How an 8-acre green roof atop the Javits Center is boosting NYC’s biodiversity
It’s migratory bird season, and ecologists are cataloging the large number of birds that stop and refuel in New York during journeys that can reach up to 1,000 miles. On a recent Thursday afternoon at one of these pit stops, crickets drowned out the metallic grind of heavy construction and roaring traffic in Midtown.
“ birds were piling up as people were walking into conventions,” said Dustin Partridge, director of conservation and science at the NYC Audubon. Green roofs offer benefits beyond lush aesthetics, such as good habitats for wildlife pushed out of urban areas and resiliency against flooding and heat. According to the Nature Conservancy, New York City has about, representing less than 1% of the potential building top spaces available.
This illustration represents the most common design of a green roof, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, though not all the layers shown are found on every green roof.Once the clean water passes through, a layer below retains the fluid to delay potential run-off or directs the water toward a drainage layer. The drainage layer looks like a synthetic mat or gravel. It primarily diverts water off the roof and slows down stormwater on its way to the sewer.
The Javits farm is irrigated by stormwater that is captured, measured, treated in underground tanks that pump the water back up to the roof.“Being on municipal water means that you're always adding a small amount of disinfectant to your soil – chlorine,” Ashmore said. “The type of farming that we're doing is really cultivating a bacterial, biologically active soil, and if you're constantly adding little bits of disinfectant over time, you are hindering my ultimate goal as a farmer.
On approximately seven acres of sedum, about 160 herring gull nests have maxed out their colony, according to NYC Audubon. On the remaining acre of farmland and food forests, colorful migratory birds use the roof as a resting spot as they travel as far north as Toronto and Florida to the south. The varieties include yellow-greenThe birds feast on the grasshoppers, spiders and ants that are attracted to the green roof.
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