The Green Roof concept initially arrived aiming to be used for the heat insulation of houses in Scandinavia in the 1800?s. The people who had lived in Scandinavia used the green roofs on their houses for this purpose and this approach then spread in North Europe. Nearly 30 years ago, people started to use green roofs on top of the modern buildings. As a result of intensive usage and lost green areas in the cities, the importance of green roofs has increased. Green roofs usually consist of small plants or ground covering plants, shallow growing medium, light-weight materials which are produced from recycled materials. Therefore, green roofs have low maintenance needs, easy installation opportunities and also they don?t bring too much weight to the building below.

Generally, while roof gardens are used for aesthetical purposes, green roofs are used for the ecological benefits that they bring to the city. Especially, green roofs are used for heat insulation on the buildings, reducing the energy costs of cooling and heating, storm water run-off control, reducing the urban heat island effect and waste water management.

In the Istanbul University Faculty of Forestry Landscape Architecture Department Green Roof Research Project study, our main aim is to discover the effects of green roofs on the environment, city, building and life quality in the building. Therefore, by establishing a test site, responses of a green roof in Istanbul climate conditions will be determined with multiple measurement devices. Thus, as a new concept in our country, the importance of green roofs in the urban ecosystem will be investigated.

In this research project a typical extensive green roof was established in October of 2010. During this first phase, we want to see how a green roof behaves in our Istanbul climate. With this study, environmental factors that have effects on green roofs and the relationship between the green roof and the building will be analyzed, including:

? Heat and temperature relationship between green roof and building
? Benefits of green roofs to the indoor environment
? Water quality which drains from roof
? Water retention ration
? Humidity in growing media
? Solar radiation and reflection parameters (to determine the benefits for reducing the urban heat island effect)
? Plant growing in Istanbul climate conditions
? Meteorological data analysis

To obtain the results with these parameters, a special data logging system was designed. Nearly 38-channel data logging is being accumulated and analyzed.