Effect of Vegetation Structure on Urban Climate Mitigation

Abstract

Vegetation formations are an important component in the urban structure, as they perform a wide range of ecosystem services there. The climate modification to improve the environmental and residential quality of the city is one of the important functions. The paper presents the results of the microclimate assessment in the chosen localities of Nitra town, Slovakia, with an emphasis on the stage and differences in air temperature and relative humidity. The climate elements were measured at 7 spatially different sites (sites A to G), each of them at two comparative sites, vegetation stand and open area. The largest average air temperature difference between the vegetation stand and the non-vegetation area was 1.2 °C at the locality D. The largest air temperature difference in the vegetation stands was measured between the street space (site E) and the city park (F), reaching 2.3–2.5 °C. The relative air humidity reached the highest differences between the park (locality F) and the street space (G) measured at 3:00–8:00. These reached 19.6% to 24.4% with higher relative humidity in the popular city park. The highest differences between the compared habitats were measured at locality G and averaged 9.6% at 04:00 – 07:00 in a preference to a tree canopy. The research results confirmed the importance of the vegetation structures in the process of mitigating the urban climate extremes and the environmental quality improving.

Vegetation Cover Change and Its Diversity in Urban Areas of Medan

“…Paying attention to the construction of green space and green roads in cities, reducing urban land use, rationally distributing land resources, and strengthening environmental management and protection are important ways to improve the ecological environment level of vegetation in Zaozhuang City (Wen and Xhang 2020). The research con rmed the importance of vegetation structures in the process of mitigating urban climate extremes and improving environmental quality (Rozova et al 2020). The development of fringe areas outside the urban core areas should be avoided as much as possible to mitigate vegetation degradation effectively, and the positive in uences of urbanization on vegetation growth through effective urban landscape planning should be encouraged (Li et al 2020).…”

“…Complex environmental problems have accompanied the enormous growth of cities. City environment is in uenced by global and local climate changes, pollution from transport, industries, and local heating sources (Rozova et al 2020). Urbanization is considered as one of the main factors affecting global change.…”

“…Vegetation formations are an important component in the urban structure due to a wide range of ecosystem services in the area. Rozova et al (2020) contested one of the important functions to improve the environmental and residential quality of the city is climate modi cation.…”

Vegetation diversity and structure of urban parks in Cilegon City, Indonesia, and local residents’ perception of its function

“…Urban park planted with various species provides a wide range of ecosystem benefits including regulating, supporting, cultural, and provisioning services (Iskandar and Iskandar 2016b;Pulighe et al 2016). In term of regulating service, urban park can mitigate climate change by storing carbon (Zölch et al 2016), improve air quality by acting as city lungs that absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce oxygen (Manes et al 2012;Janhall 2015;Zhang et al 2017;Jones 2018;Rózová et al 2020), and reducing environmental temperatures (Bagheri et al 2017). Urban park also increases water quality and reduce rainwater runoff (Zhang et al 2015a) so that it can help to control urban flooding (Yao et al 2015;Leimer et al 2014).…”

“…The knowledge about urban parks is important in its management and provides an understanding for the community to participate in plant conservation (Dearborn and Kark 2010;Lepczyk et al 2017;Smith et al 2018). Some studies regarding urban parks were undertaken by some scholars in several themes, including microclimate assessment in the chosen localities of Nitra, Slovakia (Rózová et al 2020), assessment of toxic effect on plant, risk of environmental and health on the urban park soils (Brtnický et al 2019), the influence of urban park on the temperature of local urban environment (Yan et al 2018), composition and structure of vegetation of urban parks in different countries (Zhao et al 2010;Pearse et al 2018;Talal and Santelmann 2019), the relationship between vegetation and ecological functions, such as microclimate and carbon sinks (Cundaningsih et al 2015;Erdianto et al 2019), and perception and knowledge of plant diversity related to urban park management (Muratet et al 2015;Talal and Santelmann 2020). In more details, some studies looked at the particular uses of the plants cultivated in urban park including for traditional medicine (Taek et al 2019;Rahmawati et al 2020), ornamental plants (Lacy and Shackleton 2017), edible fruits (Lacy and Shackleton 2017), religious ceremonies (Dash et al 2019;Sujarwo et al 2020;Sutrisno et al 2020), timber and fuelwood (Nagendra and Gopal 2010), and others.…”