Landscape Sustainability Rating and Certification is Focus of SITES, Announced June 10, 2015, by Green Business Certification, Inc.

On June 10, 2015, Green Business Certification, Inc. (GBCI) released the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) system for rating the sustainability of landscape-development designs and landscape-managment practices.  The SITES Web site defines a “sustainable site” as “a healthy functioning landscape that provides ecosystem services to a diverse group of site users,” and “ecosystem services” are defined as “goods and services of direct or indirect benefit to humans that are produced by ecosystem processes that involve the interactions of living elements, such as vegetation and soil organisms, and non-living elements such as bedrock, water, and air.”  More information about SITES is available online at http://www.sustainablesites.org/, and in the June 10 news release on the launch of SITES, available online at http://www.sustainablesites.org/node/236.

For the role of Virginia Tech Associate Professor Susan Day (Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation) in helping develop SITES guidelines for soil management, see “Virginia Tech professor helps develop new landscape sustainability ratings,” by Tonia Moxley, Roanoke Times, 6/19/15, online at http://www.roanoke.com/news/education/higher_education/virginia_tech/virginia-tech-professor-helps-develop-new-landscape-sustainability-ratings/article_45c2ee02-f508-5bdb-a35c-0ead4b5cfef7.html.