Search

Soil invertebrates have an essential role in decomposition, nutrient turnover and soil structure formation, all of which are strongly threatened by urbanization. Sealing, compaction by trampling and pollution destroy and degrade city soils and potentially damage soil-living invertebrates. The existing literature on how urbanization affects soil invertebrates is inconsistent, presenting both negative and positive effects. Therefore, here we aimed to synthesize the effects of urbanization on soil invertebrates considering their taxonomic (Acari, Annelida, Carabidae, Collembola, Gastropoda, Isopoda, Myriapoda, Nematoda) and functional (soil living vs. soil-related; mobility) identities, as well as to examine how the overall effect is modulated by climatic conditions (total annual precipitation, annual mean ambient temperature), urban heat island effect (based on ambient temperature differences between urban and rural areas) and city population. In a systematic review using hierarchical and categorical meta-analyses, we extracted 158 effect sizes from 75 studies on abundance and 125 effect sizes from 84 studies on species richness. Invertebrate abundance showed an increase (r = 0.085), whereas species richness significantly decreased with increasing urbanization (r = −0.168). The reason behind this could be that a few generalist species can adapt well to the urban environment and achieve strongly elevated densities. The species richness of annelids (r = −0.301), springtails (r = −0.579), and snails (r = −0.233) decreased with advancing urbanization, most probably because these animals are sensitive to soil compaction and pollution, both of which are common consequences of urbanization. The temperature did not modify the effects of urbanization, but precipitation modified the effects on abundance (r = −0.457). Abundance increased with advancing urbanization in drier climates, probably because irrigation increased soil moisture, whereas it decreased in wet climates, as urban areas were drier than their surroundings. Making future cities more climate-neutral could better sustain soil biodiversity.

The climate data used for dynamic energy simulation of buildings located in urban regions are usually collected in meteorological stations situated in rural areas, which do not accurately represent the urban microclimate (e.g., urban heat island effect), and this might affect the simulation accuracy. This paper aims at quantitatively evaluating the effects of heat island on a high-rise building’s energy performance based on the microclimate simulation tool ENVI-met and the building energy simulation tool COMFIE. However, the computation of microclimate models is time consuming; it is not possible to simulate every day of a year in a reasonable time. This paper proposes a method that generates hourly “site-specific climate data” to avoid long microclimate simulation times. A coupling method of ENVI-met and COMFIE was developed for more precise building energy simulation, accounting for the heat island effect. It was applied to a high-rise building in Wuhan, China. The results showed that the yearly average urban heat island effect intensity at the height of 3 m was estimated to be 0.55 °C and decreased with height. Compared to the simulation considering the outdoor temperature variation with the height and orientation, using the original climate data collected in rural areas led to an overestimation of the heating load by around 5.8% and an underestimation of the cooling load by around 8.7%. Compared to the weather file at the height of 3 m near the north facade neglecting the temperature variation along the height, the heating load was overestimated by 8.2% and the cooling load was underestimated by 10.8%. The methods proposed in this paper can be used for the more precise application of urban building energy simulation.

Rapid urban development has changed urban substrate conditions, greatly affecting urban ecology and heating urban environment. Mitigating urban temperature rises by optimizing urban morphology is considered a promising approach; most studies ignore spatial and temporal heterogeneity. This study analyzes how plot spatial form influences urban thermal environment in the main Nanjing area from 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021, based on geographically weighted regression models (spatio-temporal- and multi-scale). Results show that: 1. The formation of geothermal heat islands matches the direction of urban expansion, mainly due to changes in land substrate; 2. the spatio-temporal model performs best, indicating that urban morphology and surface thermal environment have obvious spatio-temporal heterogeneity; obvious scale differences exist in each index influencing the heat island effect; and 3. floor area ratio (FAR) and building density (BD) negatively and positively correlate with surface thermal conditions, with gradually increasing effect, respectively. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and distance from the nearest water body (Dis_W) negatively and positively correlate with surface thermal conditions separately; good ecological infrastructure reduces surface temperatures but shows a gradually weakening effect. Proximity to roads is associated with warmer thermal environment. This study elucidates how urban form influences surface thermal environments and suggests measures to reduce surface temperatures in the main urban Nanjing area.

Neighborhood planning and design strategies that reduce outdoor air temperatures would improve the thermal and energy performance of cities in arid regions. This study presents the thermal behavior and energy consumption of different urban scenarios for low-density social housing neighborhoods in Mendoza, Argentina. The microclimates of three representative urban canyons located in three different social housing neighborhoods were monitored. These neighborhoods have different layouts but share other similar features, which allow the behavior of their microclimates to be compared. Thus, 48 simulations were conducted using ENVI-met software to test neighborhood-level scenarios with the following features: two street widths (16 and 20 m), three layout grids (multi-azimuthal, Cul-de-Sac, and rectangular), and four street orientations (E-W, N-S, NE-SW, and NW-SE). The energy consumption of each urban scenario was then estimated and compared. The results show that, in a house constructed without following bioclimatic design strategies, at least 21% of the auxiliary energy required to achieve a comfortable indoor temperature (25 °C) during summer can be saved. Energy savings depend on a suitable layout and street orientation, urban trees, and the albedo of the building materials. This study highlights the importance of planning and design decisions, especially for social housing settlements in arid cities. Fil: Sosa, María Belén. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Ambiente, Hábitat y Energía; Argentina Fil: Correa Cantaloube, Erica Norma. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Ambiente, Hábitat y Energía; Argentina Fil: Canton, Maria Alicia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Ambiente, Hábitat y Energía; Argentina

The urban heat island (UHI) effect resulted from urbanization as well as industrialization has become a major environmental problem. UHI effect aggravates global warming and endangers human health. Thus, mitigating the UHI effect has become a primary task to address these challenges. This paper verifies the feasibility of a three-dimensional turbulent porous media model. Using this model, the authors simulate the urban canopy wind-heat environment. The temperature and flow field over a city with a concentric circular structure are presented. The impact of three factors (i.e., anthropogenic heat, ambient crosswind speed, and porosity in the central area) on turbulent flow and heat transfer in the central business district of a simplified city model with a concentric circular structure were analyzed. It is found that the three-dimensional turbulent porous media model is suitable for estimating the UHI effect. The UHI effect could be mitigated by reducing the artificial heat and improving the porosity of the central city area.

The cooling and humidifying effects of urban aggregated green infrastructure can provide essential services for city ecosystems, regulating microclimates or mitigating the urban heat island effect. However, the optimal thresholds of plant community structure parameters for maximizing the associated cooling and humidifying effects remain unclear. In this paper, we use the method of dummy variable regression to measure plant communities in an urban aggregated green infrastructure. By examining the relationships between the cooling and humidifying effects and plant community structure parameters (i.e., canopy density, porosity, and vegetation type), we introduce optimal thresholds for the parameters. We find that canopy density has a significantly positive correlation with both cooling and humidifying effects, while porosity has a positive correlation with cooling and a negative one with humidifying. Different vegetation types have distinct influences on cooling and humidifying effects. When the canopy density is between 0.81 and 0.85 and the porosity is between 0.31 and 0.35, the cooling and humidifying effects of the plant communities reach their peak. Additionally, the greening coverage rate and spatial types of urban aggregated green infrastructure have influences on cooling and humidifying effects. The findings can help us to better understand the relationships between plant community structure parameters and their temperature regulation functioning for urban aggregated green infrastructure. This study provides guidelines and theoretical references for the plant configuration of future urban green spaces.

A comprehensive parametric analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of the green roof design parameters on the thermal or energy performance of a secondary school building in four distinctively different climate zones in North America (i.e., Toronto, ON, Canada, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Las Vegas, NV, USA and Miami, FL, USA). Soil moisture content, soil thermal properties, leaf area index, plant height, leaf albedo, thermal insulation thickness and soil thickness were used as design variables. Optimal parameters of green roofs were found to be functionally related to meteorological conditions in each city. In terms of energy savings, the results showed that the light-weight substrate had better thermal performance for the uninsulated green roof. Additionally, the recommended soil thickness and leaf area index for all four cities were 15 cm and 5 respectively. The optimal plant height for the cooling dominated climates is 30 cm and for the heating dominated cities is 10 cm. The plant albedo had the least impact on the energy consumption while it was effective in mitigating the heat island effect. Finally, unlike the cooling load, which was largely influenced by the substrate and vegetation, the heating load was considerably affected by the thermal insulation instead of green roof design parameters.

A green roof test bed, established at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, was used to investigate its benefit for storm water management and urban heat island effect mitigation. The system comprised 3 units, 2 in the form of vegetated roofs and the other a bare roof. The system was equipped with automatic monitoring devices for measuring the hydrological data. Continuous data monitoring on the roofs was conducted to evaluate the thermal and hydrological effects. The study shows that the green roof test bed can significantly reduce the roof surface temperature (by an average of 7.3ºC) and lower the ambient air temperature (by an average of 0.5ºC) when compared with a bare roof during day time hours (from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm). The ability to reduce and delay the peak runoff was demonstrated by using a typical rainfall event with 18 mm depth. The designed system is useful in evaluating both thermal and hydrological benefits of a green roof system in tropical areas and can offer guidance to local managers in mitigating the urban heat island effect and designing storm water management strategies.

Understanding theimpact of urban underlying surfaces on the urban local climate is very important. The analysis on climatic characteristics of different urban landscape communities can play an important part in understanding the urban surface – atmosphere interaction, urban planning and landscape design. In this study, meteorology and radiation observation data of two typical urban landscape communities (a typical architectural complex and a green park) in Beijingwere used to analyze the climate differences and energy budget items differences with alocalscaleurban meteorological parameterization scheme (LUMPS). The results showed that: 1) Comparison with the green park, the architectural complexwas more hot-dry climatic conditions than the green park.The difference value of air temperature and relative humidity of the two communities were 0.30°C and 2.0% separately. 2) The changes of energy budget items could explain the change process of air temperature. The heat budget of different landscape communities existed differences, especially net radiation and latent heat flux, which displayed a marked difference. Therein, the annual mean net radiation and the latent heat flux of the green park were 14.33 W/m2and 14.56 W/m2 higher than the architectural complex area, respectively. While the sensible heat flux of the green park was 2.9 W/m2 lower than the architectural complex area. 3) The latent heat flux had close relationship with air temperature, and had a lag effect. The correlation coefficient between latent heat flux and temperature could reach 0.633 from the initial 0.513 after about 2-hour delay. All these demonstrated the important effects of latent heat on temperature.

It is known that there are severe heat-island effects in the urbanized area such as Taipei and that temperature increases are causing hydrological change. The city continues to develop, so it is urgent that the region creates early warning methods. In this study, we observed the influence of the heat-island effect on temperature, precipitable water vapor (PWV), and rainfall in a suburb in Taipei and confirmed that the urban area had a rising temperature trend during the period from 2006 - 2014, approximately 0.7 degrees higher than that in the suburb, which decreased by 1.1 degrees. The average PWV increased by approximately 6.7 mm and the cumulative rainfall increased approximately 54.7 mm. Two other high-temperature areas are in the development zone and in the northern mountainous area, which is lower in temperature, and a heat-island effect is obvious. Rainfall is greatest in the southern mountainous areas in summer. Due to wind direction in the winter, rain falls in the northeastern region of the windward side. Our results also show that there is a significant urban heat-island effect in the Taipei region and that PWV and rainfall are increasing in the urban area with global warming.

New Belgrade is a highly urbanized commercial and residential district of Belgrade lying on the alluvial plane of the Sava and the Danube rivers. The groundwater of the area is a geothermal resource that is usable through geothermal heat pumps (GHP). The research has shown that the ?heat island effect? affects part of the alluvial groundwater with the average groundwater temperature of about 15.5?C, i.e. 2?C higher than the one in less urbanized surroundings. Based on the measured groundwater temperatures as well as the appraisal of the sustainable aquifer yield, the available thermal power of the resource is estimated to about 29MWt. The increasing urbanization trend of the New Belgrade district implies the growing energy demands that may partly be met by the available groundwater thermal power. Taking into consideration the average apartment consumption of 80 Wm-2, it is possible to heat about 360,000 m2 and with the consumption efficiency of 50 Wm-2, it would be possible to heat over 570,000 m2. Environmental and financial aspects were considered through the substitution of conventional fuels and the reduction of greenhouse gas emission as well as through the optimization of the resource use.

Tez (Doktora) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2014, İklim değişikliğine uyum, bir çok uluslararası organizasyon ve Avrupa Birliği (AB) kurumlarının gündemlerinde yer alan ve günümüzde önemi gitgide artan bir konudur. Özellikle İstanbul gibi gelişmekte olan ve sürekli değişen dinamiklere sahip kentlerde, hızlı kentleşmenin, kurumsal ve yasal zemindeki boşlukların arazi kullanımı ve arazi örtüsü (AKAÖ) üzerinde yarattığı hassasiyetlerin yanısıra, iklim değişikliğine bağlı sıcaklık artışı ve yağış miktarındaki değişikliklerin sonucunda oluşan taşkın, sıcak hava dalgası ve kuraklık gibi etkilerin, bu mevcut hassasiyetleri daha da arttırması beklenmektedir. Kentleşme ve iklim değişikliğine bağlı bu hassasiyetler, gelecekte yaşam kalitesi ve sürdürülebilir kalkınmayı sağlamaya yönelik hedefler önünde engel oluşturabilir. İstanbul’un kentsel kalkınma dinamikleri; kentin başlıca habitatlarını oluşturan su kaynakları, ormanlar, sulak alanlar, makilik alanlar ve kıyı alanları gibi biyolojik çeşitlilik ve ekolojik birimlerin sürekliliğinin sağlanmasında önemli role sahiptir. (Özhatay et.al. 2005, Tezer 2005, Tezer 2008). Bu araştırmanın amacı, İstanbul’da kentleşme ve iklim değişikliğinin AKAÖ üzerinde yaratması beklenen hassasiyetleri gidermek için önemli araçlardan biri olan iklim değişikliği ile uyumlu mekansal planlama yaklaşımını geliştirerek, sürdürülebilir kalkınmaya katkı sağlamaktır. İstanbul’da iklim değişikliğinin AKAÖ üzerindeki olası etkilerinin tanımlanmasında iklim değişikliği senaryolarından faydalanılmıştır (Agora, 2011). Kentleşme sonucunda artan ısı adası etkisinin, iklim değişikliğinin en önemli etkilerinden sıcaklık artışını daha da arttırabileceği yönünde İstanbul’da yapı düzeyinin de dahil edildiği mekansal analizler bu tezin önemli çıktılarındandır. AKAÖ’ye yönelik hassasiyetler, iklim değişikliği, ısı adası etkisinin belirlenmesine yönelik yapılan analiz sonuçları ile mekansal ve yasal dinamiklere göre geliştirilen AKAÖ senaryoları kullanılarak tanımlanmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu hassasiyetler, iklim değişikliği ile uyumlu sürdürülebilirlik göstergeleri ile ölçülmeye çalışılmış, iklim değişikliğine hassas AKAÖ’nün ve iklim değişikliğine uyumda ön plana çıkan AKAÖ’nün belirlenmesi konusunda aktörlerin görüşlerinden faydalanılmıştır. Bu değerlendirmeden yola çıkılarak İstanbul’da iklim değişikliğine karşı hassas olan öncelikli AKAÖ ve iklim değişikliğine uyumda öncelikli öneme sahip AKAÖ tanımlanmıştır. Sonuç olarak iklim değişikliği ile uyumlu mekansal planlamanın bileşenleri tanımlanarak, iklim değişikliğine uyumda öne çıkan planlama araçlarından bahsedilmiştir. Bu planlama araçları çerçevesinden yapılan GZFT (SWOT) analizi ile Türkiye ve İstanbul’un mevcut durumu, potansiyeller ve engeller açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Son olarak iklim değişikliği ile uyumlu bir kentleşme için mevcut mevzuatın değerlendirmesi yapılarak, öneriler geliştirilmiştir. Tez kapsamında kullanılan bu yaklaşımın İstanbul’da ve diğer hızla gelişmekte olan yerleşmelerde, iklim değişikliği ile uyumlu kalkınma politikalarının geliştirilmesinde rasyonel bir araç olabileceği düşünülmektedir., Climate change adaptation is a rising global issue and has already placed in most of the transnational organizations’ and European Union institutions’ agendas. Especially in developing and ever-dynamic cities like Istanbul, climate impacts like floods, heat waves and droughts due to the rise in temperatures and change in precipitation are expected to create new vulnerabilities on land cover and land uses (LCLUs) besides the pressure of rapid urbanization, institutional and legislative gaps (Hunt et.al, 2011, UN, 2011, IPCC, 2007). These urbanization and climate based vulnerabilities may affect human well-being and interfere reaching sustainable development goal in the future. Climate change strategies and spatial planning have a strong relationship as they may affect human well-being and urban morphology (Zhao et.al., 2010). Change in LCLU especially as a result of urbanisation, is one of the main reasons for increasing the green house gas (GHG) emissions (Tan et al., 2010). Both climate and LCLU change may create serious challenges on ecosystems (EPA 2009). Evaluating the future LCLU with projected changes in primary climate parameters (e.g. temperature and precipitation) can assist on better understanding of the vulnerabilities on LCLU and ESs. Istanbul has a unique geographical location for biological diversity when compared with other settlements in the region. The urban development dynamics of the region play a significant role in the well-being of ecological units and biological diversity of the Istanbul Metropolitan Area (Özhatay et al., 2005; Tezer, 2005; Tezer, 2008). Istanbul is a unique example among rapidly growing metropolitan cities that covers 5344 km2 and has a population over 14 million with an increase of 26%, between 2000 and 2013 (TÜIK, 2013). The urbanisation ratio is around 99% (TUİK, 2013) and it has the third highest GDP among 78 OECD metro regions (OECD, 2008b). Istanbul geographically combines two continents and the climatic regions of Mediterranean and Black Sea which have also very significant role in the natural structure of the city. The existing pressure of increasing urbanisation and population growth in Istanbul are expected to increase in the near future. Climate change is a new challenge for the metropolitan area and its impacts may increase with the pressures of urbanisation. This study aims to overcome the possible vulnerabilities of urbanization and climate change impacts on LCLU of Istanbul by developing a climate integrated urban planning as a major tool in order to support sustainable develoment. Besides the evaluation of the literature reviews made for understanding possible impact of climate change on LCLU (FAO, 2013; EEA, 2012; EPA, 2012; Fagundez, 2012), climate change scenarios (by using the results of the MDG-F 1680 project) and LCLU scenarios (adapted from Shearer et al., 2009) were developed to understand the possible impact of future built-up areas and climate change on LCLU, the importance of LCLU in adapting to climate change, and possible policies. Analysis to determine the interaction between urbanization and heat island effect in Istanbul, have a particular importance in this thesis and their results are used for developing a climate change adapted spatial planning framework and related strategies. Actor opinion is used to define and to verify the existing and future vulnerabilities of LCLU and to determine the important LCLU for adaptation to climate change in Istanbul. Finally, an overall comprehensive evaluation is done by developing climate change adapted sustainability indicators based on LCLU. There are three main spatial analysis in this thesis: • Climate change scenarios: Climate change scenarios (A2 ECHAMP 5) are used in this thesis to understand the possible future climatic conditions of Istanbul and their impact on LCLU. According to A2 emissions scenario developed in this study (Agora, 2011), the average annual temperature seems to increase around 0.5 C° until 2030-2039, 2 C° until 2060-2069 and 3.5 C° until 2090-2099. This increase is expected to be more significant after 2060’s. Increase of 3.5 C° until 2100 is the same value with the predictions of IPCC global climate change scenarios. The increase in temperature seems to be worse in summer period (4.5 C°) until 2099. According to these scenarios, spatial distribution of increase in temperature seems to be homogeneous while change in precipitation doesn’t. The impacts of climate change on LCLU like forest, water surfaces, agriculture, built-up areas are important to be addressed for further evaluations. • Analysis to determine heat island effect in Istanbul: In order to address the impact of urbanisation on local climate; spatial analyses including building’s total surface, urban sprawl and satellite thermal views (LANDSAT 7 ETM), together with minimum summer period average temperature data are assessed. It is important to understand that; urbanization may alter the temperature which has already risen by climate change. The results are used for developing the main framework of climate change adapted spatial planning. • LCLU scenarios: The existing drivers, which may change LCLU of Istanbul can be categorized as rapid spatial expansion due to urbanization, population growth, gaps in regulations, unplanned urbanization and rapidly emerging economic activities. There are several things that increase the uncertainties in Istanbul’s future LCLU. These can be summarised as follows; • Istanbul is open to spatial investments with high speculations as the city is the growing economic engine of Turkey, • Spatial investments may be changed or postponed in a very short period of time, • The growing population and economy of Istanbul have been driven by sudden, top-down decisions, which may cause new uncertainties and disrupt sustainable development, • Even though local government has right to prepare and approve province-wide spatial development plans, central government has a broader authority to make spatial investments that may influence and/or change the development decisions of this plan. These ever changing dynamics complicate the planning process done with existing data. So scenario analysis is needed to understand the future situation and decrease uncertainties. It appears as an efficient tool for the planning process that facilitates creating future data, analysing the future situation and understanding the possible vulnerabilities. The LCLU scenario methodology is adapted from the studies of Schwartz (1991 in Shearer et al, 2009) and Bryan et al. (2011) in Lower Murray, Australia. A new scenario construction process adapted from these two studies is developed as shown below; • Defining the issues and/or decisions that may change the LCLU of Istanbul, • Addressing driving forces or trends, • Joining the similar driving forces and ranking by importance, • Defining the main two drivers of Istanbul in X and Y axis, • Analysing four different potential scenarios according to their responses to pre-defined policies, • Scoring the scenarios and giving names according to their features, • Defining the spatial criteria for each scenario, • Implication in the ARC-GIS interface, • Analysing the future impact of urbanization on natural LCLU, • Evaluation of these scenarios and developing spatial strategies. Both studies emphasise that related stakeholders and decision makers should be included at each step of the scenario construction process. In addition, a continuous monitoring process should be integrated to intervene and re-assess the process in case of necessity. Future LCLU in Istanbul is addressed by existing LCLU trends, present plan decisions, and large-scale investments based on the decisions of the Council of Ministers and legal reports. In order to determine the priority of the LCLU’s, to combat climate change, and/or take precautions to increase their resilience and to verify the purpose; an actor opinion procedure is taken into consideration. The actor opinion procedure was conducted in a workshop organised by the TUBITAK 110K350 Project. Through this survey, an attempt was made to determine the interaction between ecosystem services, LCLU, climate change and sustainable urbanization. A scale rating was used in questions to facilitate the procedure and prioritize the topics. A similar methodology was used to determine the priorities of LCLU, ESs (Koschke et al., 2012), and location decisions (Awasthi et al., 2011) by using statistical analysis such as multi criteria analysis. These actors consisted in 39 participants from local municipalities, the metropolitan municipality, planning and environmental associations, NGO’s such as Regional Environmental Center Turkey (REC) and The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats (TEMA), and representatives of related ministries. The results of this analysis, as well as the climate change, LCLU scenarios and heat island effect analysis are evaluated together by climate change adapted sustainability indicators for a final conclusion to address the vulnerable LCLU and LCLU which are important for climate change adaptation and mitigation. As a result, a spatial planning framework that is climate change adapted is tried to be addressed as a key tool. Under this framework, planning tools considering climate change adaptive policies are developed and proposed for filling the gaps in existing regulations in order to achieve a climate resilient, sustainable development in Istanbul. The framework used in this thesis can be a rational key tool to implement climate adaptive policies for development in Istanbul and can be used for other rapidly developing settlements., Doktora, PhD

The paper presents a regression analysis of the temperature data measured by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in their historical measuring stations in Victoria. All the downloaded data was free of quality issues and referred to specific geographical locations, with only minor gaps in the recorded data. Temperatures at stations located in regional Victoria show no growth in the long, medium and short term. Temperatures in the greater Melbourne area show growth biased by the establishment of a metropolitan heat island. Corrected for the heat island effect, the temperature changes are minimal.