2014/10/17 by Xiaoyun Cheng, Bensheng Wei, Guojian Chen +2
Environmental Science · #Land Use and Ecosystem Services #Urban Green Space and Health #Urban Heat Island Mitigation
paper · doi:10.1061/(asce)up.1943-5444.0000256
openalex publication_date 2014/10/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Urban parks, an essential component of urban green infrastructure, are known for their multiple ecosystem services to the residents in the cities. Mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) effects is one of such services. Scientific understanding on how park size and surrounding landscape pattern influence its cooling effect, however, remains poor. Using 39 parks in Shanghai, China, this paper aims to understand the relationship of land surface temperature (LST) with park size and the impacts of the surrounding landscape patterns on parks’ cooling effect. The results show that the parks’ LST decreased logarithmically with park size. There are nonlinear relationships between park sizes and their cooling effects. Large parks do not have advantages over small ones in the efficiency of cooling the surrounding environment. Both the class and landscape level patterns surrounding the parks influence the cooling effect. The proportion and dominance of urban land use types negatively affect park cooling effect, but enhanced shape complexity of urban land-use types could alleviate their adverse impact. However, the surrounding natural and seminatural landscape types facilitate the park cooling effect. These findings are valuable for landscape and urban planning.