Developing Tools to Assess the Long-Term and Multifunctional Performance of Green Infrastructure: A Case Study in Detroit, Michigan
Abstract
Heavily urbanized cities, especially shrinking cities in the Rust Belt, require stormwater management improvements. Green infrastructure (GI) is a cost-effective approach that incorporates vegetation to reduce and treat stormwater runoff at its source through natural processes. GI vegetation also provides other ecosystem services; however, tools to monitor the long-term and multifunctional performance of GI are limited. To address this gap, we used data from the Wayne State University (WSU) station centrally located in Detroit and measurements from a retrofitted bioswale (type of GI) on the WSU campus to estimate the storage of stormwater in the bioswale. Additionally, we used repeat digital photography, an emerging near-remote sensing tool for phenology research, to track species-level greenness from static regions of interest (ROIs) in images of Detroit provided by the WSU weather station webcam. Peaks in storage were observed after precipitation events. Greenness did not appear to depend on precipitation. Moreover, storage in the bioswale was not linearly correlated with Detroit greenness. We suspect that the stormwater storage in this particular bioswale is more related to storm size than vegetation composition. Therefore, our results suggest that scaling GI stormwater management services may not be possible using remote sensing techniques. However, further research is still necessary to understand the interdependence between vegetation and other GI-related ecosystem services. The tools developed by this research can be used to monitor ecosystem services provided by GI which will inform engineering, policy, and planning about the long-term and multifunctional performance of GI to optimize future GI projects.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H23Q2136C
- Keywords:
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- 1813 Eco-hydrology;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGY