Examining Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Urban Heat Islands and Factors Driving Them in Hangzhou, China

Abstract

The urban environment is a complex system featuring interactions between nature and humans. Scant research on urban areas has analyzed and assessed urban heat islands (UHIs) from the perspectives of nature and humans. This study analyzes the spatio-temporal characteristics of UHIs in Hangzhou in China in the context of the relationship between nature and humans based on the standard deviational ellipse, Pearson correlation analysis, and principal component analysis. The results show the following: (1) From 2000 to 2020, the coverage of UHIs in the main urban area of Hangzhou decreased, but areas with sub-high temperatures and high temperatures increased. (2) From 2000 to 2020, the main axis of the spatial development of UHIs persisted along the northwest-southeast direction. The spatial pattern of UHIs in Hangzhou was closely related to the direction of urban development. (3) The results of principal component analysis show that socio-economic activities, surface coverage and topography were the major factors influencing UHIs in Hangzhou. (4) Natural factors have slowed the development of UHIs while human factors have aggravated their formation, where the former contributed more significantly to them than the latter. For each unit of change in nine factors that were considered, the surface temperature in the study area decreased by 0.166 units. Index Terms-Urban heat islands (UHIs), multisource data, natural and human factors, spatio-temporal database.

Seasonal Contrast and Interactive Effects of Potential Drivers on Land Surface Temperature in the Sichuan Basin, China

“…The heat island is mainly distributed in the parallel ridge valleys in Eastern Sichuan and the Chengdu Plain in Western Sichuan. In contrast to the overall spatial pattern of LST with "high in the middle and low periphery" in most regions [24,41], the LST in the Sichuan Basin presents the characteristics of "low in the outermost, high in the secondary periphery and low in the middle". From the LST of specific cities, the high-temperature areas are mainly concentrated in most areas of Chengdu and Chongqing; the southeast of Deyang and Mianyang; the north of Luzhou, Yibin and Leshan and the south of Dazhou and Nanchong.…”

“…As shown 1, fifteen driving factors from four perspectives were selected: biophysical parameters, climatic parameters, socioeconomic parameters and landscape parameters. The DEM, slope and NDVI are used to characterize the biophysical parameters [19,24]. The common climatic parameters include wind speed, humidity, precipitation and temperature [14,28].…”

“…Gao et al explored the spatial response of urban morphology factors to UHI using a geographically weighted regression model [20]. Based on a Pearson correlation analysis and principal component analysis (PCA), Sun et al identified the contribution of various driving factors to Hangzhou UHI [24]. Taking Dalian as an example, Guo et al used the spatial regression model (spatial lag model and spatial error model) to analyze the impact of the urban form on UHI at the community level [25].…”

Construction, Evaluation, and Optimization of a Regional Ecological Security Pattern Based on MSPA–Circuit Theory Approach

“…The standard deviational ellipse (SDE) approach was used to further investigate the directional properties of ecological resistance. From a global and spatial point of view, the following equation can be used to explain how ecological resistance is centralized, distributed, and shaped in space [ 43 ]: where is the average center of , is the ecological resistance, and are the relative coordinates of each point from the center of gravity of the study area. The azimuth angle can be obtained from , and and and are the standard deviations of the x -axis (short axis) and y -axis (long axis), respectively.…”

Landscape Aesthetic Value of Waterfront Green Space Based on Space–Psychology–Behavior Dimension: A Case Study along Qiantang River (Hangzhou Section)

“…However, at this stage, sometimes the landscape effect of urban waterfront green space varies, and the green space with excellent landscape aesthetic value fails to serve the needs of most citizens. This leads to the uneven distribution of public social resources [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ], the simple pursuit of modernization and standardization of waterfront landscape [ 15 , 16 ], and the intensification of contradictions between different types of land use in waterfront areas [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. These phenomena are not conducive to China’s development of green ecological civilization construction ideas or China’s common prosperity concept.…”