Green roofs are considered an important strategy for adapting to climate change in cities, as they can help to reduce local air temperatures through evaporative cooling. In order to provide this positive ecosystem service, sufficient water availability must be ensured. Using the so-called 'recession analysis', in which the decrease in evapotranspiration is observed during drying events, water storage levels of an extensive green roof were quantified. For this purpose, latent heat flux density data were used, which were measured over the period 2015-2020 using eddy covariance. The results show that the water storage capacity of the green roof was significantly greater (factor of ≥27) than the modeled values for sealed urban surface uses.
Markolf, N., Heusinger, J. and Weber, S., 2024. Water storage levels and water storage capacity of an extensive green roof quantified from multi-year eddy covariance measurements. Ecological Engineering, 206: 107333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2024.107333