Living turf crucial for mitigating ‘urban heat island’ effects

The results of a two-year research project undertaken by Hort Innovation shows clear evidence of the benefits of living turf for mitigating the ‘urban heat island’ effect in metropolitan areas.

The research, Conveying the benefits of living turf - Mitigation of the urban heat island effect, shows that as metropolitan areas grow and greenery is lost and replaced with hard constructed surfaces, these surfaces absorb and retain heat causing an ‘urban heat island’ effect impacts the health and wellbeing of residents.

Commenting on the findings, Hort Innovation’s Head of Research and Development, Byron De Kock advised “this information can be shared with communities, developers and governments to help them better understand how to manage urban landscapes and select land surface types that encourage the development of cool rather than hot cities.

“A choice of irrigated living turf can help to cool areas whereas bitumen and synthetic turf can create hot surfaces, which contribute to heat islands.”

Mark Siebentritt, Director of Edge Environment, who managed the research project, noted “extreme heat kills more people each year than any other natural hazard. Yet we keep building hot cities. This is partly because we don’t always understand the impact on urban heat of the materials we build with or how we manage the urban landscape”

The project team used modelling and simulation to determine how living and synthetic turf coverage can influence the temperature of urban environments.

Across study sites in NSW, Victoria and South Australia, the thermal performance of five landscape coverings were analysed: irrigated and non-irrigated living turf, short and long pile synthetic turf, and bitumen.

The irrigated natural turf measured 4.9°C cooler than the baseline average surface temperature.

Long pile synthetic turf was one of the hottest surfaces in the landscape measuring nearly 11°C hotter than the baseline average. These figures show that irrigated natural turf could be 15°C cooler than synthetic turf. Bitumen was also consistently hotter. 

The results across all Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide confirmed that living turf provides a cooling influence on urban air temperatures compared with selected synthetic materials.

Click here to view the research.