Wood products for sites offer positive benefits including lower embodied carbon, renewability, carbon storage, and biophilic attributes. But there are environmental and even human rights impacts from some wood products. This session will discuss carbon neutrality of wood products, procurement and design with reclaimed wood, and sustainable forestry considerations, in support of SITES v2 principles.

Landscapes are never finished—they are a work in progress. This session explores how early maintenance planning, stewardship models, and adaptive experimentation, as encouraged in SITES v2, shape landscapes that endure beyond opening day. Discover how to design for imperfect care, evolving ecologies, and community partnership without sacrificing beauty or ambition.

Whole life carbon provides the context for tracking the embodied, operational, sequestered, and stored carbon of a site project. Presenters will introduce a new carbon assessment methodology developed by the ASLA Climate and Biodiversity Action Committee and explore its connections to larger industry initiatives, aligned with SITES v2 principles of reducing carbon emissions.

It’s time we had an uncomfortable conversation about carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is complex, incremental, and subject to reversal. We need to be able to design and speak to its power with authenticity and accuracy. Frameworks like SITES V2 show us a pathway to maximize carbon sequestration potential, if we hope to achieve our climate action goals.

Through the lens of ecological memory, emerging approaches blend foundational restoration principles with innovations in landscape form, posing the question: What can we learn from plant competition dynamics, wildlife habitat forms, migration patterns, soil processes, and adaptation processes to respond to today’s biodiversity crisis and create and maintain resilient landscapes? Aligned with SITES v2 credits, this session encourages participants to embrace site-specific responses that promote long-term ecological function and resilience.

Using reclaimed and recyclable materials can be appealing but presents barriers favoring the status quo, often leaving potential benefits achievable. Landscape architects have the power to have to align with SITES v2 principles and employ materiality in ways that decrease carbon footprints, minimize waste, promote collaborative community building, generate local economies, deepen place-based connections, and inspire future generations.

This session connects academic design research, USDA-funded practice-based research, and municipal production experience to demonstrate how wood waste can be transformed into biochar—a high-value, carbon-sequestering product for urban forest and green infrastructure applications. This circular economy solution transforms waste management challenges into lasting climate mitigation opportunities, aligned with SITES v2 principles and credits.

Join climate action leaders for a 9-part webinar series to share collaborative research and knowledge to advance the goals of decarbonization and biodiversity protection.

Biodiversity is not exclusive to land and water. The night sky supports significant biological functions for people, plants, and pollinators. This workshop will provide the latest insights you need to implement responsible lighting at night, making beautiful nighttime environments more understood while minimizing biological disruption and damage to nocturnal ecosystems.

Soils hold 80% of global terrestrial carbon stocks and are critical for carbon drawdown. The nitty "gritty" details of how we work with soils hold the greatest potential for carbon sequestration of any aspect of the built environment. This session shares best practices for maximizing carbon storage in designed landscapes.