Catoctin Branch

Managing The Hydrologic Legacy of Disturbed Compacted Urban Soils

Speaker: Stu Schwartz

Standard landscaping practices with cut-and-fill mass grading have produced a pervasive legacy of disturbed compacted urban soil profiles that limit infiltration, root growth, and vegetation success, and increase stormwater runoff from the urban pervious landscape. Dramatic increases in hydrologic services and vegetation success can be purposefully restored using sustainable grading practices, but current standards and impervious area removal credits offer no incentives to change “standard practice”. This presentation describes means and methods to reliably restore environmental services in urban pervious landscapes, as well as the stormwater credit and life cycle cost incentives that can incentivize and institutionalize the standard use of these practices. Disturbed compacted urban soil profiles represent a pervasive hydrologic legacy and a significant opportunity to improve hydrologic design, stormwater management, and restore hydrologic function to the urban pervious landscape.

About the Speaker: Stu Schwartz is a Senior Research Scientist at UMBC’s Center for Urban Environmental Research and Educations (CUERE). His research focuses on water resource systems analysis, green infrastructure, and urban hydrologic science. Before joining UMBC, he directed the Center for Environmental Science Technology and Policy at Cleveland State University; was Associate Director of the Water Resources Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, and Directed the Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations (COOP) at the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin.