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(web page)
We can no longer take nature for granted, its ability to maintain itself in the background, while humanity lives in the cultural foreground. We could describe the innocence of that recent period of background nature, as a second Eden. In the original garden, Adam and Eve only had to bite the apple, to acquire cultural awareness, and learn what they had lost. Today within what was what I would call a second Eden, we have consumed the entire tree, poisoned the soil and changed the climate of the garden. Consumption is once again, the path taking us to the point, where we realize what have lost. Moving away from Eden-1, we found cultural awareness, which we believed was separate from nature. Moving away from the conditions that were Eden-2, we may find a new awareness, that moves toward a fusion of humanity with nature, that results in a single consciousness. We could call this new consciousness, ecohumanism (Tapp, 2002), whereby we become responsible for the restoration, healing and long term health of nature as an extension of the human condition.
Tim Collins
(web page)
An overview of contemporary visual art practices that address the relationship between nature and the built environment, including some history and a touch of theory, as well as brief profiles of some interesting practitioners. Environment in a social context, with three modes of relevant practice: lyrical expression, critical engagement and transformative action.
Tim Collins, with Erica Fielder, Herman Prigann, Ann Rosenthal, Ruth Wallen and Jeroen Van Westen
(pdf 1.7m)
The impacts of a large airport on the water quality and aquatic life of a small western Pennsylvania stream were examined. The principal adverse effects of airport runoff were related to runway deicing operations.
Michael Koryak, Linda J. Stafford, Rosemary J. Reilly, Robert H. Hoskin and Marcia H. Haberman
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
A Pittsburgh-area model demonstrates it's possible to solve problems of sewer overflows, stormwater runoff, and urban revitalization at the source-in the urban areas where the rain falls and the people live-by absorbing costs into incremental redevelopment.
Stormwater | The Journal for Surface Water Quality Professionals FEATURE STORY
(pdf 4.2m)
Wetlands in the United States have been regulated by national legislation for the last 133 years. In this paper both the historical development and present status of the regulations are reviewed with an Appalachian regional perspective. Public sentiment and the availability of wetland definitions and inventories are presented in the discussion as major factors influencing the evolution and effective administration of the laws.
Michael Koryak
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 250k) Koryak, Stafford, Reilly, Sykora
US Army Corps of Engineers
University of Pittsburgh
(pdf 1.3m)
The Nine Mile Run site is 18 stories of steel industry waste dumped on 240 acres over 50 years. The site features two broad slag plateaus split by a slag valley and an urban stream. As the development team struggles with issues relative to the site grading, the the surrounding community is currently organizing on the basis of three issues:
Tim Collins, Kirk Savage
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Pittsburgh
(pdf 3.5m)
Post-industrial public space should: Reveal the legacy of industrialism, not eradicate it or cloak it in nostalgia; create images and stories which reveal both the effect and the cause of the legacy; ...
Tim Collins
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Pittsburgh
(pdf 383k)
Highway deicing activities can influence the quality of waters draining urban areas that experience multiple winter season freeze/thaw cycles. However, because of the flashy hydrology of smaller urban streams, and the unpredictable nature of deicing runoff, these events are difficult to fully document by traditional monitoring approaches.
Koryak, Stafford, Reilly, Sykora
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 638k)
The Design and Operation of mainstem navigation dams were found to significantly influence a number of physical, chemical and biological parameters. The effect of the mainstem projects on dissolved oxygen was most dramatic.
Michael Koryak
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 222k)
Peridinium inconspicuum Lemmermann (Dinophyceae) is a member of the algal association of several takes affected by mineral acids. Sustained dominance of phytoplankton communities by this pyrrhophyte was observed in at least two large acid impoundments.
Michael Koryak
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 1.2m)
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, what are the possibilities for an art of urban engagement, which takes a position on issues such as democracy and power, or social justice, which is committed? It is not a question of mapping past avant-gardes onto today, not because there is nothing to be learned from history, nor even because past avant-gardes failed to deliver a new society, but because history is change. What is understood from past conditions may lead to insights into those present or future conditions most likely to bring about a particular direction of change; but present realities also require understanding if strategies are to be effective.
Malcom Miles
(pdf 224k)
Rhyacophila mainensis, a member of Sibirica group, is distributed in North Central and Eastern North America (Ross, 1956). It lives in large, clear mountain streams. In addition to Pennsylvania, reliable records are known from Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Newfoundland, New Jersey, New York, Quebec, and West Virginia (Weaver,1990)
Koryak, Stafford, Reilly, Sykora
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 364k)
The distribution and abundance of fishes along four small urban streams in western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia were examined. The water quality of three of these streams was moderately to severely degraded along various reaches.
Koryak, Stafford, Reilly, Sykora
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 406k)
The US Army Corps of Engineers light trapped adult Trichoptera at monthly intervals between May and September or October at the inflows and outflows from sixteen reservoirs operated by them in the Upper Ohio River Drainage Basin. The samples contained seventeen families of caddisflies represented by 176 species. We identified four species of Hydroptila as new to science.
Sykora, Koryak, Fowles
University of Pittsburgh
US Army Corps of Engineers
(pdf 3.3m)
Luxuriant growths of the emergent aquatic plant Justica Americana (L.) Vahl have been observed on gravel bars and riffles of larger, unpolluted streams throughout the upper Ohio River drainage basin. This plant, however, is conspicuously absent or severely suppresses in stream reaches influenced by acid mine drainage.
Koryak, Reilly
US Army Corps of Engineers
(7.7m)
Set in the context of Pittsburgh PA, the former steel capital of the United States, this paper explores the potential for a renewed civic or democratic dialogue on a specific brownfield development site. This case study, illustrates a three-part philosophy of discursive democracy, restoration ecology and reconstructive postmodernism and its experimental application by an interdisciplinary group of artists and academics working from a research facility in the college of fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University.
Tim Collins
STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
(4.6m)
In the first of two articles, Ian Thompson, describes two artist-landscape architect collaborations in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, which are contributing to the city's cultural rebirth. If you have any image of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it is probably of a smoke-blanketed city, ringed by steel mills and belching furnances. That picture is about 20 years out of date.
Ian Thompson
(4.7m)
Restoration ecology is the emerging paradigmatic relationship of humanity to nature. It has occurred in response to the industrial revolution and its massive programme utilising nature as both raw material and sink for wastes. Restoration ecology establishes a new relationship to nature by addressig a range of damaged land and water systems in both urban and rural settings. Restoration ecology is a community of disciplines, which acts upon natural systems through the sciences and engineering; and upon cultural values through the arts and humanities.
Tim Collins and Reiko Goto
STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
- The River Dialogues (3.2m)
As we emerge from an industrial culture, we must face the water problems, which follow the use of the rivers as a sink for wastes. We must consider the form and function of the post-industrial economy, and its attendant public space. The vegetation, which has prospered, as the economy languished and the riverside industrial sites crumbled provides and important component of a new urban/nature aesthetic. As we enter the post-industrial era in pursuit of renewed sewer infrastructure and the redevelopment of waterfronts, we must ask ourselves several critical questions: is it possible to consider the benefit of restored ecosystems as we rebuild infrastructure?
Tim Collins
STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
(11m)
The chapter contextualises the project within the growth of environmental art; and in relation to the issues raised by other reclamation projects, such as the Earth Centre (on a disused colliery site near Doncaster, in Yorkshire) within a discourse of post-industrial cities. The project's planning process is then investigated through the evidence of community workshops; and the problem, raised by the artists themselves, as to whether reclamation work of this kind remains art, is taken as a form of the wider problem of the relation of art's aesthetic and social dimensions.
Malcom Miles
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