Effect of Urban Forest on Daylight Availability in Built Environments. The case of Metropolitan area in Mendoza

CLAUDIA MARTINEZ; LORENA CÓRICA; MARTÍN ENDRIZZI; ANDREA PATTINI; ALICIA CANTÓN

Geneva, Switzerland

Congreso; PLEA2006 - The 23rd Conference on Passive and Low Energy Architecture, Geneva, Switzerland, 6-8 September 2006; 2006

Universite de Genove

ABSTRACT: In the city of Mendoza, Argentina, the urban “green” is a predominant feature of the city structure. Even when trees lined along streets generate a number of benefits on the sustainability of the urban environment, and in the case of deciduous species as well, it conditions the access to climatic resources in a measure that is necessary to quantify. The paper presents the first results of the development of horizontal (Eh) and vertical (Ev) illuminance measurements in summer, in urban canyons of low density built environments, similar morphological variables and forested with the most representative tree species in the city: “London Plane” (Platanus acerifolia), “Mulberry” (Morus sp.) and “European Ash” (Fraxinus excelsior).  The results obtained allow to identify behaviour and illuminance ranges associated to the urban tree pattern, its development and its spatial configuration: the discontinuous structures – “Ash”– allowed a greatest access to the resource ((Eh: 94,0000 lux on causeway; 18,000 to 50,000 lux on sidewalks) when related to “vaulted” structures of a continuous type: “London Plane” and “Mulberry” (Eh: 15,000 to 73,000 lux on causeway; 4,000-10,000 lux on the sidewalk), conditioning the open sky resource in a lesser degree on causeways than on sidewalks In future stages, the results obtained will be correlated with those obtained by the use of computational models to the effect of identifying the incidence of the sky diffuse and reflected components, from the visible sky vault and the nearby environment respectively and with those obtained in nocturnal measurements.