Story written by Alex Johnson, Yaskira Mota, Maggie Tadaro, and Yige Yang

With increasing urbanization, we are removing natural vegetation and replacing it with impervious surfaces such as streets, building roofs, parking lots, etc. This disrupts the natural hydrologic cycle by increasing stormwater runoff and decreasing the amount of water reentering aquifers.  In addition, this causes pollution of natural water bodies.  Furthermore, urban areas are built on materials that absorb energy instead of dissipating it into the atmosphere.  This increases temperatures in these areas.  According to the EPA, temperatures in urban areas are on average 12 degrees C warmer than surrounding rural areas.

Green roofs are one potential technology to help with these issues and many researchers are dedicated to understanding how these systems function. One researcher is Dr. Joel Burken from Missouri Science & Technology.  He conducts small-scale experiments of green roofs to further elucidate our understanding of green roof hydrologic and thermal performance.

It was a pleasure to invite Dr. Burken to Syracuse University on April 10th to present his findings.  In addition, he stressed the importance for engineers to be heavily involved in the design process as there is further room for improvement.  Most designers only consider if the green roof will be cost-effective, if the plants will grow, and if it looks pretty.  However, there are additional considerations that are not considered.  One example is whether the runoff from a green roof will potentially contaminate natural water bodies.  There are also no standards for green roof design.  Dr. Burken encouraged engineers to be involved with a wide variety of people including building managers to consider these factors and to bridge the divide between urban infrastructure and natural processes.