Hello,
I have a project with a lot of vegetated area with a big percentage covered by lawn, but there are a lot of trees in it that can be considered as native or adapted. The question is, what area must be counted for the correct documentation? The lawn area and the tree trunks, or the tree canopies plus the lawn area not covered with these tree canopies? Does anybody has had issues documenting the tree canopies?
Thanks in advice!
Trista Brown
Project DirectorWSP USA
456 thumbs up
November 20, 2017 - 7:11 pm
Under LEED 2009, GBCI considered tree canopies over turf grass to be non-compliant. Their reasoning is oulined in LEED Interpretation 2324, which says that "while tree canopies allow for a limited amount of species to return and live" the "hardscape below prevents the area from being truly restored to a natural condition". GBCI considers monoculture turf grass to be similar to hardscape, in that it doesn't provide habitat value. So, the approach required by GBCI was to count tree canopy over turf as non-compliant in the calculations. They also preferred that only the vegetated area at ground level be included in the calculations. While the LI is pretty old I imagine the logic holds for v4.