Green Roof Ecosystems

This book provides an up-to-date coverage of green (vegetated) roof research, design, and management from an ecosystem perspective. It reviews, explains, and poses questions about monitoring, substrate, living components and the abiotic, biotic and cultural aspects connecting green roofs to the fields of community, landscape and urban ecology. The work contains examples of green roof venues that demonstrate the focus, level of detail, and techniques needed to understand the structure, function, and impact of these novel ecosystems. Representing a seminal compilation of research and technical knowledge about green roof ecology and how functional attributes can be enhanced, it delves to explore the next wave of evolution in green technology and defines potential paths for technological advancement and research.

This book provides an up-to-date coverage of green (vegetated) roof research, design, and management from an ecosystem perspective. It reviews, explains, and poses questions about monitoring, substrate, living components, and the abiotic, biotic, and cultural aspects connecting green roofs to the fields of community, landscape, and urban ecology. The work contains examples of green roof venues that demonstrate the focus, level of detail, and techniques needed to understand the structure, function, and impact of these novel ecosystems. Representing a seminal compilation of research and technical knowledge about green roof ecology and how functional attributes can be enhanced, it delves to explore the next wave of evolution in green technology and defines potential paths for technological advancement and research.

This book studies the application of green roofs in ecoregions of the western United States and Canada. While green roofs were intended to sustain local or regional vegetation, this volume describes how green roofs in their modern form are typically planted with a low-diversity mix of sedums from Europe or Asia. The authors demonstrate how in the western USA and Canada many green roofs have been designed with native plants and have been found to thrive. Part I of this book covers theory and an overview of ecoregions and their implications for green roofs. In Part II vegetation from prairies, deserts, montane meadows, coastal meadows, and scrub and sub-alpine habitats are explored on seventy-three ecoregional green roofs. Case studies explore design concepts, materials, watering and maintenance, wildlife, plant species, and lessons learned. Part III covers an overview of ecoregional green roofs and a future outlook. This book is aimed at professionals, designers, researchers, students and educators with an interest in green roofs and the preservation of biodiversity.

Examine possibilities for city-wide green roof development using 335 color photographs, 40 in-depth building case studies, and 7 municipal case studies of Berlin, Tokyo, London, Portland, Chicago, Toronto, and New York. This book includes an opening essay by William McDonough, an architect and leader of the sustainable development movement, and details the ecological benefits, technical requirements, architectural history, and design possibilities of vegetated rooftops.

A deep understanding of the implications of green roof retrofit is required amongst students and practitioners to make the decisions and take the actions needed to mitigate climate changes. Green Roof Retrofit: 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. Examples are used from the Americas (North and South and Canada), Oceania, Asia and other European countries.The book describes the multiple criteria which inform decision making and how this provides a way forward for making better decisions about green roof retrofit in different countries and climates.

Green Roof Systems goes beyond the fashionable green roof movement and provides solid information on building accessible space, often as important public space, over structure. It offers brief coverage of the entire process, including planning and collaboration, and focuses on the technical aspects of these roof systems, their components, and their applications.

The aim of this book is to bring together multidisciplinary research in the field of green infrastructure design, construction and ecology. The main core of the volume is constituted by contributions dealing with green infrastructure, vegetation science, nature-based solutions and sustainable urban development. The green infrastructure and its ecosystem services, indeed, are gaining space in both political agendas and academic research. However, the attention is focused on the services that nature is giving for free to and for human health and survival. What if we start to see things from another perspective? Our actions shall converge for instance to turn man-made environment like cities from heterotrophic to autotrophic ecosystems. From landscape ecology to urban and building design, like bricks of a wall, from the small scale to the bigger landscape scale via ecological networks and corridors, we should start answering these questions: what are the services that are we offering to Nature? What are we improving? How to implement our actions? This book contains three Open Access chapters, which are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Multidisciplinary treatment of the urgent issues surrounding urban pollution worldwide Written by some of the top experts on the subject in the world, this book presents the diverse, complex and current themes of the urban pollution debate across the built environment, urban development and management continuum. It uniquely combines the science of urban pollution with associated policy that seeks to control it, and includes a comprehensive collection of international case studies showing the status of the problem worldwide. Urban Pollution: Science and Management is a multifaceted collection of chapters that address the contemporary concomitant issues of increasing urban living and associated issues with contamination by offering solutions specifically for the built environment. It covers: the impacts of urban pollution; historical urban pollution; evolution of air quality policy and management in urban areas; ground gases in urban environments; bioaccessibility of trace elements in urban environments; urban wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal; living green roofs; light pollution; river ecology; greywater recycling and reuse; containment of pollution from urban waste disposal sites; bioremediation in urban pollution mitigation; air quality monitoring; urban pollution in China and India; urban planning in sub–Saharan Africa and more. Deals with both the science and the relevant policy and management issues Examines the main sources of urban pollution Covers both first-world and developing world urban pollution issues Integrates the latest scientific research with practical case studies Deals with both legacy and emerging pollutants and their effects The integration of physical and environmental sciences, combined with social, economic and political sciences and the use of case studies makes Urban Pollution: Science and Management an incredibly useful resource for policy experts, scientists, engineers and those interested in the subject.