Impact/Purpose:

The Cuyahoga Sustainability Network (CSN) will apply ecosystem science and spatial decision technology to improve sustainable decision making for the Cuyahoga River Valley. To accomplish this goal, CSN will establish a portfolio of interdisciplinary teams and coordinated science and technology applications that collectively support a systems approach to sustainable development, focused on regional landuse decisions and their ecosystem impacts in the Cuyahoga River Valley. The science and technology core draws on interdisciplinary expertise in decision science and applied research on the relationship between the structure and scale of land use decisions and urban stream ecosystems. Integrating ecosystem science with interactive spatial decision support technology will enrich regional land transformation decisions; both individual decision making (e.g. housing preference) municipal decision making (e.g., zoning and storm water requirements) and regulatory decision making (e.g., use attainability, urban stream standards, and regulatory standards for integrated site design).

The CSN integrates regional partnerships and interdisciplinary expertise spanning the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable decision making, focused at the intersection of land transformation decisions and their consequences for aquatic ecosystems. Collectively the proposed program elements address essential information needs and will develop and implement transferable spatial decision tools that couple the multi-scale effects of land transformation decisions to ecosystem responses in urbanized streams.

Description:

Economic Sustainability

• The economic sustainability of Conservation Development¹ was evaluated through hedonic analysis of home and lot sales in suburban developments in Northeast Ohio. Partnering with the Countryside Program (now the Community Planning Program at Cleveland State University), we found no evidence of a price penalty – or premium – for conservation developments in Northeast Ohio.
• The economic sustainability of riparian setback ordinances was similarly evaluated through hedonic analysis of home and parcel sales in communities within the Chagrin River Watershed, in partnership with the Chagrin River Watershed Partners. In contrast to claims raised within the development community, we found no evidence of price penalties or premiums associated with the adoption of Riparian Setback Zoning in the Chagrin River watershed.
• Hedonic analysis of the first New Urbanist development in Cleveland, Ohio, did identify slightly lower but statistically significant differences in New Urbanist home prices compared to comparable housing in Cuyahoga County. Discussions with the developer suggested the lower individual home prices may be offset by the higher number of developed units possible with higher allowed densities.

Social Sustainability

• A regional survey of environmental attitudes in Northeast Ohio was conducted to characterize values and preferences within the “rustbelt” economy of northeast Ohio’s regional declining manufacturing base. Results strongly reflected broad attitudes supporting environmental protection and strong preferences for environmental services. Of the survey respondents:
  • 59% think we are spending too little on environmental protection;
  • 59.7% disagree with the statement that pollution control costs have been unfair to industry;
  • 71% thought endangered species should be protected even if it limited some land development or economic growth;
  • 57.7% agreed that endangered species should be protected even at the expense of economic activities;
  • 92% agreed with the statement that we can have it both ways: protecting the environment and enjoying economic growth;
  • 70% would support an added charge of $5 on their water bill for new sewers to prevent pollution from entering waterways;
  • 80% thought pollution of lakes streams or coastal areas is a somewhat serious or very serious problem in Ohio.
• Supporting regional initiatives to repurpose vacant and abandoned lands, Hanlon’s² typology of suburban places was used to examine the pattern and distribution of vacant lots among U.S. Census place names in the Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area. The analysis revealed three distinct populations of suburban vacant lots. Declining suburbs had high numbers of vacant lots – representing persistent abandoned unproductive lands; a second group of growing suburbs also had significant numbers of vacant lots, associated with vacant subdivided parcels ready for development. A third distinct cluster of vacant lots was found in elite suburbs, effectively serving as “private reserves,” for homeowners owning multiple (platted and subdivided) contiguous vacant lots that currently are managed as private open space and lot-sized urban forest.

Environmental Sustainability: Ecosystem Services

• In partnership with the Chagrin River Watershed Partners we developed a technical guidance document reviewing the scientific evidence supporting local muncipalities’ adoption of Riparian Setback Ordinances and zoning codes.
• Using Threshold Indicator Taxa Analysis (TITAN) we re-analyzed Ohio Department of Natural Resource's water quality and biological monitoring data used to establish aquatic nutrient standards for phosphorous. TITAN thresholds supported the current phosphorous water quality standard in Ohio – a result consistent with TITAN analysis of nutrient threshold stressor gradients elsewhere.

Environmental Sustainability: Hydrologic Services

•  In partnership with the Chagrin River Watershed Partners and Ohio U.S. Geological Survey, we developed and tested field protocols to evaluate pre- and post-development infiltration services of developed parcels. Conventional stormwater planning focuses on impervious area as a primary source of urban runoff. In contrast, we consistently found severely limited infiltration capacity in compacted disturbed urban soils, indicating pervious landuses can be a significant, under-appreciated source of urban runoff.
• The development of a 1-acre parcel in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, as the corporate home of Cawrse and Associates was designed and instrumented to be a showcase for low-impact development (LID) best management practices (BMPs) in Northeast Ohio. Careful monitoring of the developed site showed that, despite the incorporation of an extensive pervious paver parking lot and rain garden system, the effective runoff from these LID BMPs was nearly equivalent to that of conventional asphalt pavement. Careful analysis of the monitoring data strongly suggested subgrade compaction may be limiting percolation, despite surface infiltration through pervious pavers.
• Modern land transformation practices employing mass grading and topsoiling result in highly disturbed soil profiles with deeply impaired hydrologic function. The hydrologic services of the disturbed pervious landscape cannot be reliably estimated without field evaluation. This fundamental decoupling of the form and hydrologic function of the urban landscape motivates the active design and adaptive management of hydrologic services in environmental site design. The ubiquitous challenge posed by highly disturbed urban soils presents the rich opportunity to actively manage and restore hydrologic function through sustainable landscaping and grading practices specifically linked to hydrologic performance.

Field Testing Pervious Concrete

• To demonstrate the sustainability of pervious concrete in Northeast Ohio’s freeze-thaw environment, we installed a pervious concrete test plot in downtown Cleveland on the campus of Cleveland State University (CSU). Two regional workshops were conducted at CSU in partnership with the Ohio Ready Mix Concrete Association (ORMCA), including a National Ready Mix Concrete Association (NRMCA) pervious concrete certification course and examination. More than 200 participants attended the workshop. Approximately 15 workshop participants also registered for the review course and NRMCA examination for certification as a pervious concrete ‘Technician,’ building the human infrastructure of sustainable practitioners.
• Our demonstration of pervious concrete cold weather durability led the CSU architects to change the design of the University’s new Parker Hannifin Administration Building, to incorporate a pervious concrete surface parking lot in the site plan.
• CSU & University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) jointly conducted a pervious concrete workshop on the UMBC campus in Baltimore, Maryland – drawing more than 140 practitioners from every state in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The workshop included the placement of two instrumented research plots at UMBC.
• Our initial pervious concrete research in Cleveland was directed to demonstrate cold-weather durability of pervious concrete. A critical remaining barrier to the widespread acceptance of pervious pavements is the need for routine maintenance and the effective evaluation and remediation of surface clogging. In response, we developed and demonstrated a rapid field inspection protocol using so-called Delatte infiltrometers, to consistently inspect and track drainage status, clogging, and trigger routine maintenance for pervious concrete.
• We demonstrated that a single precise measurement of pavement infiltration rate is insufficient to adequately characterize the inherent variability of pervious concrete surfaces.
• Our research on pavement maintenance found pressure washing successfully restored pervious concrete drainage if initiated before the point of severe clogging or sealing. However, the feasibility of standard pressure washing may be limited to linear footprints where mobilized particulates can be flushed off the pervious concrete surfaces. Pressure washing alone will be inadequate for routine maintenance of large extensive pervious pavements.
• We evaluated our pervious pavement field inspection protocol through detailed field assessment of pervious pavements at the U.S. EPA Wet-Weather Flows lab in Edison New Jersey. Our rapid drawdown assessment gave less accurate estimates of the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the pavement compared to ASTM 1688, and would be inadequate for performance acceptance criteria; however, the speed, minimal cost, and low water requirements of the Delatte infiltrometers made it feasible to undertake much denser testing. Denser re-sampling of the EPA pervious concrete pavements in Edison, New Jersey, provided a more complete characterization of the overall condition of the pavement, demonstrating the advantage of a rapid simple testing for maintenance inspection. We conclude that routine monitoring of pavement condition as part of a regular maintenance protocol is feasible and cost effective, and strongly complements more detailed surface testing using ASTM 1688.

Pervious Concrete Design and Evaluation

• We developed and published consistent site-specific hydrologic design criteria for pervious concrete stormwater systems.
• To link design with hydrologic services, we also developed a consistent rational procedure to estimate an effective curve number (ECN) for site-specific pervious concrete designs. Together, this rational design procedure represents a model to advance performance-based design and evaluation of hydrologic services for stormwater technologies and landscape design. The design procedure developed through this project was used to define acceptable designs for pervious concrete used as an “alternative surface” in the State of Maryland’s revised stormwater BMP manual supporting new regulatory criteria for Environmental Site Design³.
• To characterize water quality services of pervious pavements, we developed a Zero Tension Lysimeter that can be embedded within pervious pavements to enable passive sampling of influent water quality through pervious pavements. We have shared the design and fabrication details with a growing network of partners, opportunistically building a network of identically instrumented pavements: http://www.screencast.com/users/sss_JING/folders/Jing/media/7814ec95-a114-4aa3-a45f-469e78b27d4c.

Decision Tools

• With colleagues at CSU – we adapted and developed the use of biogeography-based optimization (BBO) for spatial decision problems.
• Initial landuse decision models using BBO were developed for natural resource managers at the Cleveland Metro parks, and demonstrated for prototype problems of school districting, and optimal reserve expansion balancing contiguity and costs in parcel-scale decision making.
• Multiobjective decision tools for watershed-scale decision making also were demonstrated for a case study in nutrient reduction strategies in Chesapeake Bay, published in the peer reviewed literature.

 

URLs/Downloads:

Final Progress Report

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT( ABSTRACT )

Start Date:05/01/2005

Completion Date:11/01/2010

Record ID: 133204

Show Additional Record Data

Related Organizations:

Role :OWNER

Organization Name :CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Mailing Address :E 24th and Euclid Ave

Citation :Cleveland

State :OH

Zip Code :44115



Role :OWNER

Organization Name :UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND - BALTIMORE COUNTY

State :MD



Role :OWNER

Organization Name :UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

Mailing Address :Jessup Hall

Citation :Iowa City

State :IA

Zip Code :52242

Project Information:

Approach :

To foster a systems approach toward landscape decision making, CSN will develop multi-objective spatial decision tools and target key information needs informing the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable development. CSN is structured as a coordinated portfolio of interdisciplinary teams addressing six program elements. Individually these program elements target needs and opportunities to fill key information gaps. Collectively these projects combine to provide the foundation for systems thinking across decision-making scales ranging from individual decisions on the scale of home purchases and individual lot characteristics, to neighborhood, community, catchment and watershed scales that cumulatively determine the ecological sustainability of urbanizing streams, and the social and economic sustainability of regional growth and development.

The Cuyahoga Sustainability Network will strongly complement robust regional partnerships and the unique strengths of Cleveland State University to form interdisciplinary teams with expertise in urban ecology, hydrologic engineering, economics, finance, Geographic Information Systems, urban planning, history, and decision science. This rich capability is organized through six program elements:

1. Urban Stream Ecology;
2. Site Development Hydrology;
3. Hedonic Pricing;
4. Community Environmental Histories;
5. Multi-objective Spatial Decision making;
6. and Outreach and Technology Transfer.

Cost :$286,423.00

Research Component :Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development

Project IDs:

ID Code :X3832305

Project type :EPA Grant