Biohabitats Projects, Places & People
By Amy Nelson
PLACES
Landscape ecologist Kevin Grieser will be in Grand Rapids, MI this week attending the annual gathering of the Midwest-Great Lakes Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration. This year’s conference theme is Assembling the Restoration Community. Kevin is an active member of that community, and he looks forward to sharing a case study on the Morely Road Stream Restoration Design/Build project with its many members.
If you plan to attend the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference, which will be held March 26-28 in College Park, MD, you won’t want to miss the session on Ecological Landscape Stewardship: A New Approach to Operations and Maintenance. Presented by Chloe Cerwinka of The University of Pennsylvania, Jesse Forrester of Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects, and Biohabitats’ own Jennifer Dowdell, this talk will examine the goals and challenges of developing a management plan that promotes regenerative practices while adhering to a university’s mission.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Building Webinar Series takes on the most pressing topics facing energy professionals, with new experts leading the conversations on proven best practices, cost-effective strategies, and innovative new ways to approach sustainability and energy performance. One of those experts is our own Erin English. On April 4, Erin, along with on site wastewater treatment experts from Volvo and Sustainable Water, will present the free webinar: Because Wastewater Matters: Evolutions in Wastewater Treatment and Examples of Distributed Treatment.
To register, click here.
Ecological landscape designer Jennifer Dowdell looks forward to presenting “Harnessing ecological patterns and processes in community planning: The Baltimore City Green Network Plan” to fellow members of the U.S. Chapter of the International Association of Landscape Ecologists when they gather in Baltimore, MD for their annual conference April 9-13. Landscape Architect/ Urban Ecologist Aiman Duckworth will also attend the event.
From April 19-21, Pete Muñoz will instruct participants in the EcoDistricts Incubator, a three-day intensive course designed to empower district-scale teams to accelerate sustainable projects forward.
The Regional Plan Association is an urban research and advocacy organization dedicated to improving prosperity, infrastructure, and sustainability in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region. Their annual Assembly will take place in New York City this year, and landscape architect Michael Spina from our Hudson River Bioregion office plans to be there.
The Rocky Mountain Green Conference, hosted by the USGBC Colorado, will be held in Denver April 26-28. Ecological Engineer Mike Lighthiser of Biohabitats’ Southern Rocky Mountain Bioregion office plans to be there. Do you?
Landscape architect Michael Spina will be at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in New York City May 6-9.
Biohabitats is proud to sponsor the 2017 Ohio Stormwater Conference, which will take place in Sandusky, OH May 10-12. Don’t miss presentations by Biohabitats’ staff on Green Bulkheads and MS4/TMDL issues in the Mid-Atlantic, and be sure to stop by the Biohabitats booth to say hello to senior water resources engineer Jennifer Missett and Biohabitats’ Great Lakes Bioregion leader Tom Denbow.
Senior engineer Pete Muñoz will head to St. Paul, MN May 9-11 to attend the National Adaptation Forum.
Crystal Grinnell, Pete Muñoz, and Erin English will be in Seattle, WA May 17-19 attending the Living Future Institute’s annual UnConference. As a sponsor of the Living Future Institute, Biohabitats is particularly excited to be a part of this forum for leading minds in green building.
Whenever senior environmental scientist Peter May and ecological engineer Chris Streb get together, fun, creativity, and innovation inevitably ensue. We’re sure this will be the case in Athens, GA May 23-25, when Pete and Chris head to the 17th Meeting of the American Ecological Engineering Society.
From May 31 to June 2, Biohabitats Great Lakes Bioregion leader Tom Denbow will be in Detroit, MI to attend the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Green Infrastructure Conference. This is the first conference to focus on using green infrastructure across the landscape with a primary goal of protecting the surface waters in the Great Lakes region.
Engineer Justin Lyon will attendNext Generation Water Summit June 4-6 in Santa Fe, NM.
Senior ecologist Kevin Nunnery will give a talk on Regenerative Stormwater Conveyance at the annual meeting of the Society for Freshwater Science, which will take place in Raleigh, June 4-9.
The Rocky Mountain Stream Restoration Conference will take place June 13-15 in Breckenridge, CO, and senior fluvial geomorphologist Vince Sortman wouldn’t miss it for the world!
People
Beth Forbes, Water Resources Engineer
When Cleveland’s polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, a little girl named Beth was paying attention. The horror of that event in her hometown, combined with an ethic she learned from Girl Scouts to leave a place better than you found it, sparked in Beth a passion for improving the environment and cleaning up man-made messes. To acknowledge the first Earth Day, which took place the year after the Cuyahoga fire, Beth coordinated an effort to make construction paper buttons for everyone in her elementary school containing messages such as “Save the Earth” and “Clean Water Now.” Fortunately, Beth ultimately channeled her passion toward a career devoted to improving water quality. Since accepting a job at the Washington (DC) Suburban Sanitary Commission in the late 1980s, she has been doing just that. We are delighted to welcome Beth to the Chesapeake/Delaware Bays Bioregion office, where she is managing restoration projects to reduce the impacts of impervious surfaces, nutrients, and sediment to Montgomery County, MD waterways. Thankfully, the Cuyahoga River no longer burns. The same cannot be said of Beth’s passion for clean water. The tools of her trade may consist of simulation models and GIS applications, but we wouldn’t be surprised if she keeps a stack of construction paper handy.
Markku McGlynn, PLA, LEED Green Associate
As a child, Markku McGlynn dreamed of flying planes through remote backcountry. Fortunately for us, the only puddles he’s jumping these days are those he comes across when conducting field assessments to inform his planning and design work. Before joining Biohabitats, Markku was an environmental protection specialist with the DC Department of Energy and Environment. He also spent seven years as a landscape construction engineer with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. With his extensive experience conducting stormwater facility inspections and developing plan review guidelines, Markku infuses a strong sense of constructability and performance into his green infrastructure design. Drawn to Biohabitats by the chance to preserve and restore ecological balance to the land, he is already applying his skills toward improving water quality in the Chesapeake/Delaware Bays Bioregion. In fact, when it comes to helping Montgomery County, MD meet its MS4 permit requirements, we’d say Markku’s career at Biohabitats is definitely taking off!
Visha Lewis, Administrative Assistant
If you have phoned Biohabitats’ Lowcountry field office recently, you’ve likely spoken with administrative assistant Visha Lewis. That smile you sensed on the other end of the phone? It’s genuine. Eager to find an eco-friendly company where she could apply her educational background in business management and Applied Sciences, Visha joined Biohabitats last November. The skills Visha has amassed while working in retail management and airline customer service have already proven invaluable to the firm—and we don’t just mean the ability to multitask with a smile. She is the mastermind behind Keith Bowers’ ever-changing travel itinerary, keeper of the office files, and Lowcountry office expert in our web-based document management platform. When she’s not working, Visha can be found outside-running, playing with her daughter, or strolling on the beach.
Elena Stachew, University of Akron Biomimicry PhD Fellow
Summer camp is the setting of many a teenage love story. So it was for Elena Stachew, who, as a 10th grader attending a science and engineering camp, discovered her passion- materials science. Today, Elena is a polymer engineer, a materials scientist, and Biohabitats’ first PhD Biomimicry Fellow. Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. Over the next five years of her fellowship, Elena will be applying nature’s genius to develop and test innovative biomimicry applications to green infrastructure, stormwater management, and coastal and nearshore habitat restoration in the place she calls home: Northeast Ohio. She will also be developing educational tools to help facilitate the application of biomimicry into our daily work and operations.
The fellowship is the result of a partnership between Biohabitats, Cleveland Water Alliance, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, University of Akron, and Great Lakes Biomimicry. As you might expect from a materials scientist, Elena spends a great deal of her non-working time making things. She can often be found experimenting in the kitchen, with locally sourced ingredients and exotic dishes, or with homemade cleaning and hygiene products. She also enjoys travel, something she combines with service as International Project Management Lead for her local chapter of Engineers Without Borders. We’re thrilled to have Elena camping out in our Great Lakes Bioregion office in Cleveland, and we look forward to working with her to apply biomimetic-inspired approaches to design, restoration and planning!
Can You See Yourself Here?
Biohabitats is hiring! If you seek meaningful work, share Biohabitats’ values, and meet the qualifications for any of these open positions, we’d love to hear from you!
- Controller, Baltimore, Maryland
- Ecological Restoration Specialist, Baltimore, Maryland
- Senior Ecological Restoration Specialist, Baltimore, Maryland
- Construction Operations Lead, Baltimore, Maryland
- Water Resources Engineer, Cleveland, Ohio
Last fall, we completed a Site Suitability Analysis to determine which vacant sites across the City are most appropriate for inclusion in the green network, followed by a Prioritization Analysis of sites across the city. After sharing the results with community members at a series of public meetings, the City held several design charrettes in key focus area neighborhoods around the city. These meetings provided further insight into the needs of the community, and concepts for initial greening strategies. Baltimore’s Green Network Plan is envisioned as a network of nodes and corridors. The nodes, or hubs, are destinations that provide opportunities for recreation, social gatherings, improved habitat, or economic revitalization. Corridors provide connections between the nodes, linking all neighborhoods into the Green Network. Corridors take the form of streams, streets, or trails to provide safe and comfortable routes that connect green spaces throughout the city. We can’t wait to join the City in unveiling their draft vision plan for the Baltimore Green Network, and we’re even more excited to see it begin to come to life in the coming months and years!
From Flashy to Functional in Santa Fe
How do you solve urban flash flooding in Santa Fe, NM? “Slow it; flow it; grow it,” says Melissa McDonald, Santa Fe’s river and watershed coordinator. We’re helping the City of Santa Fe do just that by restoring the Arroyo de los Chamisos. Emerging from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe as a small ephemeral creek, the arroyo ultimately flows through town, collecting drainage from the urban area, growing in size, and becoming more flashy and prone to channel and bank erosion along the way. Further complicating matters is the fact that soils in the watershed are sandy and quite erodible. Over time, the arroyo channel has widened and eroded its banks, exposing utility lines and threatening nearby homes and park trails.
After performing a geomorphic assessment and reviewing innovative restoration techniques in use on similar streams in the region, Biohabitats worked with the City and the prime engineering consultant, Santa Fe Engineering, to craft a restoration solution. The design meets the City’s desire to use natural materials rather than concrete and steel. Locally available timber post vanes and boulder toe walls stabilize the channel at the outside of meander bends and boulder drop structures provide grade controls. Construction is now underway at five locations along the arroyo, and will be followed with native, riparian grass and shrub plantings. The plantings will help stabilize banks while adding beauty and wildlife habitat. The restored sites should be completed just in time for Santa Fe’s brief monsoon season, and we look forward to seeing this arroyo transition from flood-prone to well-grown.
If you plan to attend the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference, which will be held March 26-28 in College Park, MD, you won’t want to miss the session on Ecological Landscape Stewardship: A New Approach to Operations and Maintenance. Presented by Chloe Cerwinka of The University of Pennsylvania, Jesse Forrester of Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects, and Biohabitats’ own Jennifer Dowdell, this talk will examine the goals and challenges of developing a management plan that promotes regenerative practices while adhering to a university’s mission.
Ecological landscape designer Jennifer Dowdell looks forward to presenting “Harnessing ecological patterns and processes in community planning: The Baltimore City Green Network Plan” to fellow members of the U.S. Chapter of the International Association of Landscape Ecologists when they gather in Baltimore, MD for their annual conference April 9-13. Landscape Architect/ Urban Ecologist Aiman Duckworth will also attend the event.
From April 19-21, Pete Muñoz will instruct participants in the EcoDistricts Incubator, a three-day intensive course designed to empower district-scale teams to accelerate sustainable projects forward.
The Regional Plan Association is an urban research and advocacy organization dedicated to improving prosperity, infrastructure, and sustainability in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region. Their annual Assembly will take place in New York City this year, and landscape architect Michael Spina from our Hudson River Bioregion office plans to be there.
Landscape architect Michael Spina will be at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in New York City May 6-9.
Biohabitats is proud to sponsor the 2017 Ohio Stormwater Conference, which will take place in Sandusky, OH May 10-12. Don’t miss presentations by Biohabitats’ staff on Green Bulkheads and MS4/TMDL issues in the Mid-Atlantic, and be sure to stop by the Biohabitats booth to say hello to senior water resources engineer Jennifer Missett and Biohabitats’ Great Lakes Bioregion leader Tom Denbow.
Senior engineer Pete Muñoz will head to St. Paul, MN May 9-11 to attend the National Adaptation Forum.
Crystal Grinnell, Pete Muñoz, and Erin English will be in Seattle, WA May 17-19 attending the Living Future Institute’s annual UnConference. As a sponsor of the Living Future Institute, Biohabitats is particularly excited to be a part of this forum for leading minds in green building.
Whenever senior environmental scientist Peter May and ecological engineer Chris Streb get together, fun, creativity, and innovation inevitably ensue. We’re sure this will be the case in Athens, GA May 23-25, when Pete and Chris head to the 17th Meeting of the American Ecological Engineering Society.
From May 31 to June 2, Biohabitats Great Lakes Bioregion leader Tom Denbow will be in Detroit, MI to attend the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Green Infrastructure Conference. This is the first conference to focus on using green infrastructure across the landscape with a primary goal of protecting the surface waters in the Great Lakes region.
Engineer Justin Lyon will attendNext Generation Water Summit June 4-6 in Santa Fe, NM.
Senior ecologist Kevin Nunnery will give a talk on Regenerative Stormwater Conveyance at the annual meeting of the Society for Freshwater Science, which will take place in Raleigh, June 4-9.
The Rocky Mountain Stream Restoration Conference will take place June 13-15 in Breckenridge, CO, and senior fluvial geomorphologist Vince Sortman wouldn’t miss it for the world!
Can You See Yourself Here?
Biohabitats is hiring! If you seek meaningful work, share Biohabitats’ values, and meet the qualifications for any of these open positions, we’d love to hear from you!
- Controller, Baltimore, Maryland
- Ecological Restoration Specialist, Baltimore, Maryland
- Senior Ecological Restoration Specialist, Baltimore, Maryland
- Construction Operations Lead, Baltimore, Maryland
- Water Resources Engineer, Cleveland, Ohio
