Integrated Design: Lower Columbia River Ecosystems

Integrated Design: Lower Columbia River Ecosystems (Giving Voice to the Land) Continuing Education Course

The natural and cultural resources of the lower Columbia River have progressively undergone change as a direct result of human occupation and especially so since EuroAmerican arrival. Densely populated for thousands of years by ecologically sophisticated and adaptive indigenous cultures, Ridgefield became a EuroAmerican agricultural system in the 1840’s and later, a wildlife refuge in 1965. Currently, resource managers at federal, state and local levels are challenged with designing and implementing management plans and interpretive strategies to maintain and restore desired natural resources. In addition managers must deal with ongoing changes such as the introduction or expansion of invasive species (e.g. nutria), the effects of the Bonneville Dam (completed in 1937 the dam has dramatically changed the flooding regimes of Ridgefield), and future climate change scenarios.

Using the wetlands, prairies, savannas and forests of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge as representative of the greater Lower Columbia, this intensive will explore alternative management regimes and their implications for future natural / cultural resource scenarios within the context of continuous, accelerating ecological change.

PNCA Instructors:

Peter Schoonmaker, Ph.D., Chair MFA Collaborative Design, PNCA

Tracey Cockrell, MFA, Chair, Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies, PNCA

Donald Harker, M.S., Systems Thinking and Natural Resource Management, PNCA

Guest Scholars:

Nancy Turner, Ph.D., Hakai Professor of Ethnoecology, University of Victoria

Judy Bluehorse Skelton, Ethnobiologist, Nez Perce Tribe

Virginia Butler, Ph.D., Salmon Archeologist, Portland State University

Kenneth Ames, Ph.D., Archeologist, Portland State University, Emeritus

Kimberlee Chambers, Ph.D., Ethnoecologist, Assistant professor, PNCA

Lauri Twitchell, MFA, Master Landscape Architecture, Printmaker, painter, visiting artist, PNCA

Peter Suchecki, MFA, Printmaking, videographer, animator, visiting artist, PNCA