Dive Brief:

• A new Walmart in Hayden Island Meadows, near Portland, Ore., is a university research lab.
• Portland State University has a Green Building Research Laboratory that will install a 40,000-square-foot green-roof garden and monitor its performance in cutting heat, filtering water and other functions.
• The other 52,000 square feet of roof will be finished with conventional white membrane and will be the comparison.

Dive Insight:

This gives researcher a great opportunity to monitor what their roof is doing and what changes it's making instead of having to guess. The project also will be plugged into a green roof in Chicago, and that will allow researchers to compare differences in effects between the two climates.