Assessing Green Infrastructure Function Across North America with Citizen Scientists and Affordable Sensors
Abstract
Cities across the globe are rapidly building green infrastructure to mitigate stormwater problems. However, few studies have compared the performance of green infrastructure across varying climates and geographies. We seek to determine how green infrastructure characteristics, such as design, maintenance, age, climate, and physiography, influence the water capture and heat dissipation functions of bioswales. In order to compare green infrastructure across cities, we have developed a Rapid Green Infrastructure Assessment Protocol for citizen scientists, which is fully transferrable between studies and regions.
We have studied the performance of over 50 bioswales across 5 North American cities (New York City, Vancouver, Buffalo, Toronto, and San Francisco) through a partnership with the Earthwatch Institute and HSBC. At each of seven citizen science events, participants performed our Rapid Green Infrastructure Assessment Protocol and installed Particle Electron-based sensors for long-term monitoring of 10 bioswales. We will present the transferrable Rapid Green Infrastructure Assessment Protocol as well as initial results from the first year of the project. Results from the first several events indicate that bioswale age and maintenance have a substantial impact on water capture function.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H52G..05S
- Keywords:
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- 0493 Urban systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY