Lessons from Nature's Water Management

Nature has ingenious methods of managing and delivering water in all its phases: precipitation, evaporation, absorption by plants, wetlands, rivers and lakes, and infiltration that recharges groundwater and aquifers. Yet in most urban environments, stormwater is seen as a nuisance to be whisked away in large pipes. However over the past few decades a new appreciation for nature's ingenuity in managing water has taken hold in urban communities around the world.

On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Tom Liptan, a Portland area green infrastructure consultant and researcher, about how eco roofs and landscape water management reintegrate nature's methods of turning waste water into a valuable natural resource.