About

Stuart Patton Echols is an associate professor of landscape architecture and the director of graduate studies in the department at Penn State's College of Arts & Architecture. His research focuses on stormwater design, emphasizing two integrated areas: utility and amenity. The utility aspect aims to develop stormwater management systems that restore the hydrology of natural landscapes by replicating predevelopment evapotranspiration, infiltration, and runoff processes. The amenity aspect involves analyzing and disseminating strategies to incorporate stormwater management into site design, creating landscapes that provide rich experiences centered on rainwater. Echols advocates for an integrated approach that uses landscape design to restore natural hydrology through small, dispersed systems, thereby eliminating end-of-pipe facilities and promoting landscape amenities that add value to land development. He has developed and advanced a Split-Flow theory of stormwater design, recognizing landscape and stormwater systems as interconnected ecological systems based on shared processes. Echols holds a BS from Texas A&M University, an MS in Land Development from Texas A&M University, an MLA from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, and a PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. His service includes curriculum development, advancing sustainable site development and stormwater management education, and providing pro-bono consulting for integrated stormwater systems. He has also created an online portal featuring case studies and resources on artful rainwater design.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Environmental science
• Biology

Selected publications

• Artful Rainwater Design: Lessons Learned Over Time

  Landscape Journal · 2024

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Environmental science

  <h3>Abstract</h3> Artful rainwater design (ARD) emerged in the United States in the 1990s as a creative way to manage rainfall typical of temperate climates. ARD is performative and <i>revelatory</i>: it shows viewers what the rain is doing—where it is moving from and where it is going on a site—and helps the public understand rain as a resource, not a waste product. Indeed, the defining characteristic of ARD is its revelation of rain’s beneficial impact, or its “rain message.” If ARD is to become an accepted, revelatory norm in rain management, designers, managers, and owners of ARDs must ensure that the rain message in every installation remains legible <i>for the long term</i>. This study addresses a simple question: Can we derive useful considerations to guide designers toward long‐term “rain message legibility” in future ARDs? To answer this question, we returned to 20 ARDs presented as noteworthy case studies in our 2015 book on ARD. All of these sites are now 10–20 years old. Are their rain messages still legible? The answer is varied, providing many useful insights. This study combined updated site observations of the projects with interviews of case study ARD designers and managers. The results are one set of observation‐derived themes and another of interview‐derived themes, with the intersection of those themes producing a body of useful considerations for future ARD design.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Do Visual Representations Influence Survey Responses? Evidence from a Choice Experiment on Landscape Attributes of Green Infrastructure

  Ecological Economics · 2018-10-30 · 88 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• FOOD PRODUCTION ON A LIVING WALL: PILOT STUDY

  Journal of Green Building · 2017-01-01 · 21 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT Living walls and other vertical green infrastructure on building surfaces provide regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem services in the built environment. Green walls can also generate food as a provisioning ecosystem service. This article discusses a pilot study monitoring the productivity of a 7.5 m 2 outdoor living wall system planted with produce crops during the 2015 summer growing season in State College, Pennsylvania, USA. Irradiance, water usage, and soil moisture data were also collected to assess context and performance of the living wall system during the growing season.

  PublisherDOI

• Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater

  2015-05-19 · 9 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  This beautifully illustrated, comprehensive guide explains how to design creative, yet practical, landscapes that treat on-site stormwater management as an opportunity to enhance site design. Stormwater management as art? Absolutely. Rain is a resource that should be valued and celebrated, not merely treated as an urban design problem—and yet, traditional stormwater treatment methods often range from ugly to forgettable. This book shows that it’s possible to effectively manage runoff while also creating inviting, attractive landscapes. It is a must-have resource for landscape architects, urban designers, civil engineers, and architects looking to create landscapes that celebrate rain for the life-giving resource it is-- and contribute to more sustainable, healthy, and even fun, built environments.

  PublisherDOI

• The History of Stormwater Management and Background for Artful Rainwater Design

  Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · 2015-01-01 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Although rainwater has been considered a resource in agricultural contexts for millennia, in urban contexts it has historically been considered a waste product. With some exceptions in historical management strategies, urban rainwater was treated as a problem to be mitigated, a waste product to be eliminated or controlled.KeywordsGreen InfrastructureStormwater RunoffStormwater ManagementUrban StormwaterLandscape ArchitectureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

  PublisherDOI

• Artful Rainwater Design

  Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · 2015-01-01 · 12 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This beautifully illustrated, comprehensive guide explains how to design creative, yet practical, landscapes that treat on-site stormwater management as an opportunity to enhance site design. Stormwat

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Achieving Utility with Artful Rainwater Design

  Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · 2015-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This part of the book focuses on an array of sustainable stormwater management options and their potential connection to the amenity options in ARD. Plenty of manuals on sustainable stormwater management illustrate and explain effective management strategies, and we have no intention of replicating those sources in this book, nor do we intend to present every possible stormwater management strategy. Instead, we present a range of sustainable stormwater management strategies that are particularly appropriate to ARD.KeywordsImpervious SurfaceGreen InfrastructureSite DesignConstruct WetlandFlow SplitterThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

  PublisherDOI

• Achieving Amenity with Artful Rainwater Design

  Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · 2015-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  As we discussed in the Introduction, there are two components of ARD, amenity and utility. This section of the book presents the amenity side of ARD: the goals, objectives, and techniques a designer might use to make a sustainable stormwater management system into a landscape amenity that celebrates rain, encouraging visitors to learn about, be entertained by, or otherwise enjoy the rainwater-focused landscape. Our hope is that, armed with the cumulative information from this section and part 3, augmented by real-world details from the case study section, designers will have abundant ideas and strategies for their own creation of ARDs.KeywordsGreen InfrastructureStormwater ManagementLandscape ArchitectEducation ObjectiveDetention BasinThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

  PublisherDOI

• Case Studies of Artful Rainwater Design

  Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · 2015-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Imagine this scenario: You're a designer with a solid regional reputation. One day, the director of campus construction at a local community college calls you with a serious problem: The college and its parking lot sit uphill from a nearby commercial area; the business owners are threatening to sue the college, because in large rain events, storm runoff from the college property floods their building basements. Worse yet, because they have combined sewers in this town, the flooding sometimes results in sewage backup in those buildings. It's a simple enough problem to solve: You could put in one of those turf pits of a detention basin, but then you think, "That's a lot of land to use, probably surrounded by a chain link fence for liability protection, right at a town–gown edge. What kind of a place, and what kind of a town–gown relationship message, would that create?" You mull it over for a while, and then suddenly the answer comes: The college doesn't have a stormwater problem, it has a rainwater opportunity.KeywordsGreen RoofGreen InfrastructureStormwater ManagementLandscape ArchitectPersonal CorrespondenceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · 2015-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  On a rainy day in Portland, Oregon, a man stops at New Seasons Market at Arbor Lodge to pick up a few items for dinner. As he hurries inside, he looks up above the entrance canopy and notices that rain is spewing from a spout near the roof and onto a metal sculpture of salmon that appear to be swimming upstream against the current of the falling rain. For just a moment he's reminded that runoff from rain flows from rooftop to river; it had better be clean and plentiful!KeywordsGreen RoofGreen InfrastructureStormwater ManagementCombine SewerLandscape ArchitectureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Eliza Pennypacker

  St. John's College of Nursing

  17 shared

• Barry Kew

  Pennsylvania State University

  2 shared

• Richard C. Ready

  Montana Institute on Ecosystems

  2 shared

• Yau‐Huo Shr

  National Taiwan University

  1 shared

• Lara Kimberly Nagle

  Pennsylvania State University

  1 shared

• Ken Tamminga

  Pennsylvania State University

  1 shared

• Hala Nassar

  Ajman University

  1 shared

• Brian Orland

  University of Georgia

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Stuckeman Collaborative Research Grant