PD1: W2021
Permaculture Design
Certificate Course
(Part 1, Winter 2021):
Fundamentals of Ecological Design
Michael Burns
<mb756@cornell.edu>
Section
Permaculture Design
Certificate Course
Instructions: Clicking on the section name will show / hide the section.
History of Permaculture
We start the core content of this course with a discussion of permaculture's history. We discuss ideas and evidence that makes a permaculture important to our industrial, modern, and interconnected world.
Our first design activity is the almost literal foundation to many of our future assessment, analysis and design work: the base map.
Article: What makes a site "Permaculture?" File 81.8KB PDF document
Optional Resources
Ethics and Case Studies
Objectives:
- Examine permaculture ethics.
- Consider examples of permaculture systems that demonstrate applied principles in a wide range of contexts.
- Research an existing permaculture-based project.
- Begin setting goals for your own site.
Optional Activities
Optional Resources
Ecological Principles
- Objectives
- Examine the core of successful permaculture-designed systems: understanding and using ecological
- Identify an existing permaculture project to analyze what principles are represented in their work
- Observe and record ecological and social patterns in everyday life
Review this week's assignments and budget your time accordingly. - Examine the core of successful permaculture-designed systems: understanding and using ecological
Optional Activity
Optional Resources
Climate, Energy, & Technology
Our learning objectives are based around two questions:
- How do we consider climate when designing and assessing systems?
- How do we make decisions regarding technology and energy for sustainable designs?
Optional Activity
Zone, Sector, and Elevation Planning
An introduction to zone and sector analysis as tools for site assessment.
- How do we better assess analyze activity and energy patterns on our site?
- Where is the most activity and humans impact on the landscape ?
- What energy and materials flow into or through the site?
Optional Resources
Optional Activities
Polyculture Design
Examine plants through an ecological perspective and/or permaculture principles.
Analyze and design communities of plants and animals (polycultures.)
Research established examples of guilds.
Complete a niche analysis for a plant or animal of your choice and propose a polyculture as a design project.
Optional Resources
Optional Activity
- This section
The presentation of part one of the Permaculture Design Certificate coursework is finished. If you are not, you have until next January to finish BUT YOU ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO FINISH EARLIER! Most students who continue at their own pace finish. Many who put the work aside for a later date do not.
Please keep your own copies of your submitted assignments until you have finished all three parts of the course.
I have heard from many of you about being behind with your work. That is very OK and understandable. Checking in with me via email is a good idea so I have a sense of your progress and an estimate of when you will finish.
Your Moodle account and access to course materials continues until next January. You may continue to communicate with me after this week through phone, email and during my office hours to continue your work. Come May, my office hours will reduced to one per week usually around lunch hour. I can also arrange for an appointment if the singular weekly hour does not work for your schedule.
Finishing your assignments after the deadline does not disqualify you from earning the Permaculture Design Certificate.
When you have submitted all previous assignments, the last activity and a survey will be accessible to complete part one.
NOTE ON GRADING: Most assignments are graded with "Satisfactory" unless there weren't. Occasionally, participants may receive "Outstanding" for submissions that demonstrated superior understanding and presentation of the assignment's objectives. The outstanding grade is not given lightly. Because students come from a fairly wide range of experiences and skills the satisfactory grade represent a wide range of success based on their progress. If you are receiving "Satisfactory" grades you are passing.
Activity 7.1: Personal Evaluation (Reflective Writing) Assignment
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