Parametric study of the influence of environmental factors and tree properties on the transpirative cooling effect of trees

Abstract

Vegetation can provide transpirative cooling in cities and is therefore being increasingly integrated as an essential part of Urban Heat Island (UHI) mitigation strategies. However, the behaviour of vegetation must be accurately understood to determine the effectiveness of vegetation based solutions. In this study, vegetation is modelled as a porous medium in a computational fluid dynamics model for flow of moist air, where a leaf energy balance model is used to determine the heat fluxes. We study the cooling effect of a single row of trees at noon with solar altitude at 90° for various environmental factors (wind speed, air temperature, relative humidity and solar radiation intensity) and tree properties (leaf size, stomatal resistance and leaf area density). Furthermore, the influence of tree height and number of tree rows on the cooling effect are studied. The Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) around the trees is estimated to determine the impact of transpirative cooling on pedestrian thermal comfort. The study shows that, at low wind speeds, pedestrians would only perceive a local benefit of transpirative cooling. However, vegetation extracts overall more heat from the flow at higher wind speeds. A study on the influence of environmental conditions quantifies to which extent a single row of trees provide maximum cooling during hot and dry conditions. The shading provided by trees improves thermal comfort more that transpirative cooling of a single row of trees. Furthermore, taller trees are more beneficial as the vegetation canopy with high leaf temperatures is further away from the pedestrian level.