Cross scale evaluation of cooling effect ecosystem service supplied by vegetation: understanding the relationship with landscape and patch attributes for Green Infrastructure strategic planning

Abstract

Despite the key role of Green Infrastructure (GI) to achieve the sustainable development goals, quantitative requirements to be accounted for strategically plan an effective GI are still lacking. Among the ecosystem services (ESs) provided, cooling effect is essential to cope with the effects of climate change. Many studies investigated Urban Heat Island within cities, but the scale and patch configuration influences on the supply of this ES have been neglected. Thus, our study aims to fill this gap. A small city of the countryside provided the high variability of composition and configuration in land use and land cover which to be linked with ESs supply. After building a categorical map to calculate attributes at landscape and patch levels, and a heatmap of Land Surface Temperature to quantify the supply of the ES during summer, statistical analyses revealed significant relationships. At landscape level, different attributes have arisen to be related to cooling effect between herbaceous and woody communities (i.e., cover for herbaceous areas, number of patches for woody areas). At patch level, urban green areas, grasslands and hedgerows revealed different cooling effects as different were the attributes significantly involved in the ES supply (i.e., shape for urban green areas, cover for grasslands, perimeter for hedgerows). Thus, specific attributes need to be accounted for each element in GI planning as well as the complementary insights revealed by cross scale evaluation.