Theme 1: The Natural Resources Challenge and Theme 2: Sustainability in Practice Watershed Management with Bottom-up Approaches

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1 Timothy J Schauwecker PhD Mississippi State University Theme 1: The Natural Resources Challenge and Theme 2: Sustainability in Practice Watershed Management with Bottom-up Approaches Host Institution: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Architettura Universita degli Studi di Catania Supervisors: Filippo Gravagno and Giusy Papallardo December 13-20, 2015 July 5, 2016 September 30, 2016 I, Tim Schauwecker, consent to this report being posted on the Co-operative Research Programme s website.

2 Relevance to the Co-operative Research Programme Objectives Theme 1: The Natural Resource Challenge and Theme 2: Sustainability in Practice. Our projects were relevant to the sustainable use and protection of natural resources by performing ecological site design and implementation projects with significant societal involvement within economically-feasible budget constraints. The research plan employed Participatory Action Research to evaluate a Collaborative Design-Build approach for the ecological design of two related projects near Paternó, Sicily. The theoretical models used as the cornerstones for our work were a nested hierarchy of the components of sustainability where economic outcomes are a subset of societal factors, and where the societal and economic components are derived from ecological services; and a design approach that recognizes the interdependence of art, design, and craft. The application of these models involved community participation in the development of site functional relationships, site design, and the installation of site design elements. Our design and implementation processes led first to the adoption of a site design plans for Contrada Nicoló and Stazione San Marcos, historically- and ecologically-significant open spaces near the Simeto River Valley south of Paternó, Sicily by community resource groups (ViviSimeto, Stazione Unite del Simeto, Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli, Simeto Participatory Presidium) that are actively engaged in the management of the Simeto River Watershed. We focused on the two sustainability components at the top of our theoretical hierarchy: Ecology and Society. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) lists 6 important cultural ecosystem services categories that are derived from ecological systems. Three of the six categories take priority at Contrada Nicolo, a public access site on the banks of the Simeto River west of Paterno, Sicily, Italy and Stazione San Marcos in Paterno. The cultural ecosystem services of particular interest at our sites are Heritage Value, Cultural Identity, and Recreation. Heritage Value describes sites of historical significance for a community. This service was eliminated in recent years by the use of the site for illicit trash dumping and as a site for fill soils from the creation of a levee system near the river. Historically, people from Paterno and the surrounding communities came to Contrada Nicolo to access the river, but more recently this has not been the case. The Cultural Identity associated with the Simeto River and community interaction with the river is tied to the importance of the river system, and particularly its spring-fed tributaries, to the agricultural systems of the surrounding landscape. The livelihood of numerous local residents is dependent on the water systems of the Simeto River watershed and also, therefore, to the cultural importance of people s connection to the main channel of the river, visible and accessible from Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos. The recreation services provided by the site have been compromised in recent years, but current efforts to restore the site will provide opportunities for hiking, camping, birdwatching, and picnicking. Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos provide opportunities for river advocates to demonstrate that the community cares about the cultural services that the watershed provides. Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos also present numerous opportunities to convey connections between the sites (or any other site) and greater watershed needs for conservation and ecosystem management at the watershed scale. If successful, visitors will see the value of habitat restoration, collaborative design, and collaborative management. An overarching goal of the project is to convey native forms of streamflow and riparian habitat so that visitors might employ similar approaches on private and public lands that they manage. Applicable stream forms include stream cut banks, point bars, riffles, and pools, and also their associated riparian plant communities. The site will demonstrate rehabilitated ecological conditions and communicate an increased appreciation for the ecosystem services provided by the watershed, including but not restricted to: 1. Agriculture 2. Recreation

3 3. Plant and animal communities 4. Clean water 5. Clean air Our workshops and design proposals focused on finding site design solutions that are legible. At Contrada Nicoloand Stazione San Marcos, the elements contributing to overall landscape legibility include the native plants used in the demonstration communities, the landforms associated with the streamlike irrigation canals, the entrance connection to the access road, and that all site improvements and operations, even those occurring over long periods of time, must be legible and should be tied to the ecological/historical past. The purpose for creating legibility is for the site to make sense upon a person s first visit by communicating a perceived structure, and by encouraging their future involvement in the site. As the community participates in the design process, they must continuously evaluate the design approach to the site, including in their evaluation elements that form positive site perception such as mystery, complexity, legibility, and coherence. Collaborative design-build Bottom-up refers to the absence of a single decision maker communicating their will on a group to carry out a project, and rather involves as many parties impacted by the decisions as possible in the process. The lengthy community meeting process that led to the River Agreement now in place in the Simeto Watershed is an example of this type of participatory planning. The site-specific projects recently undertaken by communities in Paterno and Adrano, Sicily must also reflect this process. Bottom-up design-build processes for landscape architecture are applied at the site scale, which is the appropriate scale of observation for the initial on-the-ground projects of the River Agreement. The approach for increasing community involvement in the site restorations at Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos included: Step 1: Engage the community in problem assessment; Step 2: Identify multiple possible interventions and select outcomes; Step 3: Plan projects for installation; and Step 4: Set up a monitoring and evaluation system. On August 5, 2016 a community collaborative design exercise was conducted at La Casa Delle Acque, a permaculture farm located near Contrada Nicolo. The participants were asked to brainstorm the perceived positives and negatives associated with collaborative design-build, and then to propose solutions to any negatives that they identified. They were then asked to consider and evaluate all existing on-site materials and to give their opinions of what the forms in the landscape should be, specifically with regard to roads/pathways, soil/rocks, water, and plant forms. Then, prior to the consideration of design alternatives, all participants agreed: 1. To seek a diversity of options 2. To accept open consideration of all ideas and options 3. To work together to effectively narrow the choices for site design 4. To avoid the separation of Design, Art, and Craft as it related to construction, the build portion of design/build: DESIGN CRAFT ART

4 Using ideas generated at the August 5 workshop and through continuous dissemination/response by the community throughout the fellowship via numerous meetings, workdays and social media, a four-phased approach for site rehabilitation at Contrada Nicolo was proposed. Phase 1 is called Experiment, Phase 2 is called Bosco, Phase 3 is called Restoration and Succession, and Phase 4 is called River Connection. Using a similar process, a planting design was also generated for Stazione San Marcos. Objectives of the fellowship Our objectives were to: 1. Test the efficacy of the Collaborative Design-Build approach, a bottom-up process for sitescale design and construction; 2. Engage local community groups for the realization of two community-led site improvement projects that increase site biodiversity; and 3. Quantify community participation and biodiversity improvements as a result of the implementation of the Collaborative Design-Build approach. Major achievements The first major achievement was to finalize a process for determining planting design solutions that included, as an outcome of initial public meetings, to: 1. Conduct a site inventory using the layout of a 50m x 50 site grid at Contrada Nicolo to facilitate existing plant community mapping for future comparisons following site design implementation 2. Inventory approach/entry views at Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos 3. Determine future views of site entrances to draw people into the sites, make them more legible, and communicate larger site and watershed goals 4. Determine plant communities, what degree of forest vs. open landscape 5. Determine visitor use areas 6. Identify local materials as potential landmarks (distinctive plants/trees, use of rocks and other historic materials) related to the site. The second major achievement was to take this community-generated process and produce site designs for Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos for review by the local and regional stakeholders. Final site designs were adopted by stakeholders and exist now as living documents for continuous review and continued implementation. The final major accomplishment was the installation, with the involvement of stakeholders, of over 400 locally-grown native plants at Contrada Nicolo and Stazione San Marcos. Follow-up Publications envisaged in the immediate future are an abstract and proceedings submission to be submitted in October 2016 for the annual meeting of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) to be held in Beijing, China in May The full proceeding paper is due in January A submission summarizing the outcomes of the fellowship research is in preparation to Landscape and Urban Planning. We anticipate this paper being submitted in 2016 for publication in This fellowship was the

5 continuation of a collaboration between our universities that we feel will grow in the future. We will also be collaborating with researchers from the Urban Planning program at the University of Memphis, who also work in Sicily on planning projects with study abroad students. Satisfaction My fellowship conformed to our expectations by encouraging colleagues with similar interests on separate continents to work together. We learned from one another by exposing one another to new patterns and processes, and came to realize our strengths and weaknesses. My colleagues at the University of Catania are very good at organizing community leaders and building partnerships locally and regionally. However, they need project success to legitimize their planning efforts and maintain momentum towards tangible results in the field, at the site scale. I think that we helped one another build skills in each area. As a result of the fellowship, I will have an opportunity to expand my research productivity in a new area, participatory action research. In addition to gaining expertise in this line of research, I began collaborations that I foresee lasting throughout my career. The only practical problems encountered involved local bureaucratic hurdles that had to be overcome in a short time period. Advertising the Co-operative Research Programme I learned about the CRP by searching the internet for international funding opportunities for researchers in the United States. I found that the OECD website and the information in the CRP pages were wellorganized and that the people associated with the program were reliably responsive when I contacted them with questions, which was very encouraging and helped me to learn more about the expectations of the Programme. To increase the visibility of the Programme, I would suggest creating news stories that can be circulated in the host countries, and in particular the local communities where the research occurs. For example, in the vicinity of our project, our community partners have a significant presence in social media outlets. These outlets would be reliable partners for disseminating research plans and results to other interested parties in Sicily. Each researcher should provide contact information for partner organizations, and then each article should begin by stressing the goals and objectives of the OECD and the CRP, moving to the details of the research project. The articles should take the form of a press release that could potentially be picked up by local and regional news entities.