Date of Award

Spring 2022

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2022 Kennedy M. Hill. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Studies Program

Abstract

Water-sensitive urban design is becoming increasingly important for urban water security and climate adaptation, especially as drought becomes more frequent and intense in semi-arid countries like South Africa. There is therefore more interest in multi-functional blue-green infrastructure, given its integration of urban water resource management, ecological services, as well as social amenity into one space. This paper explored the use of native Western Cape vegetation in the Rondevlei Park Pond in Rondevlei, Mitchells Plain to support multi-functionality. Based on literature, more than half of the native plants identified at the Pond provided at least one ecological service that attributes to one of the aforementioned multi-BGI components. Five of the native species are effective phytoremediators of 21 different contaminants ranging from anthropogenic chemicals to heavy metals. Moreover, all five species combined are able to remove Cape Town contaminants of emerging concern. Further research can be done in Cape Town to understand the use of native Western Cape plant species in BGI and ecosystem rehabilitation. For example, aside from studies on root structure in phytoremediation, there was limited information on the relationship between native plant root structure and soil porosity, or any other plant characteristics that might influence the quantity of stormwater infiltration.

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