CityRoof -Analogous green roofs for cities in Wallonia

Why analogous green roofs? Green roofs are becoming increasingly popular owing to the unavailability of land for developing green infrastructure within the urban environment. Green roofs offer multiple ecosystem services, such as maintaining the biodiversity and ecological connectivity between natural areas, regulation of climate and water, and cultural services. Despite the benefits to the ecosystem, the development of green roofs is limited in the cities due to the financial cost. In this project, we unravel the complex interactions among ecological, built, and human environments for a novel ecosystem 'analogous green roofs'-and the way those interactions influence ecosystem delivery for the development of nature-based urban green infrastructures. An analogous habitat is an anthropogenic site hosting indigenous biodiversity due to its structural and functional resemblance to natural ecosystems. The project is conducted by 3 PhD students and studies the urban environment of cities in Wallonia region of Belgium.