How to Reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect

Climate change is heavily affecting us as a civilization, where it be through flooding disasters, mass drought, severe weather, or, the most obvious of them all, the extensive heat. Heat is created by a wide variety of factors, including the burning of fossil fuels, the piling of landfills, and for what will be addressed in this reading, impermeable surfaces absorbing heat instead of allowing it to seep through or reflect. Impermeable surfaces are especially prevalent in places such as cities, where concrete and dark surfaces are very common. These surfaces do not allow light to reflect and escape a city or urban area, therefore making it sit around in the region until the heat builds up. This phenomenon is known as the urban heat island effect. 

The urban heat island effect is getting progressively worse as more impervious surfaces and dark surfaces are added to the environment of a city. The heat in cities, as documented by the article “No More Pavement! The Problem of Impervious Surfaces”, the nocturnal temperatures of urban areas can be 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in countryside environments, all due to the impermeable, non-reflective surfaces in the city. Warmer temperatures are also not the only problem associated with impervious concrete surfaces used for buildings and roads. Additionally, flooding and runoff is more likely to occur, as roads can not absorb water and send it into a storm drainage system. Another problem influenced by this impermeable concrete and these other impervious materials is that the water is more likely to become polluted for local ecosystems. When rainwater mixes with the ground of concrete or the sides of buildings, it picks up materials that pollute the water, like ground gases and oil. This may impact environments by causing the water that oceanic animals live in to become contaminated, to the point where they could die. This would ruin ecosystems in urban areas and impact us as consumers of parts of those ecosystems.

So, what are the solutions to this situation? For one, permeable materials could be used as a substitute for roads and buildings. Certain permeable concrete, like the products sometimes provided by Quikrete, allow for heat to not be trapped above the roads and be reflected out of a city, where concrete is so prevalent. Plus, porous roads also swallow any poisonous materials that rainwater could mix with, and allow runoff to easily enter into storm drainage. As well as this, green roofs can be utilized, roofs on buildings that reflect a color less likely to absorb, and rather reflect heat out of the environment. These green roofs could also be used for environments of certain species that typically reside in areas where cities are built. For us, we are using the first option to specifically prevent heat from staying in a city environment. We are comparing the effects of impervious concrete on roads to the effects of permeable pavement to see which type reflects heat more efficiently. After we figure this out, we will use online models to measure the specifics of how heat is reduced by permeable surfaces. Hopefully, this will influence some cities to use permeable pavements for their roads, for more reasons than one.