Campus Green Roofs: Islands in the Sky

*This is a UNC Research Week Event*

If you’ve ever walked across Rams Head Plaza, you’ve walked across a green roof.

Green roofs, or vegetated roof systems, consist of membranes, soils, and plantings that are installed on top of buildings, typically designed to optimize energy conservation.

While you can’t take a stroll around all eight campus green roofs, they are still up there providing ecosystem services here on our highly developed campus. This talk begins with a crash course in green roofs – Sustainable Triangle Field Site students will explain the many benefits of campus green roofs. From there, Peggy Mullin will talk about how a UNC Center for Faculty Excellence/Lenovo grant has allowed her team to get a bird’s-eye view of green roofs. Using drones and traditional assessment methods, her team spent the past year and a half gathering data on the health of plants on these living roofs.

This is an in-person event. Refreshments at 5 pm, talk begins at 5:30 pm.