design elements - San Jacinto Texas Historic District

LA
13
LA IN LI CI AM
Preserve and restore plant biomass on-site.
Healthy, suitable vegetative biomass
(the amount of living and regenerating
organic material) should be maintained or
increased to enhance the ecosystem service
benefi ts. Those benefi ts include cleaner air,
cooling and climate moderation, rainwater
att enuation, visual connection to nature,
and other ecological and health benefi ts.
Organic matt er and root masses within the
soil signifi cantly reduces the volume of water
runoff . Healthy, viable landscape systems that
remain intact, should be preserved, restored,
and maintained in order to provide an
associated volume of biomass. On disturbed
sites that have been altered, cleared, or are
otherwise dominated by weedy, invasive,
exotic vegetation, recreate healthy systems
and increase the total amount of biomass.
In urban and suburban landscape sett ings,
add layers of vegetation in accordance with
the other practices to increase overall site
biomass.
[
Suggested Strategy:
]
Healthy Groundcover Planting
(Appendix A)
94 │ BEST PRACTICES
Caption for IMAGE shown above.
Deep-rooted native plants help build soil organic matter as roots grow and
die.
Expanses of native plants can help move carbon from the atmosphere into
the soil.
IMAGE: CONSERVATION DESIGN FORUM
IMAGE: CONSERVATION DESIGN FORUM