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Using USEPA’s EnviroAtlas to Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement
Citation:
Panlasigui, S. Using USEPA’s EnviroAtlas to Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement. ACES Conference, Jacksonville, FL, December 05 - 09, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
Planning green infrastructure into the revitalization efforts would provide additional benefits beyond just reduced heat mitigation for the community, such as increased property values and improved human health and well being. While this analysis was conducted in Portland, OR, it can be applied to any other location. The poster presents a use case for EnviroAtlas that may be incorporated as part of the public web application.
Description:
Excessive heat in the summer months can be dangerous to human health and increases demand for water and electricity. Cities tend to experience higher temperatures than the surrounding natural area, a phenomenon known as an urban heat island (UHI). Trees are provisioners of ecosystem services, including heat mitigation in the urban environment. Trees and other types of green infrastructure, such as rooftop gardens and green rooftops, can help reduce the effect of UHI, leading to health benefits such as lowered risk of heat stroke, dehydration and respiratory distress. Often green infrastructure is not uniformly distributed, resulting in some neighborhoods being more affected by UHI than others. Project planning which targets areas having low levels of green infrastructure may help with community revitalization, UHI abatement, and improved community health for a more sustainable future. To this end, we demonstrate the use of US EPA’s EnviroAtlas data along with other data sources to explore one solution for minimizing the negative impacts of excessive summer heat due to urbanization. EnviroAtlas contains a variety of ecological, economic and demographic data related to ecosystem goods and services for the contiguous US and featured communities. For the Portland, OR community, we created a data layer representing a summer daytime UHI index using Landsat 8 scenes. We used thermal infrared information in Band 10 to estimate land surface temperature (LST) for multiple summer dates, then calculated an index that is the average difference from median LST. We incorporated an EnviroAtlas data layer of percent tree cover along busy roads that is based on the 1-m resolution land cover product. We also explored the demographic metrics to view the exposed and vulnerable populations. Based on US EPA’s Making a Visible Difference recommendations we selected neighborhoods in need of revitalization efforts by local governments. By prioritizing areas with a high UHI index and low amount of tree cover along busy roads, we identified four sections of major roads that may be good candidates for installation of street trees or other green infrastructure. Planning green infrastructure into the revitalization efforts would provide additional benefits beyond just reduced heat mitigation for the community, such as increased property values and improved human health and well being. While this analysis was conducted in Portland, OR, it can be applied to any other location.
