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·According to the Water Education organization in Colorado, the Colorado population is increasing at a rapid rate and is expected to grow to 8.1 million by the year 2050. At the same time. Freshwater resources will continue to decline as the impacts of climate change continue. This leads to an impending water crisis in Colorado, so water conservation and protection strategies have been created.
Specifically, within the Urban environment, the natural water cycle is being disrupted. In the urban landscape, there are hard surfaces such as roads, sidewalks, and houses that cause increased amounts of runoff. The runoff collects pollutants that run into local waterways harming fish, wildlife, plants, and humans. Strategies, such as low-impact development (LID), Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS), and Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD), have been created to manage wet weather flows and provide habitat, flood protection, cleaner air, and cleaner water. Our project’s goal was to create a way to communicate these strategies through a visual display to the public. We aimed to make the diorama relevant to the Front Range by deriving our data directly from major cities along the Front Range. The data consists of precipitation amounts, snow, and minimum and maximum temperatures. The diorama shows four scenarios that undergo a similar amount of rain. Natural grassland represents undeveloped land in Colorado, which consists only of native Colorado grass. Traditional Development represents a current house in Colorado with impervious surfaces and conventional landscaping, such as turf which is water intensive. Low Impact Development shows the ideal housing development with green infrastructure implemented. Post-wildfire is meant to show the impact of wildfires on a region's soil and water quality as wildfires are becoming more frequent.
Environmental problems are often viewed as problems that require large-scale solutions that the general public does not have access to implement. As the population of Colorado continues to increase so does the demand for fresh water. Climate change is decreasing the availability of freshwater at the same time. To prevent the loss of water resources both large-scale and local-scale solutions should be implemented. The general public can only help with this issue if they know these solutions. These decentralized nature-based solutions are how the public can get involved in protecting the Front Range for years to come.