Advanced Permaculture Design Tools for Climate Resilience

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Explore Permaculture - a design system for creating sustainable human habitation that enriches the natural world - beyond the basics of Oregon State's Permaculture Design Certificate.

With climate change, geophysical and social conditions are shifting on the planet, and there are specific tools that the Permaculture designer can use to assess, analyze and project future climate scenarios and respond to them with resilient design. This course is design-intensive and is focused on design tools for students who have completed a Permaculture Design Certificate Course and are seeking deeper studies. Each student will design a site of their choice as the focus of the course assignments. The course begins with technical training in the advanced use of Google Earth and the remainder of the course mapping and design assignments will use Google Earth as a format for submissions.

The next section of the course looks at climate classification systems and teaches the climate analogue design tool. From there the curriculum moves into climate change forecasting and its use in the design process. Each student will assess their design site location based on the climate analogue and climate change forecasting tools that are presented.

The next piece in the course is to create a design for the student's selected site in the order of P.A.Yeoman's Scales of Landscape Permanence, with each design layer done on Google Earth. The design will be based on the climate analogue and climate change information from the first part of the course. Each student will work with an instructor one-on-one and get project-specific feedback on their work. Each student should come out of this course with a refined design concept for the site of their choice, as well as the outline of a business and implementation plan.