Glossary

Green Infrastructure - An adaptable term used to describe an array of products, technologies, and practices that use natural systems - or engineered systems that mimic natural processes - to enhance overall environmental quality and provide utility services. As a general principal, Green Infrastructure techniques use soils and vegetation to infiltrate, evapotranspirate, and/or recycle stormwater runoff. (Source: U.S. EPA)

LID - A sustainable landscaping approach that can be used to replicate or restore natural watershed functions and/or address targeted watershed goals and objectives. . (Source: U.S. EPA)

Restorative Design - Approaching design in terms of using the activities of design and building to restore the capability of local natural systems to an entry state of self-organization and continual evolution. (source: Bill Reed)

Regenerative Design - This design process acknowledges that humans are an integral part of nature. Human and natural systems - currently disparate systems in Western culture - need to be in alignment in order to achieve a state of continual and healthy evolution. The design process can and should catalyze this alignment. (source: Bill Reed)

Sustainability - Leaf Litter derives its definition from the definition of sustainable development in Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, published in 1987 by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED):

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."