THE INFLUENCE OF VEGETATION ON DIURNAL LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURES IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The moderation of urban heat stress and its socioeconomic impacts is increasingly important in the context of a rapidly expanding global urban population and projected climate change. Urban vegetation plays a major role in buffering the development of intra-urban heat islands (UHIs), but important knowledge gaps remain in terms of the spatial scales at which landscape interventions should be targeted, the role of landscape configuration, and potential trade-offs between daytime and night-time heat stress reduction. This thesis develops and integrate spatial datasets based on remote sensing to address these questions in the context of the tropical city state of Singapore. This is accomplished by generating maps of leaf area index (LAI), land surface temperature (LST) and local climate zones (LCZ), and integrating them using a multi-scale urban landscape thresholds (ULT) framework. Recommendations are made for the planning and design of urban greenery for temperature moderation in tropical urban landscapes.