Today is World Soil Day, which celebrates the importance of soil as a critical component of the natural system and a vital contributor to human health and well-being. 

Congratulations on taking your first step toward earning your SITES AP professional credential! The SITES AP demonstrates to the marketplace your knowledge, expertise and commitment to the profession of sustainable landscape design and development. The key to earning a SITES AP credential is through a thorough understanding of sustainable landscapes and the SITES rating system.

We’ve come up with some tips to help you study for the SITES AP exam:

Reimagined Navy Pier recognized for sustainability-focused centennial year redesign

Do you have questions about SITES? Attendees during our first quarterly SITES call did, and in this live format, GBCI staff discussed the value of SITES certification and credentials, offered up resources and answered attendee questions. If you missed it, you can listen to a recording of the call.

Here are some of the top questions:

There was plenty of excitement about the Sustainable SITES Initiative (SITES) at the 2016 Annual American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Meeting this past weekend in New Orleans. This beautiful, vibrant, fragile, precarious and recovering city provided an ideal backdrop for starting conversations about the benefits of high-performance landscapes.

SITES is poised to become the most widely used land development rating system in the world. Just as LEED undeniably transformed the built environment, SITES has the ability to transform land development and use under the administration of GBCI. The SITES rating system works for all types of landscapes, for new construction sites with or without buildings and across all types of projects, from residential homes to large parks and institutional campuses.

If you’re seeking to further define, improve or demonstrate the site sustainability aspects of your project, you can benefit from pursuing both LEED® and SITES® certification. We want to help by simplifying your certification experience at the intersection of these two rating systems. For that reason, we’ve released a list of credit substitutions so that similar credits need only be earned in one rating system—not both! 

Heading to the 2016 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Meeting and Expo Oct. 21–24 in New Orleans? The SITES® rating system will be featured throughout the conference, and members of the team will be available to answer your questions.

This article was originally published as "Driving Sustainability Beyond the Building" in the September/October issue of USGBC+. Read the original version.

Can landscape architecture help save the world? The way Christian Gabriel, the national design director for landscape architecture at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), describes the federal agency’s recent work in the field makes a compelling case for the affirmative.

Join USGBC Minnesota for a one-day workshop on the SITES® rating system and the concepts and goals of sustainable and regenerative land design, development and management. Practitioners and regional leaders who attend will leave with the tools you need to integrate SITES into their work.