Monitoring the St.George Rainway Co-Benefits
Urban Heat Island Mitigation and Biodiversity
Kim Nguyen, Ian Russell, Savannah Shirley, Aubrie Verleur, Anson Wong
Objectives
Curate a robust data collection methodology that will accurately track the changes in biodiversity and the local urban heat island (UHI) effect of the St. George Rainway.
Develop a monitoring plan to measure the biodiversity and UHI effect before and after implementing the Rainway.
Propose analysis techniques that assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the Rainway to provide co-benefits.
Next Steps
We hope our monitoring plan can demonstrate the St. George Rainway’s success in providing co-benefits to the community. We are confident that our monitoring plan will accurately measure the changes to the UHI effect and biodiversity within St. George Street. We hope these results can be used to communicate the benefits provided by the Rainway to the public. Moreover, we hope our work can also provide guidance for developing and monitoring future green rainwater infrastructure projects.
Going forward we think that the continual protection of native late-successional growth and the removal of invasive species will be urgent in ensuring Jericho parks ecological integrity. It was evident in our data that Jericho Park's primary issue was its poor biodiversity. Invasive species such as English Ivy, threaten the diversity of other plant species and reduce the resilience of the ecosystem. Therefore, invasive species must be controlled to ensure the long term sustainability of the park.
