Water management of urban parks

Water management of the urban parks is a particular research direction in the frame of urban geology. Natural and antropogen factors affect these green sites, giving a special scientific importance of their investigation. Social relevance of these complex environments is also arising, since ability of tolerance of extrem heat events is highly supported by these green areas.

Points mentioned above were the base to introduce a new research project in 2016. Within the frame of this project, field studies have been started in 4 parks of Budapest from summer of 2016, which were supplemented by another one from 2017:

• Honvéd tér (square)(Pest [Eside of the Danube], downtown);
• Derkovits tér (Pest, suburb, garden area);
• Nagy Imre tér (Buda [Wside of the Danube], downtown);
• Vérhalom tér (Buda, garden area)
• Mátyás tér (Pest, downtown – from 2017)

After shallow geophysical measurements, one shallow drilling was established, in every park. Soil and groundwater (if available was) samples were collected for laboratory analysis.

Beside these field works, soil temperature and soil moisture measurements were started, and are being still in progress, at four different locations of a given park, every week. The locations were selected to represent different microclimatic conditions of the parks:

• a permanent sunny area of the park
• a permanent shady area of the park
• the southern borderline of the park facing the northern frontage of the surrounding houses
• the northern borderline of the park facing to the southern frontage of the houses

Our objective is better to understand behavior of urban parks under special conditions (e.g. during heat island effects), comparing green sites in the downtown and the suburb area on the one hand, and within a single park, on the other hand.

Project leader: Halupka Gábor
E-mail: halupka.gabor@mbfsz.gov.hu
Phone: +36 30 463 8909