Welcome to Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology! Today is Share:

Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology ›› 2017, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (9): 2823-2830.doi: 10.13287/j.1001-9332.201709.012

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Cooling effects of urban forest community structure.

TANG Ze1,2, REN Zhi-bin1, ZHENG Hai-feng1, HE Xing-yuan1*   

  1. 1Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China;
    2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
  • Received:2016-12-06 Online:2017-09-18 Published:2017-09-18
  • Contact: * E-mail: hexingyuan@iga.ac.cn
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by the Key Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KFZD-SW-302-03) and the Foundation for Excellent Young Scholar of Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (DLSYQ13004).

Abstract: In this study, the influence of community structure on the cooling effect of urban forest was studied in Changchun by field sampling. The results showed that the temperatures of urban fore-sts with different canopy densities showed the same fluctuation trend with time. The temperature in urban forest was lower with higher canopy density. Community structure characteristics of urban fore-st affected the urban thermal environment. Among the structural indices used in this study, canopy density (CD), leaf area index (LAI) and tree height (H) had the most significant relationships with the cooling effect of urban forest, while stem density (SD), diameter at breast height (DBH) and base area (BA) had no significant influence on the thermal environment. CD and H were linearly correlated with the cooling intensity of urban forest, and cooling intensity increased by 0.5 ℃ for each 10% increase of canopy density and 0.05 ℃ for each 10 cm increase of tree height. There was a positive nonlinear correlation between the LAI and the cooling intensity. Further, a reasonable threshold of LAI for the cooling function was found in the range of 0.23-2.3. When the LAI was in the range of threshold value, the cooling intensity increased rapidly with the increase of LAI.