How Will Your Campus Adapt to Wacky Weather in the Climate-Change Era?

Our item last week about the floods at Iowa State University—along with alarming reports about the heat waves and flooding around the world—got me thinking about the mayhem that wacky weather will bring to colleges and what colleges are doing to prepare. I’d love to get your perspectives in the comments below.

Two years ago, following the disastrous floods at the University of Iowa, The Chronicle ran a story on this very topic, in which we quoted analysts from insurance companies who are trying to grapple with the risks of climate change. Of course, one cannot connect any single weather event, like the Iowa floods, to climate change—but the overall trends are unsettling, even to scientists who are cautious about making such links. The trends in climate, at least, are fairly clear: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that July 2010 was the second-warmest on record, and we are on track for the warmest year.

Although many colleges are trying to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, campuses should probably also focus on how they might need to adapt to more frequent floods or dry spells, and consider how this might affect the way they build. On his New York Times blog, Andrew Revkin recently ran a compelling interview with Robert R.M. Verchick, the director of Loyola University’s Center for Environmental Law and Land Use. He discussed the importance of building differently on a “turbulent planet.”

“Why is Nature so mad all of a sudden?” he said. “The truth is, a lot of this is our fault. The population is expanding, and we are building where we shouldn’t—in flood plains, on fragile beaches, in valleys, and on muddy hillsides. As we develop, we are destroying much of our protective ‘natural infrastructure,’ too—the marshes and swamps that protect New Orleans, the mangroves that protect Myanmar from cyclone surge, the forests that prevent mudslides in the Himalaya.”

I got a similar perspective on higher education’s building from Luanne Greene, an architect at the firm Ayers Saint Gross, which specializes in campus planning and design. She said that managing storm water will be one of the keys to future adaptation. The mind-set of the past was to control and channel storm water, because it was traditionally polluted and toxic. But that control comes at a price: “The flood plain ceases to work as it was meant to work, which is as a broad and flat surge area,” she says.

That flood plain then becomes a tempting place to put buildings—but with potentially disastrous consequences, as might have been the case in Iowa in 2008. “I don’t know what led them to put the [Frank] Gehry building and all those other buildings in the flood plain, as opposed to playing fields or things that might be able to work with the surge,” Ms. Greene says.

Many colleges are now managing storm water differently—Ms. Greene points to Towson University, which took an old, ugly concrete water channel and restored it to a more natural state. Such changes have been driven by a shift in aesthetics as well as good water management.

“In the old days everyone wanted more of a country-club look to these campuses,” she says, “and now there is more of an emphasis on a regional feeling, a sense of place, and native landscape.”

Some parts of the country may have to adjust to droughts rather than floods, and Ms. Greene sees adaptations happening there, too—like at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They have had some really nasty drought cycles, and they have partnered with the water authority to set up a reclaimed water system,” she says. Used water is sent to the wastewater treatment facility next to the campus, where it is cleaned to a certain level and then used in the campus cooling towers.

“Water harvesting is a big piece of the puzzle—even if it’s just for irrigation,” she says. “We’re planning for that in a lot of our new campuses—a nonpotable water system.”

Tell us what’s happening on your campus.