Date of Award
Fall 12-16-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Geosciences
First Advisor
Dr. Jeremy Diem
Second Advisor
Dr. Dajun Dai
Third Advisor
Dr. Brian Meyer
Abstract
Green roofs can be an effective mitigation strategy to offset the environmental impact that urbanization has on the environment. The roof area for the city of Atlanta and for the Georgia State University campus was used to compare the effectiveness of green roofs at removing pollutants, abating stormwater runoff, and reducing the urban heat island at different scales. Results show that the warmest part of the city is the urban core with a mean of 33.5°C, which is also the area of the city with the highest percentage of impermeable surfaces at 91%. At the GSU scale, green roofs can reduce land surface temperature in the urban core up to 2.62°C, remove up to 73 kg of atmospheric pollutants annually, and reduce stormwater runoff by up to 32.3% annually. Results were less significant at the Atlanta scale due to the large amount of vegetated surfaces that already exist.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/7904009
Recommended Citation
Murphy, Sharon, "Assessing the Effectiveness of Extensive Green Roofs at Improving Environmental Conditions in Atlanta, Georgia." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2015.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/7904009