Environmental Restoration and Design for Recreation and Ecotourism (Integrative Studies in Water Management & Land Development)

A wetland center in London, parks in downtown San Francisco, a wildlife sanctuary in Arcata, and a wetlands park on the outskirts of Las Vegas―what do these urban and suburban locations have in common? They are leading examples of a new restoration design approach that is squarely placed at the interface of nature and culture. This multidisciplinary paradigm bridges the gap between an ecological approach preoccupied with returning damaged landscapes to an imagined original state and a landscape design approach concerned with creating a place for people to reinhabit.

Environmental Restoration and Design for Recreation and Ecotourism is the first book to provide a detailed examination of the entire process of restoring damaged or abandoned landscapes to benefit both nature and people, specifically for the purposes of recreation and ecotourism. With a focus on history, planning, methodology, design, and construction, it explores five case studies of successful regenerative landscape design projects and gives readers an inside look at the evolution of design projects.

Two of the cases offer a particularly comprehensive review of award-winning projects: the reparation of the degraded Las Vegas Wash into Clark County Wetlands Park and the transformation of the abandoned Barn Elms Reservoirs into the London Wetland Centre. Supported by extensive photographs, tables, maps, sketches, and schematics, these case studies trace how ideas are first conceived and then adopted, transformed, or even abandoned along the way. Each case study also includes a questions-and-answers discussion with designers and managers. Emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary cooperation, the book presents lessons learned from some of the most innovative projects in regenerative landscape design.

Robert L. France is associate professor of watershed management at Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC). Dr. France has conducted research in regions from the High Arctic to the tropics, on subject areas from bacteria and algae to whales, as well as on chemistry and environmental theory. He has taught at the universities of McGill, Ca’Foscari Venice, and Harvard. France is a Series Editor for CRC Press, where he runs the Integrative Studies in Water Management and Land Development series, and is also on the editorial board of the independent environmental press Green Frigate Books. He has published over two hundred articles and is the author or editor of over a dozen books of both a technical nature as well as general public interest. France conducts research on the environmental restoration of postagricultural and postindustrial landscapes, integrated watershed management and water-sensitive planning and design, the use of stable isotope analysis to trace material flow in aquatic foodwebs, the impacts of clear-cutting on land–lake linkages, landscape modifications at the suburban-agricultural interface, agricultural urbanism, environmental biography, and immersion into historic agricultural and utilitarian landscapes.

For more information about the author, see Dr. France’s web page at NSAC.