Abstract
Sunshine is an important factor which limits the choice of urban plant species, especially in environments with high-density buildings. In practice, plant selection and configuration is a key step of landscape architecture, which has relied on an experience-based qualitative approach. However, the rationality and efficiency of this need to be improved. To maintain the diversity of plant species and to ensure their ecological adaptability (solar radiation) in the context of sustainable development, we developed the Urban Plants Decision Support System (UP-DSS) for assisting plant selection in urban areas with diversified solar radiation. Our methodology mainly consists of the solar radiation model and calibration, the urban plant database, and information retrieval model. The structure of UP-DSS is also presented at the end of the methodology section, which is based on the platform of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Microsoft Excel. An application of UP-DSS is demonstrated in a residential area of Wuhan, China. The results show that UP-DSS can provide a very scientific and stable tool for the adaptive planning of shade-tolerant plants and photoperiod-sensitive plants, meanwhile, it also provides a specific plant species and the appropriate types of plant community for user decision-making according to different sunshine radiation conditions and the designer’s preferences.
Highlights
Urbanization is the most obvious trend in the last 20 years [1]; land use intensity and building density are increasing due to a shortage of land resources
This study mainly focuses on the calculation of regional solar radiation, thereby guiding different species of the landscape plant selection and community configuration
Landscape plant selection and configuration are an important aspect of landscape planning and design in practice [64]
Summary
Urbanization is the most obvious trend in the last 20 years [1]; land use intensity and building density are increasing due to a shortage of land resources. Landscape plants selected for urban greening and urban forestry are ‘best performers’, which have a strong adaptability to climate, pollution, drought, pests, salinity, insufficient light, and to other adverse ecological factors [2,3,10]. These perfect plants are hard to find. The proper solution is based on the principle of ‘put the right tree in the right place’ [11] or ‘matching the plant to the site’ [12,13] This strategy can achieve a better balance between the environmental supply and the ecological needs of landscape plants
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