Green Infrastructure
We’re Hosting a Green Infrastructure Charette in 2024!
Thanks to funding from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, we are able to convene regional stakeholders to see where green infrastructure would be most feasible and needed! Stay tuned for more information and to learn how to participate.
Green infrastructure— simply put– is a practice that captures and absorbs rainwater where it falls! This can be as simple as a rainbarrel to capture the water coming from your roof or as complicated as removing pavement to install permeable pavers. These practices are meant to take advantage of nature-based solutions by using vegetation to reduce stormwater runoff and erosion. This vegetation has a helpful co-benefit of reducing URBAN HEAT ISLAND effect by providing shade and through a process called evapotranspiration. Shaded surfaces, for example, may be 20–45°F cooler than the peak temperatures of unshaded areas.1
Green Infrastructure Plans
GI is an interconnected network of natural areas, other open spaces, and management practices that conserve natural ecosystem functions, sustain clean air, promote water quality (by mimicking natural processes to infiltrate, evapotranspirate or reuse storm water or runoff), and provide a wide array of benefits to people and wildlife. Our green infrastructure resources include commercial and non-commercial forests, waterways, wildlife areas, wetlands, historic landscapes, working farms, vineyards and pasture, and public parks.
In 2011, as an approach to strategic conservation of our green infrastructure assets, GWRC undertook a series of tasks to define the region’s critical green infrastructure and the pressure on this regional asset. The resulting 2011 Regional Green Infrastructure Plan and its 2016 and 2017 updates are linked below.
2011 Regional Green Infrastructure Plan
2016 Regional Green Infrastructure Plan Update
2017 Regional Green Infrastructure Plan Update
2017 Regional Green Infrastructure Retention Prioritization Strategy
