Size matters: the effect of urban vegetation patch size on surface temperature patterns along a urban-to- rural gradient in NW Argentina.

GIOIA, A.; PAOLINI, L.; MALIZIA, A.; OLTRA-CARRIO, R.; SOBRINO, J.A.

Valencia

Simposio; 3rd International Symposium on Recent Advances in Quantitative Remote Sensing, Valencia, España.; 2010

Unidad de Cambio Global, Universidad de Valencia

Urbanization is one of the most extreme forms of land use change. Urban ecosystems directly affect vegetation cover, altering their structure and composition. The changes in vegetation structure and the increase of impervious caused by urbanization can contribute to an increase in surface temperature, leading to a phenomenon known as Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI). According to several studies, the reforestation of the cities (via the re-vegetation of public places) can account of part of the overheating caused by concrete and asphalt construction. The main goal of this project is to analyze the relationship between different urban vegetation patches size and the spatial patterns of surface temperature (TS), along an urban-to-rural gradient in Gran San Miguel de Tucuman, Northwestern Argentina. We measure vegetation structure and composition (based on field survey), and surface temperature (based on Landsat TM satellite images) on 23 vegetation patches of different sizes, along the gradient, considering differences in context and urban morphology . The results shows that while small patches (1 ha or less) show no effect on reducing Surface Temperature, bigger patches show a decrease of 1 to 2 °C (depending on the context and urbanization morphology) in comparison to the surrounding area dominated by human construction. Our results can contribute to a better understanding of the effects of vegetation in urban areas in relation to its size and context.