Main Concept
The climate change you are used to hearing about is global warming, but this has local connections. For example, urban heat islands are when cities or urban areas experience greatly increased temperatures compared to the surrounding countryside. This mostly has to do with how surfaces hold heat. The asphalt used to build playgrounds and parking lots can easily absorb heat, but it struggles to release it back to the atmosphere. Wood, sand and soil has a much less difficult time than asphalt and brick. You may observe that in the summer, a wooden porch is much cooler to sit on than brick or concrete ledges. Runoff is also a much more serious problem on man made surfaces such as concrete because water is not able to be absorbed, causing parking lots to have overflows of water when it rains. Streets need drain pipes so that they are able to collect water from the road, which keeps the street from flooding when it rains. Plants are great ways to release heat and to absorb runoff. Also, using materials that can release heat can help. In this module we will explore how we can build with materials that allow for the water cycle to be less interrupted, to give plants a chance to thrive. This is important, since it can have chain reactions on our communities, state and country when we monitor how we are hurting the local environment.
