Project Desert Landscape
How it all started
Students
have been advocating a change in the university's water policy
for years; however, Students Conscious Of Protecting the Environment (S.C.O.P.E.)
was the first organization to proactively tackle the problem.
In the beginning of the spring 1994 semester, S.C.O.P.E. made Project Desert Landscape its main focus. We decided just taking an advocacy position was not enough to conserve water; we realized we had to become a part of the solution.
The project became a quest to raise funds to pay for conversion of turf to water-conserving landscape and to use the areas we convert to educate the community about water conservation.
An effort of
this nature had to involve the campus department in charge of making
decisions regarding landscape, so we called Landscape, Grounds
and Arboretum to offer our fundraising and educational services.
The director, Dennis Swartzell, informed us that he had recently commissioned
the Landscape Architecture and Planning Program on campus to draft
a Turf Reduction Maste Plan and a partnership was formed.
In the spring of 1994, the students of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, under the instruction of Mark Elison Hoversten, were given the challenge to develop a Turf Reduction Master Plan for the campus.
Student research and recommendations
For such areas that were either inappropriately used or designed, the students recommended a low water use landscape. This will not only reduce water consumption, but decrease maintenance costs by as much as 30 percent. The students were influenced by several factors. They analyzed the social, economic, and environmental benefits to desert landscape, and the long term maintenance costs of turf.
The report breaks the campus into different zones. It addresses areas of turf needing low water use landscape and outlines a construction and maintenance cost analysis. The plan is a conceptual guideline to help in the planning process and a tool to aid in developing a landscape irrigation policy. The plan is designed to allow staff to make field adjustments to the detailed planting plans while maintaining the conceptual framework of each Landscape zone. The master plan reduces total turf areas on campus from 59 acres to 40.86 acres. Annual maintenance savings total approximately $53,000 and a conservative estimate of the water savings is 30 percent or around $200,000 per year. The turf reduction plan has indirect benefit of protecting the exterior of buildings and increasing crew safety. The spray from the sprinklers and the physical harm from lawnmowers deteriorates the stucco buildings. Turf reduction on the steep hills around campus reduces hazard to Grounds workers and to the campus community.
With the Turf Reduction Master Plan and support of Landscape, Grounds and Arbiretum, S.C.O.P.E. started Project Desert Landscape. S.C.O.P.E. members volunteer by physically working on conversion sites and by raising enough funds every semester to convert at least one area to desert landscape. S.C.O.P.E. also actively tries to educate the public on the benefits of water conserving landscape, while trying to get the community involved in the campus conservation efforts.
The areas designated for conversion are poorly irrigated areas and areas too small for recreation or leisure. The idea of Project Desert Landscape is to conserve water in the most efficient way, not to make the entire campus a desert. Another benefit of conversion is the protection of buildings and structures from water spray and lawn maintenance. Signs like the Howard Hughes engineering sign have been rusted as a result of water spray and need to be replaced. Installing desert landscaping and drip irrigation in this area will protect the new sign from deterioration. The residential halls have been experiencing stucco deterioration from water spray and the lawn mowers have been clipping the buildings resulting in building damage.
Our progress so far
Since spring 1994, S.C.O.P.E. has raised approximately $6,000 through direct fundraising, which includes selling T-shirts, flowers, cacti, baked goods, posters, and buttons. We have also entered contests and written a grant proposal to a foundation. S.C.O.P.E. realized that direct fundraising is a slow process so we started a program to actively recruit other student groups on campus to adopt an area and fundraise $1,000 for the conversion of that site. Once a student group adopted an area, S.C.O.P.E. would seek a business to match the funds raised by the student group. The UNLV Foundation has recently accepted the responsibility of finding a matching gift from a local business. This program called "Adopt-A-Plot" has been successful in raising awareness about Project Desert Landscape and conservation. It has also increased student and business involvement in the campus and the local environment.
Help support the program
Landscape, Grounds and Arboretum actively seeks donations of plant material, decorative rocks and outdoor furniture. The partnership formed between S.C.O.P.E. and the campus department is helping change the attitude of the administration toward the more financially and environmentally beneficial idea of water conservation. Together we are going to convert the proposed 18 acres of grass to beautiful desert landscape over the next five to eight years. New buildings on campus are all done with desert landscape and in the future the campus will be water efficient.
More Information
For more information on Project Desert Landscape and/or S.C.O.P.E., please contact Timothy Farnham.