Do Urban Functional Zones Affect Land Surface Temperature Differently? A Case Study of Beijing, China

Abstract

The non-uniformity of the relationships between urban temperature and landscape has attracted board attention. The non-uniformity in urban areas is reflected in the spatial landscape’s heterogeneity and the difference of socio-economic functions. The former is shown as the spatial differentiation of land-cover, land-use, landscape composition, and configuration, while the latter leads to the difference of the intensity of human activities and population density, which are closely related with anthropogenic heat emission. Therefore, this study introduces urban functional zones (UFZs) to express urban spatial heterogeneity. This study also attempts to comprehend urban heat island (UHI) effects and discloses the variability of urban surface temperature (LST)–landscape relationships in different kinds of UFZs. There are two main technical difficulties—how to characterize the spatial heterogeneity of UFZs and how to quantify non-uniform LST effects. A three-level variable system is established from their attributes, inner structures, and interrelationships to characterize UFZs and their LST effects hierarchically. Considering the multi-collinearity among high-dimensional variables, the Elastic Net regression method is selected for quantitative analysis. The experimental results reveal the deficiency of uniform LST analysis for heterogeneous urban areas and verify the variable relationships of LST-landscaped with different kinds of UFZs.

Remotely Sensed Derived Land Surface Temperature (LST) as a Proxy for Air Temperature and Thermal Comfort at a Small Geographical Scale

“…Both, UHI and SUHI phenomena have been examined in the literature at different geographical scales, including at the level of continents [38][39][40], countries [41], cities and metropolitan areas [13,42] and increasingly at micro-scales [43,44]. To illustrate, [45] examines the impacts of urban functional zones and spatial heterogeneity on LST in Beijing, China; Temporal changes in LST as a result of urban redevelopments in Lyon, France where investigated by [46]; and the impacts of different types of LULC patterns on SUHI variations in Bangkok, Thailand, where evaluated by [47]. Similarly, the impacts of the composition of different types of land cover on SUHI have been examined in the cases of Austin and San Antonio, Texas [48] and Portland, Oregon [49].…”

Understanding the Role of Optimized Land Use/Land Cover Components in Mitigating Summertime Intra-Surface Urban Heat Island Effect: A Study on Downtown Shanghai, China

“…It covers an area of 4000 km 2 , housing approximately 84.03% of a total of 24.18 million permanent residents within the boundary of greater Shanghai [41]. In this study, concerning previous studies of urban function zones (UFZs) in China [42][43][44][45], four typical UFZs of downtown Shanghai were selected (see Figure 1 and Table 1). One of the subcenters of downtown Shanghai with a cluster featuring a commercial center, colleges and universities, and a high-tech park for innovative firms.…”

The Diversified Impacts of Urban Morphology on Land Surface Temperature among Urban Functional Zones

“…Thus, the idea of urban zoning is introduced to explore these diversified impacts in addition to the conventional “urban-rural” dichotomy of LST differences [ 22 ]. One of the extensive discussions is the local climate zone (LCZ), which divides urban areas through different composition, configuration, and morphology of the land surface, resulting in homogeneous units with uniform land cover, structure, materials, and human activities [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ].…”

“…UFZs divide urban space according to the differences in socioeconomic activities, which reflect differences in human behavior patterns, intensity of activity, and population density [ 29 ]. In fact, an increasing number of researchers in recent years have introduced urban functional zoning into their studies [ 24 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. The landscape-LST relationship among UFZs is discussed at two levels: (1) each type of UFZ has different human activities and anthropogenic heat, thus spatial landscape indicators have diversified impacts on LST among UFZs; (2) in the same type of UFZ, each type of landscape indicators’ impact process on LST may not occur at the same spatial scale, thus resulting in different impacts of spatial landscape indicators on LST at different locations.…”

“…The landscape-LST relationship among UFZs is discussed at two levels: (1) each type of UFZ has different human activities and anthropogenic heat, thus spatial landscape indicators have diversified impacts on LST among UFZs; (2) in the same type of UFZ, each type of landscape indicators’ impact process on LST may not occur at the same spatial scale, thus resulting in different impacts of spatial landscape indicators on LST at different locations. For the research of the spatial heterogeneity in the Landscape-LST relationship among UFZs, the different UFZs need to be regarded as a whole to reflect the diversified impact at the macro-scale and the spatial heterogeneity in the Landscape-LST relationship in specific UFZ should be discussed by a separate model for each UFZ [ 24 ].…”