Bruce D Dvorak

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Verified

Bruce verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MLA, University of Illinois
• Professor at Texas A&M University

Wildlife are always on the lookout for food, water, clean air, shelter, or rest. Insects are integral to the global food web, and green roofs can provide for the food needs of wildlife. In this article, four strategies are discussed to feed and support insects on green roofs.

Discover how 12 acres of green roofs at Washington D.C.'s Munro Coast Guard Building exemplify sustainability for public infrastructure. Learn about stormwater management, biodiversity, and the economic benefits of a green roof that has thrived for over a decade. I share three planting innovations implemented at Munro from which urban designers and...

When green roofs are planted to maximize biodiversity, specifying native vegetation by seeding can be an effective and affordable approach to establishing green roof vegetation.

Plants have long supported human health, with modern medicine using them in over half of pharmaceuticals. Recently, their biophilic benefits, like reducing stress and lowering blood pressure, have gained recognition in hospitals. This article explores a case study of an outdated medical center transformed with plants, including rooftop greenery, fo...

Rain gardens share a similar plant palette with green roofs and are very effective at soaking up stormwater. In this article I explore several rain gardens for their creative and multifunctional use of plants.

Bird populations are an indicator of ecosystem health. Birds are in decline worldwide primarily due to the destruction and degradation of their habitat by humans. By design, green roofs can be planted to feed and shelter birds. This article reviews how green roofs have been planted to recover habitats for feeding birds. https://livingarchitecturem...

Living wall systems can generate multiple human health and environmental benefits. Living wall modules have typically been made from materials such as geotextiles, plastics, and metal. In this pilot study, sheet metal by-products from the automotive industry were transformed into three hundred modular living wall system (MLWS) planters. The cooling...

To maximize ecosystem services, green roofs are being planted with greater plant diversity to better support biodiversity. This article looks at seven steps to re-innovate green roofs for biodiversity.

Identifying plants that naturally adapt to heat and drought stress in any biogeographic region may be as simple as visiting a nature preserve. In this article learn how plants, native to glades, barrens and alvars may harbor a variety of species that thrive on green roofs with only marginal use of water. These “habitat templates” can inform which p...

Discover how to design biodiverse green roofs that attract and support dragonflies. Learn about the importance of water, stones, and flowering plants in creating dragonfly habitats on green roofs. Explore case studies and expert insights. https://livingarchitecturemonitor.com/issues/#2023

K-12 schools, universities and local businesses are great places to have edible and healing rooftop plants which provide a wide variety of educational and edible benefits. Take a tour of these diverse projects and learn what they have to offer.

Green roofs grow in almost every climate on earth. While a green roof is a universal concept, green roofs are most beneficial when they are planted with flora that have a long history in the region. After all, it is the native vegetation that the native fauna is in search of to feed, rest, breed, and nest. For these reasons, it makes a lot of ecolo...

Green roofs have gained much attention as a modern roofing surface due to their potential to deliver many environmental and social benefits. Studies have indicated that different GR designs deliver different ecosystem services, and there are important factors that affect GR performance. This article reviewed significant factors that influence GR pe...

In their own unique way, all things live in relation to water and sunlight (Patchett and Wilhelm 1999). This is a “first principle” for life on earth. Plants, living on green roof ecosystems, are no exception to this reality. Resilient green roofs are designed to be maintained with an agreeable pairing of vegetation with green roof substrates, sunl...

Grasses and pollinators go together like summer and hot weather. However, one might not intuitively think that grasses attract pollinators because most grasses lack the bold floral display of wildflowers. Although all grasses flower, many native grasses have small flowers that look like seeds, and many are quite beautiful. Grasses are pollinated th...

Spring is on the rise in the Northern Hemisphere as wildflowers begin to unfold their annual ultraviolet “light show.” Birds and bees see some of the same colors we can see, plus more. Although humans can’t see the solar spectrum called ultraviolet light, the eyes of birds and bees can, and it allows them to roam across landscapes in search of nect...

How green roofs can be designed to be resilient to changes in climate. The article provides details and examples from Ecoregional Green Roofs: Theory and Application in the Western USA and Canada

The aim of this study was to determine if local or regional native plants might be suitable for use on a custom living wall system (LWS) located in a humid subtropical climate. Nineteen taxa of plants native to the ecoregion or adjacent ecoregions were installed into 297 custom-designed modules fabricated from galvanized sheet metal by-products. Th...

This chapter presents case studies of four conservation sites and eight green roofs located in the Desert Southwest and montane semi-arid ecoregions. Although precipitation in the deserts is generally limited to 100–300 mm annually in lower elevations, the region has one of the world’s most diverse desert vegetation. The monsoon season arrives in t...

This chapter covers ecoregional case studies located within the Intermontane Plateaus. Ecoregions include semi-arid grasslands located in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, the Columbia Plateau, the Salt Lake Valley, and Basin and Range geographic regions. This is a large geographic area (multi-state) and is ecologically complex as topographic ele...

This chapter examines four case studies of conservation sites and nine green roofs located in the Shortgrass Prairie and Rocky Mountain ecoregions. The shortgrass prairie once covered the Great Plains from the Texas Panhandle in the south to Alberta, Canada, in the north, and from western Kansas in the east to Montana in the west. With 300–400 mm o...

Chapter 11 provides a synthesis of and commentary about ecoregional green roofs informed by the case studies in Part II. Discussions address critical factors outlined in Chap. 2 such as the conservation of native plant communities, the use of native vegetation on green roofs, biodiversity, maintenance, water for irrigation, and microclimates. This...

This chapter investigates the theoretical background of environmental and ecological factors that can be used to inform the design of ecoregional green roofs. Ecoregions are defined by major or minor delineations of plant communities and their interactions with other resident or transient organisms. By observing and learning how native vegetation a...

This chapter presents case studies of five conservation sites and nine green roofs mainly located in the Puget Lowland ecoregions of western Washington state, and foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The landscape is geographically complex with many diverse ecoregions such as coniferous forests, mixed forests, prairie-oak ecosystems, rocky balds, we...

This chapter presents case studies of four conservation sites and 11 green roofs located in the broadly coastal ecoregions of western California. Geographically complex, California’s many ecoregions are differentiated by topography and microclimate along the coast. This chapter focuses on the chaparral/shrub/meadow/and dune ecoregions from San Fran...

This chapter covers case studies of four conservation sites and nine green roofs located in the Willamette Valley ecoregions of western Oregon. The region is geographically complex with multiple ecoregions including prairies, rocky outcrops, oak woodlands, mixed woodlands, forests, wetlands, and riparian habitats. Historically, grasslands were wide...

This chapter introduces ecoregional green roofs by discussing the development of native plant communities, the history of modern green roofs, and some observations about ecoregional green roofs. It examines the development of the natural vegetation in the western U.S. and Canada and the kinds of plant communities that make up ecoregions appropriate...

This chapter presents case studies of four conservation sites and seven green roofs located in western British Columbia in the ecoregions of the Fraser Lowlands and Vancouver Island. The region is geographically complex with remnants of forested, savanna, and grassland ecoregions that once populated the Fraser River delta and parts of Vancouver Isl...

This chapter presents case studies of three tallgrass prairie conservation sites and nine ecoregional green roofs located in the Coastal Plains and Interior Lowlands of North America. Prairies were once one of the top ten ecologically rich ecosystems in the world with over 300 species of forbs and 70 species of grasses native to the tallgrass prair...

This book studies the application of green roofs in ecoregions of the western United States and Canada. While green roofs were intended to sustain local or regional vegetation, this volume describes how green roofs in their modern form are typically planted with a low-diversity mix of sedums from Europe or Asia. The authors demonstrate how in the w...

Urban agriculture (UA) has the potential to benefit inner-city communities, by reducing food transport distance, increasing awareness of how food is produced, and by improving the nutrition, health, and economic status of the same communities. In this study, green beans, cantaloupe, eggplant, squash and tomatoes were grown in a rooftop garden. Resu...

Green and living walls are an old idea made anew through the use of conventional construction materials used in new and creative ways. There is now a broad market for mass-produced prefabricated living wall systems that are made from PVC, metal, and or geotextiles. There exist hydroponic living walls made from geotextiles and fabric materials, rigi...

Although there is a large body of previous studies on the cooling effect of green roof s on urban heat islands (U HIs), moreempirical studies with an experimental setting measuring the role of green roof on mitigating urban heat should beconsidered. The purpose of this research is to determine the air temperature differ ence betwee n green and bare...

Regulating lines are visible or implied lines used to compose and construct artifacts, buildings, landscapes or other objects. In landscape architecture, regulating lines have been used from antiquity. During the renaissance, for example, many French formal gardens were organized with symmetry and Euclidean geometry as organizing elements. These fo...

Urban agriculture is practiced in a variety of forms and scales. Practices range from the production of edibles in small to large lots or plazas, to vertical production on walls and rooftops. Produce is grown in rural locations and sold at farmer's markets in urban locations or grown onsite. Efforts to produce, maintain and sell products of urban a...

This paper reviews literature from a variety of living roof and living wall publications including peer-reviewed journal and conference papers as well as a few descriptive publications. A review of the energy and cooling benefits of living roofs and walls in the U.S. and abroad demonstrates that they can achieve dramatic energy conservation benefit...

This book documents a high-impact service learning project produced during the spring semester of 2014. It was part of a community initiative to help achieve the University’s Action 2015: Education First Commitment to interdisciplinary learning. To accomplish this goal, faculty from three graduate programs in the College of Architecture combined as...

Green roofs have been heralded as a “sustainable building practice” in cities throughout the world as one response to mounting environmental stresses. A range of stressors plus erosion of aesthetics and human well being in urban areas have initiated policies and practices often with incentives to develop green infrastructure such as green roofs. Th...

The presence of vegetation is thought to reduce loss of soil substrate after roof installation; however, few attempts have been made to quantify this effect. Twelve green roof modules placed at a 2% slope were used to quantify the effect of wind, precipitation intensity ,vegetation and vegetation type on modular green roof substrate depth. The pres...

Landscape performance, as defined by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, is “the measure of efficiency with which landscape solutions fulfill their intended purpose and contribute toward sustainability.” It is becoming a popular research focus in recent years; and its theoretical framework is built upon the sustainability triad: environment, eco...

The quantification of ecological services from green roofs in Texas is emergent and proving advantageous. Identification of candidate plant species for green roofs in Texas and similar hot and humid subtropical climates is limited. Three extensive green roof systems and research sites in Texas employed different water conserving techniques ranging...

Background and aims The application of green roof technology has become more common in the central, northwestern and eastern USA, and is now being employed across the southern USA as well. However, there is little research in the literature that evaluated plant survival on unirrigated green roofs in subtropical climates that experience frequent dro...

Modular green roofs were investigated to better understand surface and membrane level temperature expectations of unirrigated green roofs during hot summer conditions in south-central Texas. We used three succulent monocultures, Sedum kamtschaticum, Delosperma cooperi, Talinum calycinum syn. Phemeranthus calycinus and one unplanted control module,...

The German FLL Guidelines for green roofs are designed to inform about state-of-the-art performance expectations for green roofs. North America is experiencing steady growth in the green roof market and has no single-source set of standards or guidelines; therefore there is a need to identify what type of guidance may be lacking. Seven domains of k...

Installation of intensive and extensive green roofs is becoming popular for reducing runoff from impervious surfaces in many cities around the world. Most studies on runoff quality from green roofs have been conducted in cooler northern climates. We examined the losses and gains of nutrients, cations and selected anions in planted and unplanted gro...

A green roof is a vegetated roof or deck designed to provide urban greening for buildings, people, or the environment. Made popular across Europe over the past few decades, green roofs are now becoming more familiar to North Americans as some cities have built green roof pilot projects and adopted incentives for using green roofs or even require th...

Continuing Education Article for Fabric Architecture Magazine Learning objectives After reading the article you will be able to: List the different uses for geotextiles in green roofs. Know when to use geogrids on sloping roofs. Explain the difference between woven and non-woven geotextiles.

According to scientific research, the choices made when designing buildings and landscapes and selecting products applied to the land directly affect human health. As a way of addressing the issue, landscape designers now rely on various solutions such as the use of fabrics. In fact, there is a small but growing trend of landscape treatments called...

Just recently, Washington has dedicated a green roof demonstration project for the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) located on the top of their headquarters building in the heart of D.C.'s Chinatown. Prior to the realization of the project, a Green Roof Task Force of ASLA members convened and discussed the role landscape architects w...

The designers can play an important role in the planning, design, and current research that is shaping the green roof industry. A green roof design system may be designed as a retrofit to an existing building or a new installation to a planned building, and both options require nearly the same principle design processes. The design team may typical...

The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum's 2,400 S.F. green roof demonstration garden displays a wide range of green roof technology. The display presents visitors with a green roof demonstration garden that reveals a diversity of green roof systems. The demonstration garden features four progressively thicker green roof systems including wetland, extensi...

Printout. Thesis (MLA)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-95).

Early green roof cooling and energy reduction research in North America took place in Canada and the northern latitudes of the United States, where green roofs reduced rooftop temperatures by 70% to 90%. Less is known about green roof technology in the southern Untied States; where energy demand for cooling buildings is high, and the urban heat isl...