The effects from urban park planning on urban climate change - A case from Xi'an, China

Urban heat island (UHI) that is associated with rapid urbanization has an adverse effect on the well-being of the general public, therefore, developing UHI mitigation strategy has attracted more attention than ever before. Previous studies have shown that urban vegetation has certain positive effects on UHI mitigation. However, few studies on developing mitigation strategy have focused on the specific evaluation about urban park's scale, shape, and seasonal differences. It is important to provide scientific supports for urban vegetation system planning. This research is based on 8 parks with different landscape shape indices (LSI) and locations in the urban area of Xi'an, China. The field measurements were based on continuously monitoring the weather conditions at 20 measuring points, both inside and around each park, for more than 30 hours in different seasons (the distance between two adjacent measuring points is about 50 to 100 meters). The results show that, for parks with different locations, the impacts that range and intensity have on UHI mitigation are different; and the park's LSI is correlated with 'park cool island' (PCI) at night. In this study, quantitative indicators are formulated for planning and designing urban parks, which are based on analyzing the measured data of the 8 urban parks; and a reliable scientific basis is provided for urban environmental optimization design.