Location & Transportation
Promoting alternative travel methods such as bicycling, walking, mass transit, and carpooling begins with providing only the minimum number of this, required by the local code.
What are Parking Spaces?
The main considerations of the Sustainable Sites category are selecting a building's site, managing that site during construction, and considering this type of impact over its lifetime.
What is the building's Environmental Impact?
Plants that are either native to the region or have adapted to the region and require little or no irrigation are called these terms.
What are Native and Adapted Species?
This term describes LEED's first approach to water conservation.
What is the Efficiency First approach? Note: LEED does not choose to focus first on the Water Balance approach, which means the building will use only as much water as it can harvest from the annual rainfall, since there are weaknesses or unknowns such as when demand exceeds supply.
This is the designation for a building occupant who spends 40 hours per week in the project building. Transient occupants have values of this based on their hours per week divided by 40.
What is a Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)?
A property whose use may be complicated by the presence or possible presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant is called this.
What is a Brownfield?
This term describes hardscape such as asphalt, concrete, brick, stone, and sealed surfaces are problematic, which do not allow rainwater to pass through.
What is Impervious? (meaning water cannot pass through)
During this process, a team will consider opportunities for open space, protection of native habitats and species, climate and rainfall, site contamination and remediation needs, and whether the site has been previously developed/disturbed, among other things.
What is a Site Assessment?
Through WE Prerequisite: Indoor Water Use Reduction, LEED v4 requires a minimum of a 20% reduction of the baseline for water used indoors by requiring high-performance flush and flow fixtures carrying this label.
What is the WaterSense label? Note: This is a partnership program by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Installing submeters on water systems allows buildings to track water usage trends, monitor fixture performance, and identify these.
What are Water Leaks?
The LT category allows all points to be fulfilled immediately by locating a project in this.
What is a LEED for Neighborhood Development location? (Note: If located in one of these locations, projects are NOT eligible to earn other credits in the LT category).
Installing LED downlighting and these types of lighting controls will reduce light trespass (spillage of light across the project boundary).
What are Motion Sensors, or Timers?
The term describes backlight caused by misdirecting light onto adjacent sites (properties) and in the opposite direction of the area intended to be lighted.
What is Light Trespass? (Note: Light Trespass, as well as Uplight which causes artificial sky glow, and Glare caused by high-angled front lighting, are all forms of light pollution causing problems for nocturnal and migratory animals, and disrupting circadian rhythms, sleep patterns, melatonin production, and night vision in people).
This term describes water that is treated to a standard that makes it safe for human consumption.
What is potable water?
Which prerequisite requires that project teams install permanent water meters that measure the total potable water use for the building and associated grounds?
What is WE Prerequisite: Building-Level Water Metering? Note: Meter data must be compiled into monthly and annual summaries and teams must commit to sharing this data with USGBC for 5 years.
Reusing previously developed land, cleaning up brownfield sites, and investing in these type of areas are strategies of the Location & Transportation category.
What are Disadvantaged Areas?
Bioswales, rain gardens, and dry ponds are examples of this type of rainwater management.
What is Passive Rainwater Management?
What is SS Prerequisite - Construction Activity Pollution Prevention? (Note: This requires project teams to have an Erosion and Sedimentation Control Plan with strategies like silt fences, watering down the site, putting down gravel to control airborne dust, and using filtration materials around inlets to control sedimentation).
This term describes wastewater that has been treated and purified for Nonpotable uses.
What is reclaimed water?
To meet the WE Prerequisite for Outdoor Water Use Reduction, teams must reduce the project’s landscape water requirement by at least this percentage from the calculated baseline for the site’s peak watering month.
What is 30 percent (30%)?
When the project is located in an area that has access to a variety of transportation modes, this type of emissions from car travel can be reduced.
This term describes the patchwork of natural areas that provide habitat, flood protection, clean air, and clean water at the scale of a city or county, or rainwater management systems that mimic nature by soaking up and storing water at the scale of a neighborhood or site.
What is Green Infrastructure (GI)?
This term describes a sustainable approach of controlling pest infestation and damage in an economical way while minimizing the hazards to people, property, and the environment.
What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)?
This act requires that toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush and all urinals use no more than 1.0 gallon per flush and is used in the LEED Water Efficiency credit category to calculate the baseline daily water usage of a project.
What is EPAct of 1992?
The most sustainable forms of outdoor irrigation are (1) little or no irrigation at all, or (2) using this for irrigation.
What is harvested rainwater?