Transdisciplinary Co-design and Implementation of an Urban Ecological Green Infrastructure Landscape Performance Monitoring Plan

Abstract

AbstractCities are increasingly using nature-based approaches to address urban sustainability challenges. These approaches leverage ecological processes associated with Urban Ecological Infrastructure (UEI) to resolve issues through ecosystem services. The growing use of UEI to address urban sustainability challenges provides opportunities to bring urban researchers and practitioners together to co-produce UEI design, monitoring, and maintenance. Until recently these co-production processes have received little attention in the literature. We used a social-ecological research approach to examine a co-produced UEI design process and the outcomes of the associated UEI project—bioretention basins on the campus of Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ, USA). We collaborated with key project researchers and practitioners to produce an ecohydrological monitoring protocol for the site to measure water quality, hydrology, soil moisture, and plant transpiration. We then implemented this protocol to monitor and evaluate UEI performance outcomes. Finally, we conducted semistructured interviews to document the transdisciplinary co-production design process and outcomes. The co-production experience resulted in observable change in attitudes among participants toward the integration of urban ecological research with the monitoring of UEI performance. Our results confirmed that the UEI bioswale system met the stormwater design goals of retaining 2 h 100 year storm events onsite, with some additional capacity for nutrient reduction. These data and results are being used by practitioners to gain SITES certification for the project and to inform future design and management of UEI across the ASU campuses. Our work also provides insights into the transdisciplinary processes of UEI design and evaluation.KeywordsNature-based solutionsLandscape PerformanceCo-design processSustainable campus design and monitoringUrban ecological infrastructure