DDC plants First ON-CAMPUS GREEN ROOF
By: Marina Barsoum
The Desert Development Center (DDC) built an experimental green roof on campus that helps the growth of healthy vegetables, absorbs unfavorable gasses and offers a healthy environment for insects.
“The green roof has environmental benefits such as having a cooling effect on the rooms below, creating a habitat for bees and insects and absorbing [Carbon Dioxide], expanding urban green space as well as offering a space to grow fruits and vegetables,” explained Martina Jakolski, senior manager at the DDC.
Jakolski said the Research Institute for a Sustainable Environment (RISE) research team, built the AUC green roof in June 2013 on the roof of the Site Office Building in the New Cairo campus. The DDC will soon change its name to RISE.
Jakolski spoke about the benefits and the importance of having green roofs saying that RISE is developing a teaching and learning approach called Living Learning Laboratory in which campus facilities such as the green roof serve as spaces where AUC students can collect data and learn in practical ways.
The manager added that professor Arthur Bos who teaches environmental biology, is RISE’s partner for this semester, and that the institute enables students from the class to do fieldwork on the green roof. They measure plant growth and water use efficiency, she said.
Yara Moustafa, research associate at DDC who has worked in the green roof project, said that their purpose in the center is to establish sustainable areas on campus.
“We thought of having [a] green roof to have more green areas on campus, we are one of the first people to build a green roof in Egypt; and actually we are experiencing how such roofs can work [here],” said Moustafa.
Moustafa added that equipment and materials used in the project were bought from the US, as they were not found in Egypt.
Jakolski and Moustafa said that this project, including all materials and construction for all systems, costs around $10,000.
Moustafa stressed on the fact that the fund was taken from the budget of the DDC and not from AUC.
According to Jakolski, the DDC/RISE is testing different green roof technologies such as raised wooden planters, extensive green roof systems (planting directly on roof with roof protection layers), aquaponics (a closed system with fish) and hydroponics (planting without soil).
She also added that RISE is testing different soil replacement media mixes.
“We are also measuring the water holding capacity of different media mixes, the effect of the nutrients in the irrigation water from the fish tank on plant growth as opposed to tap water, as well as the feasibility and efficiency of all systems,” explained Jakolski.
Moustafa said that they have started to work on this project since Jan. 2013; so it took the team working on the project almost a year to accomplish it.
“The roof is now open to the whole community, and last week the whole center celebrated the opening of the green roof; and in the party we were eating tomatoes that were planted in the roof. So it felt very rewarding to see the seeds of your hard work,” said Moustafa.
The RISE research team is assisted by Melle Patrick from the US Forest Service and Peter Ensign, a US Forest Service Consultant from Washington-based company DC Green Works.
