Quamash EcoResearch
Ecological research in support of restoration and conservation
Pollinators and native plants on urban green roofs
Urban green roofs sown with native plant species have the potential to supply habitat for urban animals, including pollinators, but the plant-pollinator communities that assemble on urban rooftops are still little studied. Since 2021, we have monitored the developing community on several "prairie rooftops" created and maintained by Amazon.com. These rooftops have very high native plant richness per unit area, and we document the pollinators visiting these flowers many floors above the streets of downtown Seattle.
To date, we find a slowly assembling community dominated by large social bees and by hoverflies. Future work will compare the assemblages on rooftops with plant-pollinator communities from the nearby south Salish prairies, the source of many of the native plants growing on the "prairie" rooftops.