A City Under the Sedums: Ecosystem Services and Adoption of Vegetated Roofs in Atlanta, Georgia

The city of Atlanta, Georgia is often referred to as the city in the forest because almost half of its area is covered in urban tree canopy. Unfortunately, urbanization is threatening the canopy. I posit if rooftops can offset lost functions from urban canopy loss. Atlanta is surprisingly far behind cities such as Portland, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. when it comes to vegetated roof implementation. Several precedent studies highlight benefits and explore their potential, while projective design calculates the ecosystem services from a typical 20,000 square foot extensive vegetated rooftop and extrapolates results into different adoption rates throughout the city. While vegetated roofs cannot offset the loss of urban trees one for one, they are an excellent option for urban areas to supplement the existing canopy. Future research can use more extensive computer models to gain real results and support the idea of vegetated roof policy for the city of Atlanta.