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Abstract
Harvey Mudd College, located in Claremont, CA, is a four-year liberal arts college of engineering, science, and mathematics that educates students to be leaders in their fields with an understanding of the impact of their work on society. A hallmark of Harvey Mudd's education is the clinic program, in which teams of students tackle real-world, technical problems for corporate or organizational clients.
During the 2000-2001 academic year, Three Valleys Municipal Water District (TVMWD) and Harvey Mudd College (HMC) co-sponsored a Clinic project, administered by the newly formed HMC Center for Environmental Studies, to conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis of current and more regionally appropriate landscaping for the HMC campus. Areas investigated included water conservation, fertilizer and pesticide use, pollution production, energy consumption, effects on biodiversity, landscape use patterns, community appeal, economic impacts, and environmental educational value.
To provide an experimental site for future evaluation as well as generate interest in the project, a resource-conserving garden was created with native water-conserving plants that require no fertilizer. If the suggested alternative or one similar to it is implemented, the new campus landscape, along with the resource-conserving garden, will be a teaching resource for the Claremont Colleges and promote environmentally conscience living at the colleges.
HMC's current landscaping has a strong influence from the eastern US. It consists mainly of large areas of lawn and ivy beds interspersed with trees. The total landscaped area of 15.5 acres includes 11 acres of turf and 4.5 acres of planting and bark beds. Maintaining this turf-intensive landscape uses large amounts of water. Because HMC'S antiquated sprinkler system must be adjusted manually, the landscape is watered on a two-season schedule. The amount of water applied to the lawns is 1.5 million gallons per week in summer, and 600,000 gallons in winter. This amount about is about 360% of the actual turf needs based on evapotranspiration. The lawns are fertilized with 2.56 lb N/1000 ft2/yr. By using lysimeters to collect groundwater and analyzing its nitrate content, we determined that this rate of application over-fertilizes the lawns by approximately 1 lb N/1000 ft2/yr. In addition, the energy sustainability of the Harvey Mudd lawns was found to be 1.7 years, while the sustainability of our experimental plot was calculated to be 240 years
A survey of landscape use patterns indicated that while some turf areas are used for recreation, classes, and college functions, many turf areas could be eliminated without impinging on the HMC community's use of the landscape. A survey of landscape aesthetic values was distributed to the HMC community and analyzed to determine the constraints within which to suggest an alternative landscape. The survey results suggest that there would be no negative financial impact to the college if a more native landscape were implemented.
Economic analysis revealed that $173,000 a year is currently spent on water, chemicals, machinery, maintenance, and plants for the landscape. Installation of a new irrigation system that could respond to daily evapotranspiration data would reduce the yearly cost of water from $133,800 to $55,100. Replacing planting beds and under-used turf areas with regionally appropriate plants, efficient irrigation, and instituting best maintenance practices would further reduce water costs to $31,600 per year and produce an overall savings of $117,900, with a payback period of approximately 6.5 years.
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