Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) are practices that mimic nature to clean and minimize stormwater runoff on-site. Besides reducing the impact of stormwater runoff, GSI practices also provide many additional co-benefits. They are beautiful elements in our neighborhoods and towns. They provide ecosystem services such as food for pollinators, and habitat for birds and wildlife. Plus, GSI such as larger shrubs and trees can provide shading, cooling, and improved air quality.
Nature's Infrastructure
Nature is high-tech. For over three billion years, the natural world has sustained itself and its inhabitants through intelligent systems that have evolved through ongoing refinement. One can think of evolution as the ultimate research and development program, whereby designs continually adapt to create living systems that endure and are truly self-sustaining. Living systems grow their own food, treat their own waste, and make efficient use of energy. They generate no pollution because everything is recycled through food webs that ensure nothing is wasted.
Some natural systems, such as wetlands, forests, riparian buffers, and soils, are also very good at improving water quality and helping to manage stormwater runoff. So are the nature-based solutions that comprise stormwater best management practices (BMPs) designed and installed within the built environment of our neighborhoods and communities. Such BMPs are based on nature's strategies for managing stormwater: slow down the flow, spread it out, and soak it into the ground.
Why is it good?
Ecosystem Services and Co-benefits
Ecosystem Services are benefits to humans that can be provided by natural systems. These can include, but are not limited to: water purification, climate regulation, stormwater management, recreation, and aesthetic value. Green Stormwater Infrastructure provides ecosystem services though strengthening urban development while promoting ecosystem health and resilience. Click here to learn more about the relationship between green stormwater infrastructure and ecosystem services.
Improved Water Quality
Green Stormwater Infrastructure does a good job at slowing the stormwater down, spreading it out, and soaking it in to the soil. This smaller volume of stormwater is then filtered by natural vegetation before eventually ending up in Lake Champlain.
