Urban Green Roof

Beetles ants bees and spiders are among these invertebrates qin et al 2013 p.

Urban green roof.

Green roofs may provide one solution. Creating low maintenance terrestrial naturalistic green spaces in the urban core is not popular. Green roofs can provide both visually and physically accessible green space. On a wider scale green roofs improve air quality and help reduce the urban heat island effect a condition in which city and suburban developments absorb and trap heat.

Anyone who has walked across a scalding parking lot on a hot summer day has felt one effect of an urban heat island. During summer the temperatures in cities are approximately 5 7 c higher than in the countryside due to buildings and roads heat absorption and the temperature on the traditional roof can be up to 40 c higher compared to the green roof. Green roofs are covered with growing media and vegetation that enable rainfall infiltration and evapotranspiration of stored water. One of the additional benefits of urban green roofs for agriculture is that they inevitably enhance urban biodiversity.

Studies have documented that invertebrate communities can live on a variety of green roofs in several countries. Building urban resilience illustrates the processes undertaken to develop this new knowledge and thereby embed a deeper level of understanding in readers illustrative case studies and exemplars are drawn from countries outside of the core researched areas to demonstrate the application of the knowledge more broadly.