Aesthetic Evaluation of Commercial Rooftop Plants Based on Beauty Degree Evaluation Method: A Case Study of Chengdu City, China

Rooftop greening not only has ecological benefits such as energy savings, water conservation and air quality improvement but also has aesthetic and social benefits, especially for the rooftops of commercial complexes, which should meet people’s demand for beauty while satisfying sustainable urban development. In this paper, 80 samples of ten commercial rooftops in five old urban areas of Chengdu, China, were selected as the research objects, and the beauty values of different roof types and different plant community types were quantified by the aesthetic evaluation method, and the factors influencing the beauty values were investigated. The results showed that the highest average SBE value was for plant ornamental roofs (0.635), followed by recreational roofs (0.080), and the lowest average SBE value was for sports and fitness (-0.555);Mixed needle-broad communities had the greatest average SBE value (0.330), followed by mixed bamboo-broad communities (0.094), while pure bamboo forests had the lowest average SBE value (-0.716). The rooftop plant community’s aesthetic value was highly significant and correlated positively with the type of roof, the community’s growth type, its vertical structure, and the number of plants in the community.

Characterization and evaluation of UV-irradiation aging of urushi by micro-UV/Py-GC/MS system

Lacquer is the main raw material of lacquerware,while UV-irradiation is an important factor leading to its aging.In order to investigate the aging behavior of urushi lacquer film under UV-irradiation,and to propose parameters that can be used to evaluate its aging degree,the micro-UV/Py-GC/MS system has been applied in the present work to enrich and identify volatile products released by urushi film during aging on the one hand,and to investigate micro-amount and conventional urushi films with different aging degrees on the other hand,in addition,representative historical samples have also been investigated.Volatile products released by urushi film demonstrate that during UV-irradiation,polysaccharides wrapping urushiol polymer would be first degraded to generate furans and alcohols,and then urushiol polymer would undergo photo-oxidation and break of molecular chain,mainly generating oxidation products including aldehydes,organic acids,and ketones,as well as a small number of alkyl benzenes and hydrocarbons.Py-GC/MS analysis of micro-amount urushi films with different aging degrees indicates that UVirradiation is more destructive to aliphatic chains in urushiol polymer,but it also can accelerate the polymerization of microamount urushi film.Py-GC/MS analysis of conventional urushi films indicates that with the increase of aging degree,the total chromatographic peak area ratio of hydrocarbons to benzene derivatives gradually increases,the peak area ratio of 3-pentadecenyl-catechol to 3-pentadecyl-catechol gradually decreases,and the peak area ratio of aging products of urushiol to 3-pentadecyl-catechol gradually increases.The above parameters were further used to evaluate the aging degree of two urushicontained samples separately collected from the surface and interior of a carved lacquer panel in the Forbidden City,and evaluation results are in accord with the natural aging law and further verify the reliability of the proposed parameters.Research results of the present work can lay a foundation for the in-depth study of the UV-irradiation aging mechanism of urushi.