Nov 6, 2025
Week 7 - Landscape, Carbon, and Climate Resilience
Where carbon cycles, species loss and climate shock collide, landscape architecture becomes an act of protection, repair, and long-term stewardship.
Technical
Forests under threat - and the work of designing for survival.
This week’s technical session was led by Mark Bentley, Associate Landscape Architect at The Environment Partnership, who introduced us to the intersection of landscape architecture and carbon. After briefly (and lengthily) outlining his own professional journey, he centred the conversation on Thetford Forest, a highly monitored and increasingly vulnerable UK landscape.
Thetford faces multiple threats:
Needle blight, which has devastated Scots pine populations
Increasing drought stress from rising temperatures
Soil degradation from monoculture and past forestry practices
Biodiversity decline, especially in specialist species
In response, Forestry England and associated ecological partners have begun implementing a Resilience Plan (Thetford Forest Resilience Plan) which Mark encouraged us to research. This includes:
Changing the species mix to increase climate tolerance
Transitioning away from single-species plantation blocks to polycultural woodland structures
Introducing drought-tolerant conifers and broadleaf species
Restoring degraded soils and diversifying age structure
Improving habitat continuity to support species such as the nightjar and woodlark
He emphasised that species diversification is a carbon strategy, not just an ecological one. As climate volatility increases, monocultures store carbon precariously; diverse, age-varied woodland systems retain carbon more reliably through disturbance.
Mark also discussed TEP’s work in establishing the North Kent Woods and Downs National Nature Reserve, a landscape-scale conservation project improving carbon sequestration, ecological connectivity and long-term habitat stability across chalk grasslands, ancient woodlands and marshland mosaics.
Understanding carbon through the construction lifecycle.
We shifted into analysing the construction lifecycle, mapping carbon emissions across every stage of a project:
Material extraction – where raw materials are mined, harvested, or processed
Manufacture and fabrication – where embodied carbon increases significantly
Transport to site – influenced by distance, weight and mode of travel
Construction and installation – machinery, energy and temporary works
Use and maintenance – operational carbon over decades
End of life – whether materials are reused, recycled, or landfilled
Mark stressed that landscape architects have enormous influence on carbon outcomes through:
Specifying low-embodied-carbon materials (recycled aggregates, lime, timber, UK-sourced stone)
Reducing excavation and earth movement
Designing for longevity and low-intervention maintenance
Creating habitats that sequester carbon rather than release it
Reducing hard surfacing and increasing permeable/vegetated systems
We also revisited Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) - the legal requirement that any new development must deliver a minimum 10% measurable increase in biodiversity. This involves baseline habitat surveys, habitat condition scoring, long-term management plans and monitoring obligations. Carbon and biodiversity are deeply intertwined, as richer habitats typically store more carbon in both vegetation and soils.
Alongside this, we learned that Beckenham Place Park, which we visited previously, was once a golf course - a landscape with extremely low biodiversity and high chemical input. Its transformation into a public park demonstrates how regenerative design can restore ecological function, increase carbon sequestration and create socially rich spaces from formerly sterile land.
Climate extremes - and designing landscapes for a destabilising world.
The latter part of the lesson focused on climate volatility, using global examples to illustrate the accelerating frequency of extreme events:
Kenya Drought (2021) – multi-season crop failure, widespread habitat loss, famine conditions
European Heatwave (2022) – record-breaking temperatures, collapsed infrastructure, 61,000+ heat-related deaths
US Wildfires (2022) – megafires intensified by decades of drought and fuel accumulation
Spanish Floods (2024) – rapid urban inundation exacerbated by impermeable surfaces and dried, hydrophobic soils
These examples framed the increasing urgency of adaptation strategies. Mark used the willow tit as a case study - one of the UK’s fastest declining bird species, dependent on wet scrub habitats, which are rapidly disappearing due to drainage, land-use change and climate stress. This underscored how small shifts in hydrology or vegetation structure can collapse whole ecological niches.
We explored how landscape architects respond to climate shocks through:
Flood attenuation and natural water storage systems
Planting schemes based on future climate analogues
Habitat mosaics that support species migration
Soil remediation and protection against erosion
Tree planting strategies that anticipate future heat and drought stress
Designs that prioritise resilience over aesthetic purity
The session reminded us that climate change is not a future problem - it is a present condition shaping every decision in contemporary landscape practice.
Reflection: This week revealed how carbon, climate resilience and biodiversity are not abstract concepts but active forces shaping every landscape intervention. The lesson underscored the responsibility of designers to think beyond aesthetics - to read forests, habitats, materials and climate as interconnected systems that must be protected, repaired and anticipated.