The Basel UrBan Boundary Layer Experiment (BUBBLE) was a year-long experimental effort to investigate in detail the boundary layer structure in the City of Basel, Switzerland. At several sites over different surface types (urban, suburban and rural reference) towers up to at least twice the main obstacle height provided turbulence observations at many levels. In addition, a Wind Profiler and a Lidar near the city center were profiling the entire lower troposphere. During an intensive observation period (IOP) of one month duration, several sub-studies on street canyon energetics and satellite ground truth, as well as on urban turbulence and profiling (sodar, RASS, tethered balloon) were performed. Also tracer experiments with near-roof-level release and sampling were performed. In parallel to the experimental activities within BUBBLE, a meso-scale numerical atmospheric model, which contains a surface exchange parameterization, especially designed for urban areas was evaluated and further developed. Finally, the area of the full-scale tracer experiment which also contains several sites of other special projects during the IOP (street canyon energetics, satellite ground truth) is modeled using a very detailed physical scale-model in a wind tunnel. In the present paper details of all these activities are presented together with first results.

Urban tree planting initiatives are being actively promoted as a planning tool to enable urban areas to adapt to and mitigate against climate change, enhance urban sustainability and improve human health and well-being. However, opportunities for creating new areas of green space within cities are often limited and tree planting initiatives may be constrained to kerbside locations. At this scale, the net impact of trees on human health and the local environment is less clear, and generalised approaches for evaluating their impact are not well developed.In this review, we use an urban ecosystems services framework to evaluate the direct, and locally-generated, ecosystems services and disservices provided by street trees. We focus our review on the services of major importance to human health and well-being which include ‘climate regulation’, ‘air quality regulation’ and ‘aesthetics and cultural services’. These are themes that are commonly used to justify new street tree or street tree retention initiatives. We argue that current scientific understanding of the impact of street trees on human health and the urban environment has been limited by predominantly regional-scale reductionist approaches which consider vegetation generally and/or single out individual services or impacts without considering the wider synergistic impacts of street trees on urban ecosystems. This can lead planners and policymakers towards decision making based on single parameter optimisation strategies which may be problematic when a single intervention offers different outcomes and has multiple effects and potential trade-offs in different places.We suggest that a holistic approach is required to evaluate the services and disservices provided by street trees at different scales. We provide information to guide decision makers and planners in their attempts to evaluate the value of vegetation in their local setting. We show that by ensuring that the specific aim of the intervention, the scale of the desired biophysical effect and an awareness of a range of impacts guide the choice of i) tree species, ii) location and iii) density of tree placement, street trees can be an important tool for urban planners and designers in developing resilient and resourceful cities in an era of climatic change.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12940-016-0103-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

[1] Eddy covariance (EC) observations above the densely built-up center of Marseille during the Expérience sur site pour contraindre les modèles de pollution atmosphérique et de transport d'émissions (ESCOMPTE) summertime measurement campaign extend current understanding of surface atmosphere exchanges in cities. The instrument array presented opportunities to address issues of the representativeness of local-scale fluxes in urban settings. Separate EC systems operated at two levels, and a telescoping tower allowed the pair to be exposed at two different sets of heights. The flux and turbulence observations taken at the four heights, stratified by wind conditions (mistral wind and sea breeze), are used to address the partitioning of the surface energy balance in an area with large roughness elements. The turbulent sensible heat flux dominates in the daytime, although the storage heat flux is a significant term that peaks before solar noon. The turbulent latent heat flux is small but not negligible. Carbon dioxide fluxes show that this central city district is almost always a source, but the vegetation reduces the magnitude of the fluxes in the afternoon. The atmosphere in such a heavily developed area is rarely stable. The turbulence characteristics support the empirical functions proposed by M. Roth.

The UBL/CLU (urban boundary layer/couche limite urbaine) observation and modelling campaign is a side-project of the regional photochemistry campaign ESCOMPTE. UBL/CLU focuses on the dynamics and thermodynamics of the urban boundary layer of Marseille, on the Mediterranean coast of France. The objective of UBL/CLU is to document the four-dimensional structure of the urban boundary layer and its relation to the heat and moisture exchanges between the urban canopy and the atmosphere during periods of low wind conditions, from June 4 to July 16, 2001. The project took advantage of the comprehensive observational set-up of the ESCOMPTE campaign over the Berre-Marseille area, especially the ground-based remote sensing, airborne measurements, and the intensive documentation of the regional meteorology. Additional instrumentation was installed as part of UBL/CLU. Analysis objectives focus on (i) validation of several energy balance computational schemes such as LUMPS, TEB and SM2-U, (ii) ground truth and urban canopy signatures suitable for the estimation of urban albedos and aerodynamic surface temperatures from satellite data, (iii) high resolution mapping of urban land cover, land-use and aerodynamic parameters used in UBL models, and (iv) testing the ability of high resolution atmospheric models to simulate the structure of the UBL during land and sea breezes, and the related transport and diffusion of pollutants over different districts of the city. This paper presents initial results from such analyses and details of the overall experimental set-up.Ã

This paper presents a novel low-cost instrument that uses a sensor based on conductivity changes of heated tungstic oxide, which is capable of accurately measuring ambient concentrations of ozone. A combination of temperature steps and air flow-rate steps is used to continually reset and re-zero the sensor. A two-stage calibration procedure is presented, in which a nonlinear transformation converts sensor resistance to a signal linear in ozone concentration, then a linear correlation is used to align the calibration with a reference instrument. The required calibration functions specific for the sensor, and control system for air flow rate and sensor temperature, are housed with the sensor in a compact, simple-to-exchange assembly. The instrument can be operated on solar power and uses cell phone technology to enable monitoring in remote locations. Data from field trials are presented here to demonstrate that both the accuracy and the stability of the instrument over periods of months are within a few parts-per-billion by volume. We show that common failure modes can be detected through measurement of signals available from the instrument. The combination of long-term stability, self-diagnosis, and simple, inexpensive repair means that the cost of operation and calibration of the instruments is significantly reduced in comparison with traditional reference instrumentation. These instruments enable the economical construction and operation of ozone monitoring networks of accuracy, time resolution and spatial density sufficient to resolve the local gradients that are characteristic of urban air pollution.