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A landscape connectivity approach to mitigating the urban heat island effect

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Abstract

Context

Urban integration has exacerbated the spreading of urban heat islands (UHIs) across cities. Blue/green landscapes embedded within urban areas, behaving as cool islands (CIs), have been highly focused due to their efficient cooling effects.

Objectives

Previous studies on the cooling effect of blue/green landscapes are mainly focused on isolated patches of CIs, which cannot provide a stable cooling service compared to connected ones. Thus, based on the ‘source-corridor-network’ paradigm, a new approach to mitigating cross-regional UHI effects was proposed through improving the connectivity of CIs.

Methods

Taking Guangzhou-Foshan Metropolitan Area (GFMA), one of the most densely settled regions in China, as the case study context, the localized contour tree method, minimum cumulative resistance model, and complex networks were integrated to identify and evaluate the source areas and connecting corridors of the cooling network.

Results

35 cooling sources and 78 CI connecting corridors were identified across the GFMA. CIs within built-up areas such as parks had higher cooling intensity acting to hinder UHI from spreading while CIs in mountainous areas offer larger cooling coverage. The CI connecting corridors in northeast GFMA were dense and short while those at the junction of the two cities were sparse and long, which should be highly focused. The cooling network was composed of the hierarchically constructed CI source areas and corridors, which provided impetus and stability for mitigating UHI effect respectively.

Conclusions

The landscape connectivity approach proposed in this study can serve as a cooling network strategy in metropolitan areas, revealing important policy implications for cities with potential cross-regional UHI threat.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (41671182).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Jian Peng & Xueyan Cheng

  2. Key Laboratory for Environmental and Urban Sciences, School of Urban Planning & Design, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Yaxin Hu

  3. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Jonathan Corcoran

Authors
  1. Jian Peng
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  2. Xueyan Cheng
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  3. Yaxin Hu
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  4. Jonathan Corcoran
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Correspondence to Jian Peng.

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Peng, J., Cheng, X., Hu, Y. et al. A landscape connectivity approach to mitigating the urban heat island effect. Landsc Ecol 37, 1707–1719 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01439-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01439-3

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