scholarly journals Reducing urban heat islands and improving the thermal comfort of residents: A nature-based solution

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
Tomislav Đorđević
Keyword(s):  
Spectral Analysis ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Complex Geometry ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Pollution Levels ◽  
Radiation Distribution ◽  
Urban Heat

The benefits of urban blue-green infrastructures are well known: they intercept airborne three-atom particles, thus reducing pollution levels; and they provide shade and cooling by means of evapotranspiration. The focus of this paper is to demonstrate methods such as remote sensing and multi-spectral analysis, which can be a very useful addition to the quantification of blue-green infrastructures for cooling and shading, especially in the highly complex geometry of city blocks. The basic aim of this research is to attempt to reduce urban heat islands and in this way to indirectly increase the comfort of living. A cause/ effect relationship between the envelope of built up structures and the solar radiation distribution on the environment was established by means of multi-spectral analysis, and an estimation was made concerning the lack of vegetation on a specific parcel/block (an important tool for urban planners). This state-of-the-art methodology was applied to the optimized prediction concept of vegetation resources. Now it is possible to create a model that will incorporate this newly-added urban vegetation into urban plans, depending on the evaporation potential that will affect the microclimate of the urban area. Such natural cooling can be measured and adapted and hence aimed at a potential decrease in temperature in areas with UHI emissions. As a case study, part of a seacoast urban block (Abu Dhabi UE,) was analysed with and without a street treeline and green façades and roofs. It was concluded that green infrastructure reduced the land surface temperature by up to 4.5˚C.

scholarly journals Urban heat island: Aerodynamics or imperviousness?

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. eaau4299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Li ◽  
Weilin Liao ◽  
Angela J. Rigden ◽  
Xiaoping Liu ◽  
Dagang Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Lower Atmosphere ◽  
Geographic Variations ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas

More than half of the world’s population now live in cities, which are known to be heat islands. While daytime urban heat islands (UHIs) are traditionally thought to be the consequence of less evaporative cooling in cities, recent work sparks new debate, showing that geographic variations of daytime UHI intensity were largely explained by variations in the efficiency with which urban and rural areas convect heat from the land surface to the lower atmosphere. Here, we reconcile this debate by demonstrating that the difference between the recent finding and the traditional paradigm can be explained by the difference in the attribution methods. Using a new attribution method, we find that spatial variations of daytime UHI intensity are more controlled by variations in the capacity of urban and rural areas to evaporate water, suggesting that strategies enhancing the evaporation capability such as green infrastructure are effective ways to mitigate urban heat.

Cooling Extent of Green Parks: A Case Study in Beijing

2014 ◽  
Vol 962-965 ◽  
pp. 2005-2017
Author(s):  
Wen Qi Lin ◽  
Xiang Qi Chang ◽  
Na Yan ◽  
Ting Yu
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Total Size ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Green Areas ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
Cooling Effects ◽  
Higher Temperature ◽  
Lower Temperature

Cooling effects of green areas are an effective way to mitigate the urban higher temperature caused by urban heat islands. The cooling extent goes beyond a green area’s boundary and extends into its surrounding area. However, measurement of the exact cooling extent and mechanism of such effects had remained unclear. Using Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images of Beijing, we have determined the lower temperature of green cooled areas by land surface temperature, identified green areas’ cooling extents, and evaluated the relation of cooling extents to green areas’ features. Results show that the total size of extended cooled areas is larger than that of total green areas, and the cooling extents and magnitudes are statistically related to the biomass, size and shape of green areas. This study has demonstrated the calculation of cooling extents, and provided an approach to the assessment of cooling effects.

MONITORING THERMAL POLLUTION SOURCES IN VORONEZH (RUSSIA) USING REMOTE SENSING DATA

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
Дмитрий Владимирович Сарычев ◽  
Ирина Владимировна Попова ◽  
Семен Александрович Куролап
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Land Surface Temperatures ◽  
Treatment Facilities ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
Industrial Zones

Рассмотрены вопросы мониторинга теплового загрязнения окружающей среды в городах. Представлена методика отбора спектрозональных спутниковых снимков, их обработки и интерпретации полученных результатов. Для оценки городского острова тепла были использованы снимки с космического аппарата Landsat 8 TIRS. На их основе построены карты пространственной структуры острова тепла города Воронежа за летний и зимний периоды. Определены тепловые аномалии и выявлено 11 основных техногенных источников теплового загрязнения в г. Воронеже, установлена их принадлежность к промышленным зонам предприятий, а также к очистным гидротехническим сооружениям. Поверхностные температуры данных источников в среднем были выше фоновых температур приблизительно на 6° зимой и на 15,5° С летом. Синхронно со спутниковой съемкой были проведены наземные контрольные тепловизионные измерения температур основных подстилающих поверхностей в г. Воронеже. Полученные данные показали высокую сходимость космических и наземных измерений, на основании чего сделан вывод о надежности используемых данных дистанционного зондирования Земли в мониторинговых наблюдениях теплового загрязнения городской среды. Результаты работ могут найти применение в городском планировании и медицинской экологии. The study deals with the remote sensing and monitoring of urban heat islands. We present a methodology of multispectral satellite imagery selection and processing. The study bases on the freely available Landsat 8 TIRS data. We used multitemporal thermal band combinations to make maps of the urban heat island of Voronezh (Russia) during summer and winter periods. That let us identify 11 artificial sources of heat in Voronezh. All of them turned out to be allocated within industrial zones of plants and water treatment facilities. Land surface temperatures (LST) of these sources were approximately 6° and 15.5° C above the background temperatures in winter and summer, respectively. To prove the remotely sensed temperatures we conducted ground control measurements of LST of different surface types at the satellite revisit moments. Our results showed a significant correlation between the satellite and ground-based measurements, so the maps we produced in this study should be robust. They are of use in urban planning and medical ecology studies.

Estimating the expansion of urban areas and urban heat islands (UHI) in Ghana: a case study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Buo ◽  
Valentina Sagris ◽  
Iuliia Burdun ◽  
Evelyn Uuemaa
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Urban Heat

scholarly journals Effect of Land Cover Fractions on Changes in Surface Urban Heat Islands Using Landsat Time-Series Images

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Chen ◽  
Anchang Sun ◽  
Ruiqing Niu
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Urban Heat Island ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Urban Heat Island Intensity ◽  
Heat Island ◽  
Impervious Surfaces ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
Surface Urban Heat Island

Man-made materials now cover a dominant proportion of urban areas, and such conditions not only change the absorption of solar radiation, but also the allocation of the solar radiation and cause the surface urban heat island effect, which is considered a serious problem associated with the deterioration of urban environments. Although numerous studies have been performed on surface urban heat islands, only a few have focused on the effect of land cover changes on surface urban heat islands over a long time period. Using six Landsat image scenes of the Metropolitan Development Area of Wuhan, our experiment (1) applied a mapping method for normalized land surface temperatures with three land cover fractions, which were impervious surfaces, non-chlorophyllous vegetation and soil and vegetation fractions, and (2) performed a fitting analysis of fierce change areas in the surface urban heat island intensity based on a time trajectory. Thematic thermal maps were drawn to analyze the distribution of and variations in the surface urban heat island in the study area. A Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis was used to extract the land cover fraction information. Then, six ternary triangle contour graphics were drawn based on the land surface temperature and land cover fraction information. A time trajectory was created to summarize the changing characteristics of the surface urban heat island intensity. A fitting analysis was conducted for areas showing fierce changes in the urban heat intensity. Our results revealed that impervious surfaces had the largest impacts on surface urban heat island intensity, followed by the non-chlorophyllous vegetation and soil fraction. Moreover, the results indicated that the vegetation fraction can alleviate the occurrence of surface urban heat islands. These results reveal the impact of the land cover fractions on surface urban heat islands. Urban expansion generates impervious artificial objects that replace pervious natural objects, which causes an increase in land surface temperature and results in a surface urban heat island.

scholarly journals Night Thermal Unmixing for the Study of Microscale Surface Urban Heat Islands with TRISHNA-Like Data

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Granero-Belinchon ◽  
Aurelie Michel ◽  
Jean-Pierre Lagouarde ◽  
Jose A. Sobrino ◽  
Xavier Briottet
Keyword(s):  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Image Resolution ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Regression Kriging ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
Land Covers ◽  
The City

Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) at the surface and canopy levels are major issues in urban planification and development. For this reason, the comprehension and quantification of the influence that the different land-uses/land-covers have on UHIs is of particular importance. In order to perform a detailed thermal characterisation of the city, measures covering the whole scenario (city and surroundings) and with a recurrent revisit are needed. In addition, a resolution of tens of meters is needed to characterise the urban heterogeneities. Spaceborne remote sensing meets the first and the second requirements but the Land Surface Temperature (LST) resolutions remain too rough compared to the urban object scale. Thermal unmixing techniques have been developed in recent years, allowing LST images during day at the desired scales. However, while LST gives information of surface urban heat islands (SUHIs), canopy UHIs and SUHIs are more correlated during the night, hence the development of thermal unmixing methods for night LSTs is necessary. This article proposes to adapt four empirical unmixing methods of the literature, Disaggregation of radiometric surface Temperature (DisTrad), High-resolution Urban Thermal Sharpener (HUTS), Area-To-Point Regression Kriging (ATPRK), and Adaptive Area-To-Point Regression Kriging (AATPRK), to unmix night LSTs. These methods are based on given relationships between LST and reflective indices, and on invariance hypotheses of these relationships across resolutions. Then, a comparative study of the performances of the different techniques is carried out on TRISHNA synthesized images of Madrid. Since TRISHNA is a mission in preparation, the synthesis of the images has been done according to the planned specification of the satellite and from initial Aircraft Hyperspectral Scanner (AHS) data of the city obtained during the DESIREX 2008 capaign. Thus, the coarse initial resolution is 60 m and the finer post-unmixing one is 20 m. In this article, we show that: (1) AATPRK is the most performant unmixing technique when applied on night LST, with the other three techniques being undesirable for night applications at TRISHNA resolutions. This can be explained by the local application of AATPRK. (2) ATPRK and DisTrad do not improve significantly the LST image resolution. (3) HUTS, which depends on albedo measures, misestimates the LST, leading to the worst temperature unmixing. (4) The two main factors explaining the obtained performances are the local/global application of the method and the reflective indices used in the LST-index relationship.

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