Quantifying the effect of waterways and green areas on the surface temperature

Abstract

The cooling effects of urban parks and green areas, which form the “Park Cool Island” (PCI) can help decrease the surface temperature and mitigate the effects of urban heat islands (UHI). Therefore, the objective of this research was to know the temporal variability of PCI intensity, as well as analyze the factors that determines it and propose an equation to predict the PCI intensity in Iporá, Goiás State, Brazil. To this purpose, the PCI intensity values were obtained using the Landsat-8 satellite (band 10), and then correlated with the NDVI and the LAI, in which proposes equations through multiple linear regression to estimate the PCI intensity. The results indicated that: 1) the greater the distance of the natural area, greater the surface temperature; 2) there is a great seasonality in PCI, in which the intensity of PCI is much higher in the spring (or close to it); 3) the relationship between NDVI and LAI variables, showed good coefficients of determination; 4) the equations for the buffer of 200 and 500 m, had low RMSE with high coefficients of determination (r2 = 0.924 and r2 = 0.957 respectively).