The urban heat island mitigation potential of vegetation depends on local surface type and shade

How Can the Floor Area Types of a University Campus Mitigate the Increase of Urban Air Temperature?

“…Conversely, the absence of consistent vegetated areas in Oriani and the large asphalt area in Ravasi made them the worst University zones for climate change mitigation. This is in line with other authors that found it is extremely important to provide green areas in urban landscapes (Takebayashi and Moriyama 2009;Lee et al 2010;Kong et al 2014;Mariani et al 2016;Yao et al 2019;Tan et al 2021), especially if they are numerous, large, or fragmented (Kong et al 2014;Chen and You 2020). This management also helps the mitigation of air temperatures of surrounding surfaces (Kong et al 2014).…”

“…For vegetated surfaces like lawns, the correct management is the reduction of annual mowings (Townsend-Small and Czimczik 2010; Gu et al 2015) that increase the photosynthetic total surface, thereby augmenting evapotranspiration and ground shading (Tan et al 2015;Mariani et al 2016). Shading properties of vegetation against the UHI effect have been demonstrated (Tan et al 2015(Tan et al , 2021Park et al 2022) and confirmed here in relation to taller vegetation. However, the fact that we recorded a higher ATMI for 4-mowing lawns than 3-mowing lawns is related to the difference of surface temperatures.…”

Urban transitions towards Nature-based Solutions

“…Two main impacts related to two of the most common urban climate change adaptation challenges are especially prominent in the articles. The mitigation of urban heat island is analyzed by Tan et al (2021), who assess different plant species in comparison with a range of grey solutions, including high-albedo materials. D'Ambrosio et al ( 2022), and Coville et al (2022) focus on stormwater management and the mitigation of urban flooding and highlight important limitations and risks from incorrectly applying common models.…”

Some like it hot: adaptation to the urban heat island in common dandelion

“…However, adaptation of plants to the UHIE is undemonstrated 12 , despite vegetation being the most important factor in UHIE mitigation. Vegetation provides considerable cooling of urban surface and air temperatures through shading of heat-retaining materials, evapotranspiration, and increased albedo and air circulation 13 . Here, we present the first experimental evidence for a plant species adapting to the UHIE, using common dandelion as a model plant.…”