Earthcache at West Woods Green Roof
The Green Roof is in The West Woods, a 902 acre park in the Geauga Park District, located just south of Route 87 between Russell Center and Newbury. Per the park rules and regulation, the park is open between 6 AM and 11PM but I highly recommend daylight hours to fully appreciate the roof and informational signage and to visit the beautiful, family friendly Nature Center (10am to 5 pm). Ample parking is available at the Nature Center parking lot with only a short walk south on a concrete sideway to the Green Roof.
Hydrologic Cycle (Water Cycle) 
Precipitation, in the form of rain or snow that falls on land, is absorbed into the soils and plants to sustain life and into the ground water to recharge aquifers for future use. This absorption is called infiltration. This infiltration can only handle so much of the water at a time. The balance is surface runoff that enters rivers, streams, lakes and eventually the oceans. Through evaporation, and transpiration the cycle starts again.
Urbanization
Through the years man as paved over a large portion of land that was the infiltration medium in the hydrologic cycle. All the roads, parking lots, shopping malls, driveways and expansion of our cities have left us with a problem of surface runoff.
The problem
This excessive runoff impacts us in several ways. Surface runoff can pick up debris, chemicals, dirt, and other pollutants and flow directly to a lake, stream, river, wetland, or coastal water. Rain falling on an impervious surface creates 16 times more runoff then a farm meadow. This additional runoff increases erosion and destruction of vegetation along rivers and streams therefore increasing the erosion even more. Also this excess water runoff does not have a chance to recharge the ground water system that is an integral part of an efficient hydrologic cycle.
The solution
This is a massive and complex problem that will require a complex solution. The West Woods Green Roof is an illustration of one part of the solution. By turning the roof of a building into a virtual woodland meadow it achieves the benefit of the infiltration section of the hydrologic cycle. This technology has been around for centuries but I suspect that today’s roofs are constructed for a different reason then in centuries past. Early green roofs were built out of necessity. The sod was an effective material to keep out the elements. Many different materials are available today to build an effective roof for that same purpose but a green roof brings other benefits as presented in the display at the West Woods Green Roof. As noted in the Geauga Park District brochure this roof is the first in the Midwest United States with a 4/12 pitch and Tokyo Japan has mandated that building vegetation must be 20% of all new construction.
Earthcache questions
As with all earthcaches, it is question and answer time. Email the CO via Groundspeak.com with the answers to the following questions in order to validate you smiley.
1.) The sign at the Green Roof illustrates the construction steps in the building of the roof. Per the sign how many layers make up the completed roof?
2.) What are four benefits of the Green Roof?
3.) The Geauga Park District conducted a study comparing the rainwater runoff of the Green Roof and a nearby building with a standard shingle roof. What percentage decrease of runoff was the Green Roof vs. the shingled roof?
4.) Not mandatory but a non-spoiler photo of the green roof would be nice. It would be interesting to see the roof at different times of the year.
Thanks to Geauga Park District for granting permission for this earthcache.
Ref
URL: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html
Geauga Park District website
URL:http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/menuofbmps/index.cfm