Vanessa Lee
Vanessa Lee
Environmental Analyst
Resilient Landscapes Program
Urban Nature Lab
Vanessa joined SFEI in 2021 while completing the final year of her dual master degree in Landscape Architecture Environmental Planning and City Planning at UC Berkeley. She works across the fields of urban planning, environmental modelling and landscape architecture, with a keen interest in web design and 3D visualization. Prior to joining SFEI, she developed her skills through diverse projects ranging from landscape restoration in Hong Kong which entered as one of the finalists of the Landscape Institute Awards 2020, research on debris flows in Montecito, CA which won the first prize of ASFPM Student Paper Competition 2021, to typhoon-resilient landscape design in Hong Kong which won the 2020 Excellence in Landscape Design Award at UC Berkeley. She enjoys interdisciplinary and international projects and is very excited to learn and grow at SFEI.
Related Projects, News, and Events
Managing Open Space in Support of Net Zero (Project)
Protecting carbon stocks and increasing carbon sequestration can support climate change mitigation and maintain healthy, resilient ecosystems. To support SFPUC managers in making informed carbon management decisions, the Alameda Watershed Carbon Assessment offers scientific guidance on the watershed’s current and potential performance as a natural climate solution. This assessment was framed by two main objectives: to quantify current carbon stocks in the Alameda Watershed, and to evaluate opportunities to enhance carbon sequestration in its vegetation and soils.
Introducing the Making Nature's City Toolkit (News)
Making Nature’s City Toolkit (makingnaturescity.org) is an interactive, beautifully designed website that guides cities through an actionable, science-based approach to support biodiversity in cities. Based on SFEI’s 2019 report titled Making Nature’s City, the Toolkit is intended to make the report’s core urban biodiversity framework more accessible to actors and decision-makers in cities across the world.
Making Nature’s City Toolkit (Project)
In partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Urban Alliance, the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) has developed the Making Nature’s City Toolkit
Ecological Horticulture at the Presidio (Project)
Look at any urban landscape in the Bay Area and the imprint of horticulture can be readily seen: plants bred to grow well in urban conditions, to require little maintenance, and to fulfill a design aesthetic. While these plants are a triumph of the success of plant propagation, they often have little connection to local ecosystems, and they do not necessarily yield the best support for native biodiversity.