CEE Undergrad Nate Wright Wins Sustainability Research Award to Study “Green Walls”
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The UMass Amherst Libraries have awarded undergraduate Nate Wright of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department a $1,000 Undergraduate Sustainability Research Award to pursue his research on “Thermal Efficacy of Green Walls in Building Structures in the Northeast United States.” According to the UMass Amherst Libraries, the Undergraduate Sustainability Award promotes in-depth understanding of sustainability topics, research strategies, and the use of library resources, thus “providing participating students with vital skills they will carry into future academic and vocational endeavors.”
Wright says that “Green walls refer to the vertical growth of plants on man-made structures, either by intention or occurring spontaneously. Green walls can be categorized as either green façades, where climbing plants use the ground as substrate, or living walls, where substrate is arranged vertically by modules, hydroponics, or another growing medium.”
As Wright explains, “Climate change is one of the most threatening issues that humankind faces in the 21st century, and there is indisputable evidence that our planet is experiencing global temperature rise, shrinking of ice sheets and sea level rise, warming oceans, and extreme weather events at an alarming rate. Urbanization drives these changes and creates the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.”
The UHI effect means that concentrations of concrete buildings, jammed into small areas, can store up vast amounts of heat, which is then released into the atmosphere over time and contributes to global warming.
According to Wright, “One method to mitigate this issue is urban greening, specifically the construction of green walls. Green walls take advantage of unused vertical space on building exteriors and have many benefits such as building energy savings, stormwater retention, reduction of air and noise pollution, an improved local microclimate, biodiversity enhancement and habitat creation, the ability for food production, and improved mental health of occupants.”
Wright adds that green walls have been shown to be “fit-all solutions in many climate zones to reduce energy demand in both heating and cooling periods.”
According to Wright, this kind of urban greening is also an incredible way to beautify and value our spaces. “Valuing our spaces encourages us to preserve them,” says Wright, “and this act of preservation, value, and engagement with our surroundings rests at the core of sustainability.”
As Wright concludes, “My project investigates the thermal performance of a green wall in an underrepresented climate zone during the winter season. With more data on green walls, we can inform design to maximize the cost-effectiveness of these systems and work towards improving our environment and limiting energy usage in our built environment.”
Each Undergraduate Sustainability Research grant is funded by the award-winning UMass Amherst Libraries’ Sustainability Fund. (May 2023)
