How Does Your Garden Flow? The Impact of Domestic Front Gardens on Urban Flooding
Journal Title: International Journal of Environment and Climate Change - Year 2016, Vol 6, Issue 2
Abstract
Aims: To quantify rainwater runoff from domestic front gardens as a consequence of increased impervious surface area and climate change impacts, thus allowing the runoff contribution from both newly and previously covered front gardens to be assessed in terms of the overall urban flood burden. Study Design: Numerical simulation of the runoff from a typical front garden in response to simulated rainfall events for four UK cities (Edinburgh, Manchester, London, and Exeter). Methodology: A typical front garden was simulated with varying areas of impermeable surface area (0%, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) to represent observed trends in garden paving. Storm events representing current design and projected future rainfall intensities were applied to each of the four cities. The resultant runoff volumes were then quantified. Results: Runoff is shown to be directly proportional to both the impermeable surface area and the rainfall intensity. Areas of impermeable paving can generate substantial volumes of runoff during a storm event which can contribute to localized flooding or add to the urban flood burden. Increased rainfall intensities and frequencies due to climate change are likely to increase runoff further. Conclusion: Domestic front gardens play a vital role in managing surface water runoff in towns and cities. Growing trends of paving over front gardens put this role in jeopardy, while increasing rainfall intensities due to climate change make this role increasingly important. The quantification of domestic front garden runoff provides a mechanism for facilitating the protection, and enhancement, of this important asset in terms of water and urban flood management.
Authors and Affiliations
D. A. Kelly
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP350484
- DOI 10.9734/BJECC/2016/23728
- Views 107
- Downloads 0
Will the Bagmati Basin’s Future Hydrological Change be linked with Global Climate Change Patterns?
The impact of climate change on society is one of the most serious challenges of this century. Observations have shown that the Earth’s hydrologic cycle has intensified during past century as the Earth’s temperatures hav...
Soil Water and Nitrogen Balance Study of Maize Using CERES Maize Model in DSSAT
Simulated studies indicated that early sowing i.e 15th April (D1) predicted highest grain yield during all the years from 1986-2013. Under irrigated conditions increasing levels of N predicted increased grain and stover...
Crop Co-efficient Values of Sunflower for Different Growth Stages by Lysimeter Study
The experiment was conducted on sunflower (variety BARI Surjomukhi-2) crop during the month of mid-November, 2014 to mid-March, 2015, in a lysimeter (dimension:1 m X 1 m X 1 m size) to measure crop evapotranspiration (ET...
Editorial: Toward a Sustainable and Resilient City – Development of Adaptation Measures to Climate Change
The earth is undergoing a warming process and we are facing an increasing possibility that extreme natural disasters are on the rise because of global warming as well as climate change. The increased temperature resulted...
Investigation of Groundwater Contribution to Stream Flow under Climate and Land Use Changes: A Case Study in British Columbia, Canada
Groundwater contributes a significant proportion of stream flow, and its contribution varies temporally throughout the year. The objective of this study was to investigate the temporal dynamics of groundwater contributio...