How are community gardens and urban farms affecting the microclimates in urban environments? How will these green areas influence the impacts of climate change in urban environments? Other questions can be asked and research hypotheses developed based on the interests of the students.
In New York City as in other cities, there is an urban farm movement. People are growing food (and other non-edible plants) in empty lots and backyards and on roof tops. There may be many reasons contributing to this movement, including a desire to grow and eat locally grown food, greater control over how food is grown (reducing the use of pesticides and herbicides), and a desire to create a more aesthetic and pleasing urban environment. As part of creating more sustainable cities, determining how water moves in urban areas is a major concern. By creating more green spaces, the flow of water will change as a result of altering evapotranspiration, runoff, soil moisture and temperature, and air temperature. A wonderful project would involve students in doing a comparative study of different urban microclimates and modeling the water flow in these microclimates throughout the growing season.
Select 3 different environments
1. Rooftop garden/farm
2. Paved lot/yard
3. Ground level garden/farm
Measurement/data collection
1. Insolation
2. Rainfall
3. Air temperature
4. Relative humidity
5. Soil temperature
6. Soil moisture
Ideally we could get continuous measurements with a data logger. If this is not possible, we could
identify which ones could be collected through data loggers and which ones would be collected manually.
Data analysis/modeling
After collecting through all or a portion of the growing season, the data would be analyzed. We could
explore different types of models students could use. One that might be great is GAPS developed by
scientists at NASA Goddard for GLOBE. The model is run in Excel and downloadable
through soil.gsfc.nasa.gov/gaps/BASICG~1.htm.