Green roof: an analysis of vegetable species influence the rain water retention

Abstract

As the urban world population grows, fact that’s noticed in Brazil as well, the urban problems become recurrent, for example the rain floods. Alternative actions to minimize the environmental impacts of the urbanization have to be implemented, the use of green roofs is one option, focusing on reducing the rain water flow. A few studies show the capacity of green roofs to retain rain water flow, without mentioning the kind of vegetation. The objective of this study is to show how the vegetation species affects on the rain water retention in the city of Curitiba. The present study tested six different vegetal species: Bulbine frutescens, Tradescantia zebrina varition Purpusii, Sedum mexicanum, Callisia repens, Arachis Repens and Zoysia tenuifolia, analysing the results is possible to see that there’s a significant variation on the water retention accordingly to the vegetation species, the Bulbine frutescens has proven to have the best performance among all analised species.