Journal
FORESTS
Volume 12, Issue 8, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/f12081136
Keywords
urban park; forest; cooling effect; spatial analysis; LST; temperate continental climate; Wroclaw; Poland
Categories
Funding
- Department of Geodesy and Geoinformatics, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study analyzed the cooling effects of four urban parks in the city of Wroclaw using Landsat 8 data, demonstrating the role of parks in mitigating the urban heat island effect through various metrics and spatial statistics. The results provide new insights into the regulation of urban temperature in a medium-sized city with a continental climate.
Urban parks have been known to form park cooling islands (PCI), which can effectively alleviate the effect of urban heat islands (UHI) in cities. This paper presents results obtained for four different size parks in the city of Wroclaw, which is located in a temperate continental climate. The number of publications for urban areas located in this type of climate and cities is low compared to sites in hot and humid areas. Land surface temperature (LST) maps were developed from Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) data acquired during three hottest weather periods between 2017 and 2019. Metrics and spatial statistics characterising the four parks selected for the analysis based on their size were calculated. These included: perimeter, area, landscape shape index (LSI) and P-LC (forest area) park metrics, and Park Cooling Area (PCA), Park Cooling Efficiency (PCE), Park Cooling Gradient (PCG), Park Cooling Island (PCI) and Extended Park Cooling Island (PCIe) spatial indexes. The averaged PCIe values ranged from 2.0 to 3.6 degrees C, PCI from 1.9 to 3.6 degrees C, PCG from 0.7 to 2.2 degrees C, PCE from 5.3 to 11.5, and PCA from 78.8 to 691.8 ha depending on the park. The cooling distance varied from 110 m to 925 m depending on park size, forest area and land use type in the park's vicinity. The study provides new insight into urban park cooling effects in a medium sized city located in a temperate continental climate, and the role of parks in regulation of urban temperature to mitigate the UHI effect.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available