Urban creep increases the risk of flooding
Far too many people have experienced local flooding in recent months caused by extreme weather. One problem is surface water – with so many hard surfaces in urban areas, it doesn’t have anywhere to go and the result is localised flooding. The cause in part is the loss of green land in built up areas – as vegetated areas are built on or paved over, the typical urban street struggles to cope in periods of heavy rainfall.
A new report has found that Edinburgh is losing the equivalent of 15 football pitches of green land every year, more than half of which is due to urban creep – that’s the loss of permeable surfaces such as flower beds and lawns.
The team of researchers from NERC Centre for Ecology looked at changes in the urban landscape of Edinburgh over the last 25 years. Commissioned by the Centre of Expertise for Water, the study looked at two aspects of urbanisation; urban creep and urban expansion. With the help of aerial photos from 1990, 2005 and 2015, researchers were able t…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Climate Change Garden to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.