Manchester-based academics and The Mersey Forest have created a free online tool to help communities find out about the impacts of climate change on their own neighbourhoods. MCFly readers are encouraged to take it for a test-drive!

Dr Susannah Gill of The Mersey Forest www.merseyforest.org.uk and the University of Manchester and Dr Gina Cavan of the University’s Centre for Urban Regional Ecology (CURE) [website] have worked with colleagues to create a tool called STAR. It aims to help organisations and groups assess how green infrastructure such as trees, vegetation, waterways and lakes – can help neighbourhoods adapt to climate change by cooling surface temperatures and reducing runoff.

Dr Gill told MCFly that it emerged from models that she used in her PhD, which she did from 2003 to 2006. A key finding from this, that had been picked up by policy-makers, was that with an additional 10% green cover, local surface temperatures in cities could be held steady till the end of the 21^st century. The STAR tools take these models and have made them more user-friendly. The development of the tools started in June last year and was funded by an UE Interreg IVC project called Green and Blue Space Adaptation for Urban Areas and Eco Towns (GRaBS) http://www.grabs-eu.org/).

There is no registration process so as not to deter anyone from using it. At the end, when the results spit out, there is a feedback form. They hope to be able to use that feedback to produce a more polished and even-more-user friendly tool, if they can get funding.

The STAR tools are available at www.ginw.co.uk/climatechange/startools. MCFly will be trying to do it for Moss Side, and it would be wonderful to hear other readers experiences.

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

Disclaimer: MCFly sent a draft of this to Dr Gill for fact-checking (not a procedure we normally engage in).  The article came back seriously improved and is printed without alteration.  Which is a bit embarrassing, but there you have it…”