THE COOLING POTENTIAL OF MANGROVES ON COASTAL URBAN AREAS

Abstract

Given rapid and continuous urbanisation since the last century, it is becoming increasingly important to study Urban Heat Island (UHI) mitigation measures. Urbanisation alongside climate change has called upon the need to further our understanding of green spaces and their associated benefits of UHI mitigation. There is currently a lack of research pertaining to the use of coastal vegetation, such as mangroves, as a cooling element. This is surprising given that coastlines are being rapidly developed into urban areas, and such urban areas still exhibit strong UHI intensities despite the presence of sea breezes. Mangroves, found at the land-sea interface, are highly productive ecosystem that provides numerous ecosystem services. It is hypothesized that mangroves, like their terrestrial counterparts, are cooling elements along the coastal urban regions despite having large ground thermal admittance due to its wet substrate. Fixed station method was employed to investigate the spatio-temporal variation of key microclimate factors, specifically air temperature and humidity of the mangroves and surrounding urban areas. It is found that mangroves are indeed cooler than the urban areas due to the presence of vegetation and canopy cover. This study demonstrates that mangroves are indeed cooling elements along the coastal urban areas, with the mangroves providing more day-time than night-time cooling potential. This finding contributes to field research of both mangroves and urban ecosystem services, stressing the importance of mangrove conservation in light of continuous loss of mangroves across the world.