UBC Graduate Course Highlights the Importance of Rainwater Management
Mar 15, 2015
As anyone living on BC’s coastal climate will tell you, we get a lot of rain. So it’s not surprising that rainwater management is extremely important in order to avoid flooding, increased erosion and high concentrations of pollutants in our waterways.
With those issues in mind, last semester students in our Urban Watershed Management course (SOIL 516) partnered with the District of North Vancouver to further understand the role of vegetation and landscape designs in issues of rainwater management and stream health.
The students used the Water Balance Model Express and GEOweb, interactive online tools that allow land owners to assess land cover on their property and see how rainwater will pass through the landscape. The students were able to view the practical impacts of different types of property design, including the effects of redevelopment, and create recommendations on how to minimize rainwater issues in future developments.
“There are some relatively simple solutions property owners can implement to prevent rainwater runoff and avoid issues of erosion and transport of contaminants, like increasing the amount of green spaces in and around properties to help water infiltrate back into the soil and subsurface,” says Julie Wilson, Academic Coordinator of the LFS Master of Land and Water Systems program.
Julie Wilson
She adds that additional research in North Vancouver and other Lower Mainland municipalities is necessary to increase awareness and knowledge of the impacts of rainwater management on property construction and redevelopment.
This project will run in future sessions of SOIL 516.
The Urban Watershed Management course is one of a series of four online Watershed Management courses. For more information, visit the course website.
–By Charlotte Bushnell-Boates
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