Resource Image

Green Infrastructure/Green Roofs (Project Eddie)

Author(s): St. Thomas the Apostle School Greg Reiva

St. Thomas the Apostle School

373 total view(s), 80 download(s)

0 comment(s) (Post a comment)

Summary:
Runoff in urban areas is an increasingly important issue when it comes to water quality. It is a major hydrologic issue in New York City, as urban infrastructure creates excess runoff and impervious surfaces decrease the infiltration rate of land…

more

Runoff in urban areas is an increasingly important issue when it comes to water quality. It is a major hydrologic issue in New York City, as urban infrastructure creates excess runoff and impervious surfaces decrease the infiltration rate of land surfaces. This excess runoff, which often times carries with it pollutants and contaminants, has proven to create water quality issues. It has become ever more critical to try to mitigate the influx of runoff into our waterways. Urbanization increases runoff, and in NYC 64% of the area is impervious. In this module students will explore green roofs as a potential solution to the environmental impacts of increased precipitation brought on by climate change. They will evaluate data collected from studies on 15 green roofs from different areas of the US and other countries, as well as historical precipitation data from Central Park in NY to illustrate how precipitation patterns are changing and if we need to use green infrastructure, such as green roofs, to combat the symptoms of climate change. Students will also use Model My Watershed , a watershed-modeling web app, to analyze real land use data, model storm-water runoff and water-quality i

Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 28 Apr 2023 doi:10.25334/CDDT-D610 - cite this

Adapted from: Green Infrastructure/Green Roofs (Project Eddie) v 1.0

Contents:

Description

This module can give students an idea of what solutions are available to help address the problems caused by excess runoff. Students will address how green roofs impact environmental issues such as water quality, air quality, biodiversity and public health. The module promotes student learning by having students look at a large dataset of annual rainfall in Central Park, NY, and make their own decisions about how to edit down that data in order to evaluate how the rate of annual rainfall has been changing recently.

Students will have the opportunity to work with a user-friendly web app that uses professional-grade models to simulate hypothetical 24-hour storms and create their own plan for implementation of various types of green infrastructure. They will also use the model to see how rainfall intensity impacts percent runoff and to evaluate the effectiveness of different forms of green infrastructure on reducing the loading rate of total suspended solids, an indicator for water quality.

Project EDDIE Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry & Exploration) is a community effort aimed at developing teaching resources and instructors that address quantitative reasoning and scientific concepts using open inquiry of publicly available data. Project EDDIE modules are designed with an A-B-C structure to make them flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

Cite this work

Researchers should cite this work as follows: