Integrated Landscaping treats each site as a system of plant and animal communities, considering their interrelationships with each other and their environment.

   

  Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Brine Garden: Stream in fall
  

Exploring Humanity’s Place In the Journey of the Universe by : Yale Environment 360

• …There’s starting to be a sense now that  there’s a moral issue about degradation of the environment, that there is something here that’s larger than us, something that’s given birth to all life forms and sustains us. And if we degrade that, it’s to the degradation of future generations. So there’s an inter-generational ethic here. And there’s a new emerging ethic of responsibility to people in other parts of the world who are suffering from our actions with things like climate change, which is affecting people along coastal waters.So where is the moral force going to come from for inter-generational ethics or ethical responsibility for people in other parts of the world? It’s going to come from longer-range thinking, and that’s what the religions can contribute.

• YALE e360

Forest management efforts in Connecticut paying off as American chestnut tree makes a comeback | The Republic

via Ct Environmental Headlines

• Scientists have been working on restoration since the 1930s, and in the last several years, American chestnut specialist Sandy Anagnostakis has been breeding blight-resistant trees by crossing the American species with its Chinese cousin, which carries a resistant gene.

   

  Some 200 of those blight-resistant seedlings were planted on 2.5 acres at Belding in 2009, and while mortality is eventually expected to reach 50 percent due to die-off from natural competition, Seymour said the vast majority of the trees are thriving.

• Eventually, the native trees will reach maturity and begin cross-pollinating with the newly planted blight-resistant strain, creating seedlings genetically similar to trees native to the site that also carry genes resistant to blight.

The Age of Man Is Not a Disaster – NYTimes.com

• Yes, we live in the Anthropocene — but that does not mean we inhabit an ecological hell. Our management and care of natural places and the millions of other species with which we share the planet could and should be improved.

Photography in the Style of Traditional Chinese Painting by Don Hong-Oai | Retronaut

Here, photography jumps into, and, dreamily, clarifies traditional Chinese painting. The effect is startling and unique; the images create a median between a far-off reality and a composed ideal.

Fearing Climate Change’s Effects on the Adirondacks – NYTimes.com

By LISA W. FODERARO

• Mr. Jenkins, who is the author of the book “Climate Change in the Adirondacks: The Path to Sustainability,” spends much of his time on the water and in the woods, documenting the ecosystem with a notebook and a camera. He thus brings an unusual perspective to the scene. Where a casual observer might behold diversity and continuity, he projects decades into the future and finds absence and loss.

Piet Oudolf Where Ecology Meets Design | Ecology Global Network

by Fran Sorin

• Over the last decade, Piet Oudolf has become a ‘superstar’  in the gardening world. But few people have knowledge of the man who creates magnificent works of art. I was compelled to set up an interview with him exactly for that reason. I wanted to better understand his process, priorities, vision, response to his completed designs….in other words, Piet’s ‘gestalt’.
• Piet might like this autumnal detail in the Brine Garden.

Keep the Clean Water Act Strong – NYTimes.com

• When the act became law, two-thirds of our nation’s lakes, rivers and coastal waters were unsafe for fishing or swimming, and untreated sewage and industrial waste was routinely dumped into our waters.