Design for Conservation

HKU Landscape undergrads traveled to northern Thailand in early March for their final-semester studio on regional landscape planning. During the 10-day trip, students traveled more than 500-kilometers overland to document sites planned for hydropower, interbasin water transfer, spoil disposal areas, flow regulation check dams for reservoir construction, river dredging, access roads, and high-voltage transmission lines. Students also visited case study sites of urban reforestation in Bangkok, rural reforestation in one of Southeast Asia's most extensive chronosequences of tropical forest plots near Chiang Mai, and a vast network of community-based fish conservation zones spanning parts of Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son, and Tak provinces. Students learned of the complexity of large-scale development and conservation project planning and of the challenges—technologically, politically, and physically—in working off-the-grid in remote and mountainous sites.

The students and their instructors professor Ashley Scott Kelly and Yuan Zhuang thank the People's Network of the Yuam, Ngao, Moei and Salween River Basin; the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN); The Border Consortium (TBC); International Rivers; the Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC); the Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU) of Chiang Mai University; landscape architecture practices Northforest Studio and TK Studio and academics from Chulalongkorn and Chiang Mai Universities; and generous support from numerous friends in the region. Wish the students the best of luck designing their studio projects in the second half of the term.