Intended Audience: civil and hydraulic engineers concerned with the design and maintenance of levees, floodwalls, and embankment dams

PDH UNITS: 3

This course provides guidelines to assure that landscape planting and vegetation management provide aesthetic and environmental benefits without compromising the reliability of levees, floodwalls, embankment dams, and appurtenant structures. The dimensions of the vegetation-free and root-free zones defined in this document provide the minimum acceptable buffer between vegetation and flood damage reduction structures. This course is based on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Technical Letter No. 1110-2-583, “Guidelines for landscape planting and vegetation management at levees, floodwalls, embankment dams, and appurtenant structures,” April 30, 2014.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this course, you’ll be able to identify and discuss:

Landscape planting: objectives and engineering requirements
Vegetation-free zone and vegetation-management zone
Root impacts and root-free zone
Treatment of levees, floodwalls, embankment dams, and appurtenant structures
Design considerations: feasibility analysis, planting berms, planters, irrigation systems, flood-fighting and structure maintenance
Maintenance of plantings, selection of plant material, and appropriate ground cover in the vegetation-free zone
Borrow sites, spoil sites, vegetation-related maintenance and repair, and operations and maintenance manual
Removal of non-compliant vegetation