Larger islands within parking lots

Matthew, It sounds like this vegetated area would be considered a graded site. This area would be included with your site calculations when complying with Case 2. This compliance path requires you to restore or protect your site with native / adaptive vegetation to meet the credit requirements.

Our LEED study group talked about this, and here's the thought process, (written up by one of our group): I thought about it and I'm not sure that I can add much to the conversation. My only thought is that no, he does not need to protect the island. If the whole site WAS a greenfield, that doesn't really matter in the context of the project. Matthew will be grading all around this 20' island and buffer, so it's not like it has any potential left for agriculture or wildlife habitat. He might as well just consider the island "graded" or "no longer a greenfield" as well and not worry about protecting it - which means including it in his site calculations. In fact, if he didn't do that (i.e. called that piece of land a greenfield and protected it), I might call it gerrymandering. He says himself, "I would consider any islands such as this part of the parking lot development" and I think anyone else would see them that way too. The intent to protect greenfields is not met by him protecting this island.

Matthew, it sounds like the islands are really part of the parking lot development.I'm confused, though -- if the islkand is 20 feet wide and is surrounded by pavement, doesn't the 15-foot buffer around pavement cover the entire island? So you meet the reequirement either way.