Listen in on a conservation.

You’ve read it before, and you’ll read it again—green building concepts have changed the way we design, construct and think about land planning and development, our homes and our communities. Eco-friendly, value-added features attract people, so demand is on the rise. In 2006, builders gave Asheville thirty energy efficient and NC HealthyBuilt® homes. This year, however, over 400 such homes are in progress here! The explosion of interest raises the question: How does one build green while protecting the land?

This question started an interesting conversation with ecologist Kevin Caldwell as we visited property overlooking a valley north of Asheville. Kevin helps landowners incorporate the ecology of the land into their property and oversees management and protection of these resources. He inventories plants, wildlife, water resources, soils and the larger “natural communities” they live in.

“Tell me, Kevin,” I began, “how can we add value to property from the start? In a new development, for instance, how can one avoid putting roads and homes over rare species and maintain the integrity of the land during construction?”

“The goal is to locate construction where it has the least impact,” he replied. “Once you’ve assessed the land and developed a plan based on nature, the land becomes a treasure chest of jewels instead of just a place to build a house. Possibly most critical to consider is the timing of heavy land disturbances like clearing and grading to avoid bird migration and breeding when impacts to wildlife are highest.”

“That makes sense,” I remarked. “More people are building green homes in the southern Appalachians than ever. Most of these people are interested in reducing their resource consumption and being closer to nature. It’s ironic, then, that we’re probably damaging some very fragile or rare features that we’d protect if we knew about them.”
“That’s true,” said Kevin. “Currently, the primary consideration is how a home consumes energy over time in order to minimize damage to nature. It makes sense to actually minimize our impacts to the natural world when we build. When native habitats, plants, wildlife and natural dynamics are meshed into the building process, a truer form of green building is realized. There is no way to avoid all impact, but we must do what we can to minimize it. Over time, we will continue to learn new ways to protect nature.”

Kevin continued, “Few of us are willfully trying to destroy natural habitats, species or water quality during construction. We just haven’t been trained to be aware of these resources, how they work, our impacts to them and how to avoid or protect them. When they are identified before development, they become the centerpieces of the land and serve as daily, visible reminders of why we’re involved in greenbuilding: to protect nature.”

As Kevin spoke, I wondered how such an assessment works within the construction process. Let’s say I wanted to have the least impact building a green home on raw land. “How would I go about integrating nature with my home?” I asked.

“The process includes pre-construction assessment of natural features, followed by planning and action. Prior to construction, the entire property is inventoried on foot to map the natural communities (bogs, cove forests, meadows, streams and rock outcrops). All plants, wildlife, and natural communities are described. This allows a birds-eye view of the most significant natural areas. These larger areas are defined by specific ‘alliances’ of plants , including trees, shrubs, wildflowers and ferns. They occur over specific soil-types, elevations, directional aspects (N, S, E, and W) and moisture levels. Historical resources like old stone walls and log roads are mapped to increase the landowners’ options.”
Kevin continued, “Combine this information with a slope analysis of buildable areas (avoiding steep slopes) and you have a basis for a least-impact land plan. This information is then a foundation for conservation easements, forest management and restoration plans, rare species management, invasive plants control, trail construction, and so on. It allows one to highlight waterfalls, bogs, seeps, cliffs, rare plants, wildflowers and rare habitats.”

Let’s consider some examples from the large scale to the small, as well as timing.

“In terms of avoiding impacts to the larger natural community,” Kevin continued, “assume a landowner holds 100 acres, ten of which are moist cove hardwoods and ninety are in a dry oak-hickory forest. The ten acres of cove forest can easily harbor hundreds of plant species, while the oak-hickory forest might contain fifty species. If a landowner wants to create a home-site, I would probably entirely avoid the cove and focus on the remaining ninety acres if possible to avoid damaging the higher biodiversity of the coves. However, within this zone, we’d then look very closely to avoid rare species, stands of mature trees, wildlife denning sites, breeding birds, amphibians and so on. Only by assessing the land first can you make this kind of distinction.”

I thanked Kevin for the great information and asked him, “Could you tell me about an experience that will put this into perspective for me?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Recently, I met a landowner who moved to the mountains to propagate and sell medicinal herbs. Prior to my inventory, the landowner built a driveway through a north-facing slope to his home on a low ridge where his home would get south-facing sun. Driving in, my stomach sank as I realized the driveway not only bisected the center of the richest portion of the tract, but also destroyed one of the largest patches of ginseng I’ve ever seen. Had the road been located instead on the south-facing slope, it would have affected far fewer plant species instead of the 310 plants we found on the moist, north slope.”

Kevin’s explanation opened the window for a question about native landscape plants. Landowners must be losing thousands of dollars worth of high quality landscape species (and valuable topsoil) in clearing land for homes and drives, not to mention the loss of local genetic pools of biodiversity. I want to explore this subject in-depth, so look for another chat with Kevin right here in Green Roots. Check back in and let me know what you think!

Meet Your Columnist:
janeAnne Narrin
janeAnne holds the highly-regarded designations of ECO® Real Estate Consultant and e-PRO® and serves as an active member on the New Life Journal Green Home Experts Board. As founder of the ECO-Steward realty firm, she specializes in NC Healthy-Built Homes®, ECO-Development, infill projects, preserves and private land trusts. Look out for her continued column in our future issues where she will chat with other green home professionals to bring you the latest information at the roots of green building.

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