At a glance
The Burke Meadow is located adjacent to the Burke Museum and the primary campus entrance from the University District light… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2022-2023
- Large
- Awarded
- $28,240
- Funding partners
-
- Student Activities Fee (SAF)
The Burke Meadow is located adjacent to the Burke Museum and the primary campus entrance from the University District light rail station from NE 43rd St. The ~10,000 s.f. meadow is planted with a diverse mix of prairie plants native to the region, many of which are important food and medicinal species relevant to indigenous cultural needs and practices. Since 2020, an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students have collaborated on developing and implementing plans to monitor and manage this unique habitat in an urban area to support the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture mission to "care for and share natural and cultural collections so all people can learn, be inspired, generate knowledge, feel joy, and heal."
More specifically, the team works together to coordinate volunteer work parties and public events, study plant community changes, and communicate the importance of the meadow as a living exhibit on campus. The work has been supported, financially and through in-kind donations, by the Campus Sustainability Fund, the Burke Museum, UW Grounds, Urban@UW, and the Departments of Biology and Landscape Architecture with advice and contributions from external partners including members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center, and the design firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.
The Burke Meadow is located adjacent to the Burke Museum and the primary campus entrance from the University District light rail station from NE 43rd St. The ~10,000 s.f. meadow is planted with a diverse mix of prairie plants native to the region, many of which are important food and medicinal species relevant to indigenous cultural needs and practices. Since 2020, an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students have collaborated on developing and implementing plans to monitor and manage this unique habitat in an urban area to support the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture mission to "care for and share natural and cultural collections so all people can learn, be inspired, generate knowledge, feel joy, and heal."
More specifically, the team works together to coordinate volunteer work parties and public events, study plant community changes, and communicate the importance of the meadow as a living exhibit on campus. The work has been supported, financially and through in-kind donations, by the Campus Sustainability Fund, the Burke Museum, UW Grounds, Urban@UW, and the Departments of Biology and Landscape Architecture with advice and contributions from external partners including members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center, and the design firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.
This proposal seeks the opportunity to extend this work for an additional year beyond our initial three-year agreement with CSF to support student employment, materials and supplies, and event coordination. The team is requesting $28,240.
Ken Yocom
Project lead
- kyocom@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Faculty
Polly Olsen
Team member
- polly@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Staff
Submitted by Ken P. Yocom, PhD – Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington on behalf of the team.
RE: Camas Meadow at the Burke Museum
I am providing this letter of intent on behalf of the team of students, staff, and faculty who are actively engaged in monitoring and managing the camas meadow at the Burke Museum. This project has been previously funded by the Campus Sustainability Fund (#16-4546). Specific activities include plant community monitoring, active maintenance, organizing public work parties, and communications).
Over the past three years, this project has worked in close collaboration with Burke Museum staff (Miguel Symonds (student) Polly Olsen, Aaron McCanna, and David Giblin), UW Grounds (Steve Kryszko) and the Department of Landscape Architecture (Jocine Velasco, Rhys Coffee, Emily Saeger, and Isabel Lewis (students), Ken Yocom (Faculty)). Though several of the students listed have now graduated, we developed a mentorship and training program to assist in the transition across student workers. The collaborative efforts are highly intentional and managed through collective agreement with all parties involved.
Sustainable impact
The roughly 10,000 ft2 camas meadow was designed and constructed as part of the new Burke Museum development. A relatively unique (camas are planted at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ and UW farm) landscape type on the UW campus, meadows dominated by camas were once prevalent in the region but have been mostly lost to agriculture and development. Camas (Camassia spp.) was and continues to be a highly important source of nutrition with deep social and cultural meaning and importance to indigenous communities. In the region and across the Pacific Northwest. This designed and constructed meadow is part of the Burke’s ‘living collections and our collaboration has been an opportunity to learn from the meadow and build greater understanding how learning on our campus can extend beyond the walls of the classroom. Also, the site is located adjacent to one of the primary entrances to campus with the recent opening of the light rail station in the University District. It is estimated that 25,000 students and employees pass by the meadow daily.
As a relatively unique landscape type on campus, UW Grounds has expressed a lot of concern over its care and management as it requires a greater level of attention and distinct approaches to their typical duties for care. Our team has developed methods and a strong approach to caring for and maintaining the space, that requires active and ongoing engagement.
Leadership & student involvement
The staff team of (Polly Olsen, David Giblin, and Ken Yocom) coordinate oversight and team management, while current students take on most week-to-week activities from data collection and analysis, organizing work parties, and active maintenance as well as coordination with other Burke staff on communication strategies to highlight what is happening in the meadow through signage, social media posts, etc.
Education, outreach, & behavior change
The work has been highly focused on education, not only for the students involved, but for the broader UW community as well. Students supported by the CSF grant get first-hand knowledge of project management, data collection and analysis, and volunteer coordination. On average, the team hosts volunteer work parties to help weed and maintain the meadow. This has been quite the feat as the meadow has been overrun with lupine the past several years that while beautiful during flowering, shade out the meadow grasses and other plants including the camas. To date, volunteers (public and other UW students) have spent 100s of hours working in the meadow and learning about this landscape type. The team has also made several local presentations for the Burke patrons, hosts UW classes interested in the meadow, and the project was presented at a national conference. The team has also been invited to provide an article of their work and research on the meadow to the journal Ecological Restoration. We are currently in the process of drafting the manuscript.
Lastly, another challenge with the meadow has been grazing by local rabbits. In particular, the rabbits chew the stalks of the camas and for two years have severely limited camas productivity. This weekend (March 4 and 5, 2023) the team has coordinated to invite Yakama Tribal Elder and master weaver Val Calac to join us for a workshop to ‘weave’ exclusion fences from willow and alder whips collected on campus with approval from UW grounds. These fences will surround marked plots in the meadow to study their effectiveness for keeping the rabbits from grazing on the camas. This past autumn the team, in collaboration with Oxbow
Farms, planted hundreds of bulbs in these plots.
Feasibility & accountability
This is a highly collaborative endeavor and active community. Those involved in the work are committed with strong ties to the meadow. This is evident in the lasting engagement of all collaborators on the work. Most previous requests for funds have supported student work and learning with some funds used to purchase supplemental plants in the meadow. Both the Burke Museum and Department of Landscape Architecture have also committed funds to purchase tools, gloves, and food for volunteer events while UW Grounds provides labor and access to trucks and hauling away weeded material.
The Burke Museum is currently in the process of applying for a Mellon Foundation grant through which this work has been written in and will be supported if the grant is funded. However, until that time bridge funding is necessary to keep the students employed and active management occurring on the site.
Request amount and budget
How the project will react to funding reductions
If a reduced amount is required to receive continued support for CSF the project will prioritize reducing amounts for event coordination, then materials and supplies, and if absolutely necessary, the partial employment of the student.
Plans for financial longevity
For this proposal we are seeking 12 months (June 2023 - May 2024) of funding to support the partial appointment of one graduate student, materials and supplies, and event coordination. The funding will serve to help bridge the gap while we continue to seek longer term options for funding. To date, the project has been financially supported by CSF as well as the Burke Museum, Urban@UW, and the Department of Landscape Architecture. Current efforts to secure longer term funding include opportunities to engage in a Mellon grant through the University of Washington and other sources, but none have been secured at this time and it is necessary to maintain continuous support for the project.
Problem statement
The Burke Meadow is a living exhibit with the Burke Museum, and essential to the mission of the museum to "care for and share natural and cultural collections so all people can learn, be inspired, generate knowledge, feel joy, and heal." It was designed and incorporated into the overall site design of the museum’s new campus because of the historical and contemporary importance of meadow habitats in the region as locations of direct intersection between nature and culture. This project offers great opportunities to more fully understand the potential of this habitat type in the context of a highly urbanized and managed environment.
Our proposal for maintenance, communication and monitoring is intended to provide information for designers, property managers (like the UW), and the public to learn about the ecological and cultural importance of regional meadows for this region and identify cultural practices and management strategies to translate their establishment in similar and distinct land use contexts.
Climate change impacts are shifting ecosystems, including urban ones, and it is necessary to adapt to these changes. Lowland meadow habitats are unique and endemic to the northwestern region of the United States and are particularly adept to the combination of seasonal fires, drought and occasional flood inundation. For centuries, Tribal communities have actively managed these environments to support environmental health and, in turn, cultivation of culturally significant food and medicinal plants. Our collaboration seeks to integrate this knowledge base with methods from Western science while incorporating eco-feminist perspective on building natural and cultural relations through active engagement and formal and informal activities that support education.
This project proposal also aims to provide ongoing research around the economic resilience of culturally significant landscapes such as meadows within urban landscapes. Management and utility costs for designed landscapes can be exponentially high and hardy, native landscapes like the camas meadows may reduce those costs over time once these plants are established. Combined with increasing public and campus-wide participation through educational programming, labor costs around management are monitored.
Measure the impacts
The impacts of this project will be measured primarily in three ways:
Scientific knowledge
The empirical research conducted through monitoring the establishment and survivability of this habitat type in an urban condition in relation to a variety of management strategies serves to benefit the establishment of this habitat type in other urban areas and long term management. As a culturally significant landscape type, this impact not only enhances our ecological understanding, it deepens our cultural connection to the landscape.
Educational outcomes
Most directly, this project provides students, faculty, and staff engage in a culturally-relevant collaboration to learn about the ecology of meadows, their cultural significance, and how to work across disciplinary limitations to knowing and understanding. Approaches to measure educational impacts include, but are not limited to formal and informal activities that promote student and public knowledge.
Financial savings
A direct impact of this research will be to identify management approaches that streamline the labor necessary to care for this project as it matures. In an effort to identify adaptive pathways to balance ecological health and maintenance costs, labor hours (paid and volunteered) will be tracked and compared against estimates for the care and maintenance of more familiar campus landscape types.
Education and outreach goals
Formal and informal activities to promote education on regional nature and society relations are at the core of this project. This deeply collaborative work engages practices and perspectives from indigenous knowledge, eco-feminist perspectives, and Western science methods. It requires a strong commitment from all partners with a focus on building and extending relationships and trust. The strength of this work is not in its outcomes, which are substantial, but in the ways in which the team works together to support the meadow and community.
External project communications can be found on the Burke Museum website and Instagram as examples. All team members - students, faculty and staff - regularly provide tours of the meadow to UW classes and the public. Last year, a student employed with the project presented the team’s collaboration to those gathered for the annual celebration of the meadow. This year, all students will be participating in the annual activities providing tours of the meadow.
One educational example of the collaboration was the recent design workshop hosted by the Burke Museum and the Department of Landscape Architecture. In an effort to control browse in the meadow the team came up with an idea for ‘weaving’ fences to deter the eastern cottontail rabbits who are frequent visitors to the meadow and who feast on the new shoots of the young plants such as camas. The team worked with UW Grounds to gather dogwood ‘whips’ (new growth) from around campus and invited a Yakama tribal elder and Master weaver to join with a group of interdisciplinary students from American Indian Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, and Landscape Architecture among others to design and install fences that protected three areas in the meadow which were heavily planted with camas last fall. During the process, the student discussions moved away from the work of building fences to exclude the rabbits to building baskets that hold their food. For us, this was a breakthrough moment in our learning activities, and all drew much from the experience. The baskets are currently installed in the meadow and will be there through camas bloom in late June with the team coordinating efforts to expand on this work next year.
Lastly, members of the team have presented this work at professional conferences (Community of Educators in Landscape Architecture) and the team has been invited to publish their work in the journal Ecological Restoration as part of their Restoration Notes series which highlights new and innovative strategies to promote ecological restoration and management activities. These are great opportunities to extend our approach and learning for others.
Student involvement
Financial support from the CSF and other sources (Urban@UW, Burke Museum, and Department of Landscape Architecture) over the past three years has continually supported 1 - 3 undergraduate and/or graduate students on partial graduate appointments (0.2 FTE) or hourly undergraduate positions. This proposal requests funding for one partial graduate appointment (0.2 FTE) for 12 months, June 2023 - May 2024.
The student will work in collaboration with the full team on the project, but coordinate directly with an undergraduate student recently hired by the Burke Museum to support all activities related to the meadow. These responsibilities include monthly data collection and entry, coordination of volunteer and formal events, educational and docent opportunities, and internal/external communications.