Simulating the Response of the Surface Urban Heat Environment to Land Use and Land Cover Changes: A Case Study of Wuhan, China

Meiling Gao,Qi Liu,Zhenhong Li,Zhenyu Tan,Huanfeng Shen

doi:10.3390/rs13224495

Abstract

With the rapid process of urbanization, the urban heat island (UHI), the phenomenon where urban regions become hotter than their surroundings, is increasingly aggravated. The UHI is affected by multiple factors overall. However, it is difficult to dissociate the effect of one aspect by widely used approaches such as the remote-sensing-based method. To qualify the response of surface UHI to the land use and land cover (LULC) changes, this study took the numerical land model named u-HRLDAS (urbanized high-resolution land data assimilation system) as the modeling tool to investigate the effect of LULC changes on the UHI from 1980 to 2013 in Wuhan city, China. Firstly, the simulation accuracy of the model was improved, and the summer urban heat environment was simulated for the summer of 2013. Secondly, taking the simulation in 2013 as the control case (CNTL), the LULC in 1980, 1990, and 2000 were replaced by the LULC while the other conditions kept the same as the CNTL to explore the effect of LULC on UHI. The results indicate that the proper configuration of the modeling setup and accurate surface input data are considered important for the simulated results of the u-HRLDAS. The response intensity of UHI to LULC changes after 2000 was stronger than that of before 2000. From the spatial perspective, the part that had the strongest response intensity of land surface temperature to LULC changes was the region between the third ring road and the inner ring road of Wuhan. This study can provide a reference for cognizing the urban heat environment and guide policy making for urban development.

Highlights

The urban heat island (UHI) effect is a well-known phenomenon where urban regions are significantly warmer than their surroundings [1,2]
Abundant studies have been conducted to investigate the UHI in different scales and different regions. These studies mainly focus on the following aspects: (1) the spatial and temporal evolution of UHI [4,5,6,7,8,9]; (2) mitigation of the urban heat and cooling of cities [10,11,12], and the mitigation methods are highly corrected with the driving factors; (3) The driving factors and the mechanism of UHI [9,13]
To test the effectiveness of different spin-up periods for the model, the RMSE was calculated for each simulated land surface temperature (LST) in the different cases compared with the simulated

Summary

Introduction

The urban heat island (UHI) effect is a well-known phenomenon where urban regions are significantly warmer than their surroundings [1,2]. Abundant studies have been conducted to investigate the UHI in different scales and different regions. These studies mainly focus on the following aspects: (1) the spatial and temporal evolution of UHI [4,5,6,7,8,9];. Many studies have investigated the driving factors of UHI in some specific regions. The UHI is a comprehensive effect involving many factors [13,14,15]. Zhao et al [13] regarded that anthropogenic heat, convection, radiation, evapo-

Objectives

Results

Conclusion