Location: University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Owner/Client: United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC); United States Dept. of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service

Collaborators: UVA Natural Infrastructure Lab; UVA School of Architecture; LimnoTech; Tantala Associates; University of Vermont

Through his capacity as Professor in Practice at the University of Virginia, Michael Luegering leads Urban Planning with Integrated Natural Systems (UPWINS). UPWINS is an early-stage Research and Development project applied to sites within the Chesapeake Bay Region. The Chesapeake Bay, as the largest estuary in the United States, presents an immense opportunity to study a landscape deeply impacted by the accelerated impacts of climate change and a rapid rate of urban growth. The project goal is to verify the efficacy and impact of Nature-Based Infrastructure (NBI).

UPWINS represents research in three key areas; Early Phase Conceptual Design and Planning, Monitoring, and Adaptive Management. Our work develops the methods for NBI design, through field trials, mapping vegetation growth patterns, indicator species, and plant health measurements. The collected data sets are intended to support the USACE’s expectations for NBI performance and reciprocal exchanges with modeling tools.

The findings from the field work inform how LVF approaches the design process. Long-term thinking, in both plant succession and maintenance practices, is applied at the earliest stages of every project. Our landscapes must adapt over time, and the research being done by LVF Partner Michael Luegering helps us plan for a more predictable future.

Photos courtesy of the UVA Natural Infrastructure Lab