LARCH 246Ridge & Valley in the Field

1 credit · Landscape Architecture · Penn State

LARCH 242 Ridge & Valley Field Study explores the intrinsic links between landform, geophysical and biological processes, vegetation communities, and human manipulation of the landscape through time. It comprises a series of four one-day trips to select locations across our local Ridge & Valley landform region (Appalachian Mountain section), providing the opportunity to examine phenomena at the site level, particularly plants, soils, and landscape contexts. The field experience is immediately preceded by a few skills-building preparatory activities (e.g. workshop(s), test) to establish basic competencies and fore-knowledge. An essential tenet of the course is that layered and interconnected landscape systems learning is something all landscape architects should pursue in their region of practice. Every place possesses a particular relationship between the underlying geology, climate, hydrology, landform, soils, and the plants and animals that inhabit it. Understanding this relationship and learning how to analyze and interpret landscapes is important to all spatial design work-as a source of essential information and as a source of design inspiration. The Ridge & Valley region contains an especially clear, distinct and "readable" relationship between the geophysical and the biological-between the geological underpinnings and the plants and animals that inhabit the surface. This makes the Ridge & Valley an outstanding context to learn how to observe these important, sometimes subtle, relationships. Once students understand what to look for and how to observe a landscape, they can apply this method to any landscape in the world. The conditions change from place to place, but the method is transferable.