The use of meteorological data to assess the cooling service of forests

Abstract

The climate regulation effects of forests have been extensively studied. Many evaluation methods exist to assess the climate regulation service on regional and global scales. However, the processes driving local scale effects are poorly understood. We established a new method, which combined the cooling effects of forest and cooling costs to assess the value of climate regulation of a local scale forest. The inhabitable value of cooling service of forests for the farming area and built-up area and the payable value only for the built-up area were considered separately. The climate regulation effects of a forest in Fanggan, a mountainous village of East China, were studied. In 2014, the economic value of the cooling effects of the forest was 3727 USD per ha per year. In the inhabitable area, only about 10% of this amount was practically payable in the built-up area for humans. This method provides a new way of incorporating cooling effects into climate regulation services.