Green Roads For Water

Roads and water are generally seen as enemies, with water responsible for most of the damage to roads, and roads being a major cause of problems such as erosion, waterlogging, flooding, and dust storms. This tension, however, can be reversed. The concept of Green Roads for Water (also known as “Green Roads†? or “roads for water†?) places roads in the service of water and landscape management and climate resilience without sacrificing or diminishing their transport functions. With global investment in roads of US$1†“US$2 trillion per year, plus maintenance costs, the widespread adoption of Green Roads approaches can leverage investment at a transformative scale, making road development and maintenance a vital tool for achieving climate resilience, water security, and productive use of natural resources. Green Roads for Water: Guidelines for Road Infrastructure in Support of Water Management and Climate Resilience provides strategies to use roads for beneficial water management tailored to diverse landscapes and climates, including watershed areas, semiarid climates, coastal lowlands, mountainous areas, and floodplains. The underlying premise of Green Roads is therefore quite simple: designing roads to fit their natural and anthropomorphic contexts; minimize externalities; and balance preservation of the road, water resources, landscape, and soil resources will usually cost less than traditional protective resilience approaches and will produce more sustainable overall outcomes.

Only book world-wide addressing this topic. The principal output of the European co-operative Action on "Water Movements in Road Pavements & Embankments". Provides unique guidance on assessing water condition and its affects on road performance. Provides unique guidance on assessing and ameliorating contaminant movement in pavement groundwater. Written by leading experts in Europe.

Roads and parking lots in the United States cover more ground than the entire state of Georgia. And while proponents of sustainable transit often focus on getting people off the roads, they will remain at the heart of our transportation systems for the foreseeable future. In Creating Green Roadways, James and Matthew Sipes demonstrate that roads don’t have to be the enemy of sustainability: they can be designed to minimally impact the environment while improving quality of life. The authors examine traditional, utilitarian methods of transportation planning that have resulted in a host of negative impacts: from urban sprawl and congestion to loss of community identity and excess air and water pollution. They offer a better approach—one that blends form and function. Creating Green Roadways covers topics including transportation policy, the basics of green road design, including an examination of complete streets, public involvement, road ecology, and the economics of sustainable roads. Case studies from metropolitan, suburban, and rural transportation projects around the country, along with numerous photographs, illustrate what makes a project successful. The need for this information has never been greater, as more than thirty percent of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, more than a quarter of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and congestion in communities of all sizes has never been worse. Creating Green Roadways offers a practical strategy for rethinking how we design, plan, and maintain our transportation infrastructure.

The purpose of this manual is to provide clear and helpful information for maintaining gravel roads. Very little technical help is available to small agencies that are responsible for managing these roads. Gravel road maintenance has traditionally been "more of an art than a science" and very few formal standards exist. This manual contains guidelines to help answer the questions that arise concerning gravel road maintenance such as: What is enough surface crown? What is too much? What causes corrugation? The information is as nontechnical as possible without sacrificing clear guidelines and instructions on how to do the job right.

By the Booker Award-winning bestselling author of The Gathering, The Green Road is Anne Enright's virtuoso new novel, her most compelling and powerful to date A darkly glinting novel set mainly in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast, The Green Road is a story of fracture and family, selfishness and compassion -- a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we learn to fill them. The children of Rosaleen Madigan grow up in the West of Ireland, in a world that is about to change. When her oldest brother, Dan, announces he will enter the priesthood, young Hanna watches her mother retreat in sorrow to her bed. In the years that follow, three of the children leave home for lives they could never have imagined. Dan for the frenzy of New York under the shadow of AIDS; Emmet for the backlands of Mali where he learns the fragility of love and order; actress Hanna for modern-day Dublin and the trials of motherhood. In her early old age, their difficult, wonderful mother, Rosaleen, decides to sell the family home, the house she was born in and where she raised her own family, with all its ghosts and memories. Her adult children visit for Christmas, carrying with them the complications of their present lives and the old needs of childhood as they are brought face to face with their mother's ageing and the effects her decision will have on them all. In this extraordinary and intimate story of one family, Enright has also given us a portrait of our times. This is a major work of fiction by one of the most exciting writers of our time.

A central goal of transportation is the delivery of safe and efficient services with minimal environmental impact. In practice, though, human mobility has flourished while nature has suffered. Awareness of the environmental impacts of roads is increasing, yet information remains scarce for those interested in studying, understanding, or minimizing the ecological effects of roads and vehicles. Road Ecology addresses that shortcoming by elevating previously localized and fragmented knowledge into a broad and inclusive framework for understanding and developing solutions. The book brings together fourteen leading ecologists and transportation experts to articulate state-of-the-science road ecology principles, and presents specific examples that demonstrate the application of those principles. Diverse theories, concepts, and models in the new field of road ecology are integrated to establish a coherent framework for transportation policy, planning, and projects. Topics examined include: foundations of road ecology roads, vehicles, and transportation planning vegetation and roadsides wildlife populations and mitigation water, sediment, and chemical flows aquatic ecosystems wind, noise, and atmospheric effects road networks and landscape fragmentation Road Ecology links ecological theories and concepts with transportation planning, engineering, and travel behavior. With more than 100 illustrations and examples from around the world, it is an indispensable and pioneering work for anyone involved with transportation, including practitioners and planners in state and province transportation departments, federal agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. The book also opens up an important new research frontier for ecologists.

All phases of road developmentâ€"from construction and use by vehicles to maintenanceâ€"affect physical and chemical soil conditions, water flow, and air and water quality, as well as plants and animals. Roads and traffic can alter wildlife habitat, cause vehicle-related mortality, impede animal migration, and disperse nonnative pest species of plants and animals. Integrating environmental considerations into all phases of transportation is an important, evolving process. The increasing awareness of environmental issues has made road development more complex and controversial. Over the past two decades, the Federal Highway Administration and state transportation agencies have increasingly recognized the importance of the effects of transportation on the natural environment. This report provides guidance on ways to reconcile the different goals of road development and environmental conservation. It identifies the ecological effects of roads that can be evaluated in the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of roads and offers several recommendations to help better understand and manage ecological impacts of paved roads.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this urgent, singularly authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical--and accessible--plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid an irreversible climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help and guidance of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science and finance, he has focused on exactly what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only gathers together all the information we need to fully grasp how important it is that we work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases but also details exactly what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. He describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions; where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively; where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions--suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but by following the guidelines he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.