• HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Friday, January 22, 2021
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

Trees and lawns beat the heat

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
October 13, 2020
in Chemistry
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Mixed landscapes are the best way to adapt to climate change and mitigate the heat island effect in semi-arid regions

IMAGE

Credit: Carolina Gomez-Navarro

In cities, humans replace the natural ground cover with roofs, pavement and other artificial materials that are impervious to water. These surfaces significantly change how the land absorbs and releases energy and cause the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon where developed areas get hotter than nearby rural areas. As climate change pushes many cities towards dangerous temperatures, planners are scrambling to mitigate excessive heat.

One strategy is to replace artificial surfaces with vegetation cover. In water-limited regions such as Utah, a state with one of the lowest annual rainfall rates in the United States, municipalities have to balance the benefit of cooler temperatures with using precious water for irrigation.

A new University of Utah study will make those decisions easier for the semi-arid Salt Lake Valley, the largest metropolitan area in Utah located in the northern part of the state. The researchers used 60 sensors to analyze the microclimate in five locations throughout the valley. They found that neighborhoods dominated by impervious surfaces were warmer and drier than the urban parks–up to 2 degrees warmer in both the daytime and nighttime.

“It’s intuitive–we’ve all stood in a parking lot on a hot summer day, and you feel the heat from the ground. And when you’re standing on a lawn, it’s cooler,” said lead author Carolina Gomez-Navarro, postdoctoral researcher at the U. “But we need to back up intuition with data to determine the best strategy for our semi-arid cities.”

Gomez-Navarro and the team measured the temperature and humidity inside five parks and in their adjacent residential areas from June through August in 2016. They also analyzed how the surrounding landscape impacted air temperature. Surprisingly, they found that lawns reduced daytime and nighttime temperatures even more than trees did. While trees provide shade, lawns and turfgrass act like a swamp cooler–water moves through the plant, evaporating from tiny holes in the leaves and cooling the air.

Much of the heat that builds up during the day dissipates at night. The more open the land, the better heat can escape into the atmosphere. An area with many trees acts like a greenhouse, trapping heat close to the ground. The study concluded that a mixture of dispersed trees and grass is the most effective way to cool temperatures in the Salt Lake Valley.

“Understanding how ground cover impacts temperature is crucial for city planners to weigh the benefits and costs of its landscape design,” said Gomez-Navarro. “This land used to be a valley of bushes and bare soil. Any vegetation we add is going to need lots of irrigation and modify the landscape in many ways.”

The paper was published on October 13, 2020 in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

Is the grass always greener?

Gomez-Navarro focused on five parks and the adjacent neighborhoods throughout the Salt Lake Valley: Hunter (northwest), Lone Peak (southeast), Midvale City (south central), Southridge (northwest) and Sugar House (northeast). Each location had 12 sensors that measured temperature and humidity: six within the park and six in the residential areas. Gomez-Navarro analyzed ground cover in a 10-meter diameter around each sensor using satellite images to estimate the percentage of the roofs, pavement, trees or turfgrass. She found that the more turfgrass in a given area, the lower the temperature.

She analyzed canopy cover by taking photos of the sky above each sensor with a fish eye lens. She used software that calculated the area that trees obstructed the sky. She found that the more open the landscape, the hotter the daytime temperature. The more canopy cover, the more shade reduced temperature.

The authors expected there to be temperature and humidity differences between the parks and neighborhoods. They were surprised, however, that turfgrass had nearly the same impact on air temperature as trees. It seems counterintuitive because of the difference between air temperature and perceived temperature. Perceived temperature is how humans feel the environment. Wind, air temperature, humidity and solar radiation all factor into how comfortable we are.

“We didn’t measure human comfort in this study, but we know that the amount of solar radiation on our skin has a big impact on the perceived temperature,” said Gomez-Navarro. “Even if the air temperature is the same, we feel much cooler under the shade of a tree because it blocks some of the radiation.”

Smart city planning

Next, Gomez-Navarro will study how different landscapes directly affect how humans feel comfortable in their environment, and how plant cover type affect soil water loss.

“It’s going to keep getting hotter and parks can be a refuge from the heat. But exactly how many degrees can they cool the air? And what should we plant to maximize this cooling?” said co-author Diane Pataki, professor of biology at the U. “It’s getting easier and cheaper to measure temperature all over parks and neighborhoods, and we’re going to need this information to make good decisions about future park designs.”

###

Eric Pardyjak of the U’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and David Bowling from the U’s School of Biological Sciences were authors of the paper. The research was supported by the NSF EPSCoR cooperative agreement IIA-1208732 and Red Butte Garden at the U.

Media Contact
Lisa Potter
[email protected]

Original Source

https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/trees-and-lawns-beat-the-heat/

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2020.108211

Tags: BiologyClimate ChangeEcology/EnvironmentEnergy SourcesHydrology/Water ResourcesPlant SciencesTemperature-Dependent PhenomenaUrbanization
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

IMAGE

Astronomers discover first cloudless, Jupiter-like planet

January 21, 2021
IMAGE

Bringing atoms to a standstill: NIST miniaturizes laser cooling

January 21, 2021

Combining best of both worlds for cancer modeling

January 21, 2021

Squeezing a rock-star material could make it stable enough for solar cells

January 21, 2021
Next Post
IMAGE

3D metal printer at College of Dental Medicine expands possibilities for innovation

IMAGE

American Pikas show resiliency in the face of global warming

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

POPULAR NEWS

  • IMAGE

    The map of nuclear deformation takes the form of a mountain landscape

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14
  • People living with HIV face premature heart disease and barriers to care

    64 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • New drug form may help treat osteoporosis, calcium-related disorders

    40 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • New findings help explain how COVID-19 overpowers the immune system

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Tags

Climate ChangeEcology/EnvironmentMaterialsChemistry/Physics/Materials SciencesCell BiologyTechnology/Engineering/Computer ScienceBiologycancerGeneticsMedicine/HealthPublic HealthInfectious/Emerging Diseases

Recent Posts

  • New combination of immunotherapies shows great promise for treating lung cancer
  • Astronomers discover first cloudless, Jupiter-like planet
  • Advances in modeling and sensors can help farmers and insurers manage risk
  • Bringing atoms to a standstill: NIST miniaturizes laser cooling
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In