Abstract:

The population growth as well as the urbanization lead to an increase of the share of impermeable areas in the cities. This results in an increase of the surface runoff and as a consequence an increase of the risk of flooding. Therefore, there is a need to develop the strategies that can support the stormwater management in the urban areas. An example of such strategy are green roofs which become more and more popular in the recent years. The focus of the research was to investigate the water retention capacity of six extensive green roof models, the part of which had the substrates partially amended with hydrogel (the cross-linked potassium polyacrylate). The obtained results show that the green roofs may be an effective tool used for the stormwater management and thus the mitigation of the climate changes in the urban areas. Results show that the best retention capacity was exhibited by the relatively new vegetated model containing the substrate amended with hydrogel. But the results indicate that the efficiency of the hydrogel may decrease after some time.