Examining the Microclimate Pattern and Related Spatial Perception of the Urban Stormwater Management Landscape: The Case of Rain Gardens

Abstract

This study examines the microclimate pattern and related spatial perception of urban green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) and the stormwater management landscape, using rain gardens as a case study. It investigates the relationship between different rain garden design factors, such as scale, depth, and planting design, and their effects on microclimate patterns and human spatial perception. Taking an area in Blacksburg, Virginia, as the study site, twelve rain garden design scenarios are generated by combining different design factors. The potential air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed/direction are analyzed through computational simulation. Additionally, feelings of comfort, the visual beauty of the landscape, and the overall favorite are used as an evaluation index to investigate people’s perception of various rain garden design options. The study found that a multilayer and complex planting design can add more areas with moderate temperature and higher humidity. It also significantly improves people’s subjective perception of a rain garden. Furthermore, a larger scale rain garden can make people feel more comfortable and improve the visual beauty of the landscape, highlighting the importance of designing larger and recreational bioretention cells in GSI systems. Regarding depth, a relatively flatter rain garden with a complex planting design can bring stronger air flow and achieve better visual comfort and visual beauty. Overall, by examining the microclimate pattern and related perception of rain gardens, this study provides insight into better rain garden design strategies for the urban stormwater management landscape. It explores the potential of rain garden design in urban GSI and responds to climate change.

Assessing the Benefits of Climate-Sensitive Design with Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Regeneration: A Case Study in Cheltenham, UK

“…Rain gardens, when incorporated into the 30% NBS design scenario, prove to be beneficial for improving thermal comfort values when in conjunction with trees and other greening strategies. The microclimatic benefits of the rain gardens found in this study are in accordance with a previous study in Virginia, USA, which analysed the microclimate impacts of 12 types of rain garden design scenarios [28]. This highlighted the role of such a typology of NBS in cities, which can be used not only for sustainable drainage systems and pollutant removal [56] but also for improving the microclimate [27].…”

“…In the past, concepts such as water-sensitive urban design and sustainable urban drainage systems, incorporating NBS, have been applied and studied by researchers and landscape architects for their ability to address water-related challenges in cities [27]. However, more recent research on bioretention systems or rain gardens has brought to the forefront their role in mitigating the UHI effect and enhancing thermal comfort [27,28]. For example, Kridakorn Na Ayutthaya et al ( 2023) [27] demonstrated that combining bioretention with mature trees can offer additional outdoor thermal comfort.…”

Pollutant accumulation and microbial community evolution in rain gardens with different drainage types at field scale

“…Especially RG-2A and RG-2B, the TOC contents of RG-2A were > 1.72 times more than RG-2B, while the highest was 1.98 times (3rd sampling). The runoff intercepted in the drained rain gardens migrated to the drainage pipeline, but this also caused runoff pollutants to migrate downward, and more organic pollutants accumulated on the soil surface 37 . However, due to the long interval between the two samplings, the stormwater in the infiltrated rain gardens had enough time to slowly infiltrate, the organic carbon in the facility gradually migrated downward, and the TOC contents level of the surface layer 0–20 cm was low.…”

Visual Perception Optimization of Residential Landscape Spaces in Cold Regions Using Virtual Reality and Machine Learning

“…In this study, after actual interviews with the subjects, it was learned that in the snow season environment, the low temperatures in the cold regions would largely affect people's walking thoughts, walking speeds, and modes of travel, which would affect the comprehensiveness of the experiment to a certain extent. Although this study explored the influence mechanism of visual perception in snow and non-snow seasons, the experiment did not consider the influence of physical factors such as the temperature [66], humidity [67], and light environment [68]. In future studies, VR experiments will be conducted in combination with a virtual environment warehouse [69,70], the aim will be to restore the same environmental conditions as the actual scenario and to dress the subjects with physiological indicator equipment, using physiological indicators as supplementary indicators for subjective evaluation, which will help to enhance the accuracy of the experiment.…”