Future Directions—Engaged Scholarship and the Climate Crisis

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to disrupt ecosystem services and further exacerbate the effects of human activities on natural resources. This has significant implications for educational institutions and the populations they serve. As the current crop of landscape architecture students struggles to define its role within the climate crisis and its related social and political underpinnings, a core mission of colleges and universities moving forward should be to provide students with applied knowledge about how climate change affects the landscape. This goes beyond coursework in climate science or policy; for landscape architecture students to be leaders in the response to climate change, they need applied, practical skills. An ever-growing body of the literature focuses on landscape design strategies for climate change adaptation; however, few frameworks integrate these strategies with the hands-on experience students will need to face real-world challenges after graduation. Educational institutions have the potential to utilize their campuses as demonstration sites for applied ecosystem research programs and actively engage students with the design, implementation, politics, and ongoing stewardship of these landscapes. This paper uses a case study methodology to understand how experiential and public-engaged learning pedagogies contribute to student preparedness to address climate change. It examines three cases of engaged learning at the University of California, Davis campus and attributes their impact to intentional connections with research, to the delegation of responsibility; to the openness of spaces for experimentation, and to self-reflection that connects climate with everyday behavior. By promoting experiential learning programs that require students to actively use their heads and their hands to construct and sustainably manage their own campus landscapes, service-learning studios and internships can provide opportunities for students to address the real scenarios of climate crisis and resilience.

Opportunities and Barriers to the Delivery of Place-based Environmental Education During Emergency and Non-emergency Teaching: An Information and Communication Technology Approach

“…ICTs such as iNaturalist go further to offer teachers and students the opportunity to contribute classroom activities to a broader, crowd-sourced, collection of curated observations. Getting involved in PBEE, in this way, gives students a chance to discover solutions to local environmental issues and may help them comprehend global environmental problems in less abstract and more accessible ways (Kiers et al, 2020).…”

Towards an AI-driven framework for multi-scale urban flood resilience planning and design

“…Technological barriers or lack of tools, deficiency of performance data, insufficient knowledge, and experiences in the practice world are primary sources of difficulties, according to resilience managers. Landscape architects, who are responsible for the construction of many public spaces/lands, didn't receive systematic education about GI (Kiers et al, 2020). Even though landscape architects are big advocates for GI, the lack of collaborations among landscape architects, architects, urban planners, and civil engineers, often hindered the implementation of GI.…”

The Role of Landscape Architecture Profession Recognition in the Context of Facing Contemporary Challenges

“…As people and planet, we are facing severe problems that impact our quality of life and morbidity, particularly in towns and cities. These include, among others, air pollution, natural disasters, and overheating [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. While it is obvious that landscape remains a crucial element impacting quality of life, currently, we are experiencing a period of profound transformations with regards to the landscape.…”