Healthy Port Futures: Landscape Strategies for Passive Sediment Management

Session: 28. - Pilot Projects and Future Visions: Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Applied Research

Brian Davis, Cornell University, [email protected]
Sean Burkholder, University at Buffalo , The State University of New York, [email protected]

Abstract

Ports and harbors in the Great Lakes Basin are located at river mouths -- typically the most ecologically productive and sensitive areas in the region. These locations are also home to most of the region’s urbanized and industrialized landscapes. This confluence of factors situates ports as critical pinch points of ecosystem, economic, and public health within the Great Lakes region. The management of sediment in these areas is a critical linkage between environmental, cultural, and economic issues. Currently, most sediment is managed using the blunt instrument of maintenance dredging. This process consistently disturbs benthic zone ecosystems, increases turbidity of the water, and generates financial stress between local, state and federal agencies.

Our project aims to pilot Passive Sediment Management, which works with natural systems to achieve desirable placement and movement of material. It brings together landscape architecture, ecology, and environmental engineering from private practice, academia, the Ohio EPA, and the USACE. If successful this project will result in the adoption of passive sediment management in forty mid-size port communities throughout all states in the Great Lakes Basin. This will result in cost savings, critical new habitat at urbanized river mouths, and new public green space that improves public health.

1. Keyword
sediments

2. Keyword
wetlands

3. Keyword
hydrodynamics

4. Additional Keyword
infrastructure

5. Additional Keyword
public space