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Friday, 23 September 2016 17:33

Green roofs at the Burnley Campus

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This week Kris French and I visited the Burnley Campus at the University of Melbourne to talk to Rebecca Miller, Claire Fuller and Nick Williams about their Green Infrastructure research and to give seminars about our own research.  Burnley has a prize winning roof garden (shown here) which incoroporates different substrates (soil substitutes) at different depths.

 

 

The group researches which plants will survive and thrive under Melbourne conditions and which ones do most for environmental control within the building. Green roofs can help to insulate the building and the plants can also potentially clean up rain water and help with storm water surges. They also have a biodiversity garden which has native plants to see if this provides better for the local animals. We discussed potential colaboration with them since Kris and I are interested in how native plants will respond to increasing heat waves. One aspect of this is how urban plants will cope with a hotter climate and how we can maintain plants in our cities and towns.  At the Innovation Campus at UOW we have green roof space on the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre.

Read 2262 times Last modified on Tuesday, 12 February 2019 18:35
Sharon Robinson

Senior Professor at University of Wollongong

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