The challenge

Cities are key drivers of climate change through the generation of greenhouse gas emissions and through the intensification of local warming via the urban heat island effect. International accords such as the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize that bespoke urban interventions are critical for an effective global climate change response.

Understanding and acting on climate change at the city and neighbourhood scales calls for appropriate methodologies and detailed knowledge of how urban environments (including greenspaces) will respond to – and potentially help ameliorate – global environmental changes.

Given that urban and natural landscapes coexist as complex open systems, insights from both scientific disciplines (e.g. biological science, hydrology and ecology) and social scientific fields (e.g. urban geography, planning and governance) are required to generate appropriate interdisciplinary knowledge of the interactions between urban ecosystems, built environments and neighbourhood-level microclimates.

What we're doing

In this project, we will mobilize insights and methodological techniques from physical, biological and environmental sciences alongside urban social sciences to develop a novel approach to examining neighbourhood microclimates in cities.

We will leverage measurements of the daily water use of urban trees to better understand their cooling capacity and contribution to regulating Bristol’s microclimates.

How it helps

The resulting knowledge will create a solid basis for the design of research and outreach projects that will enable policymakers, decision-makers, planners and other urban practitioners to anticipate changes in urban microclimates.

This knowledge will inform appropriate investments and design solutions to alleviate the effects of global climate change on local urban contexts and populations, thereby contributing to sustainable, equitable and healthy city futures.

Investigators

• Dr James Duminy, School of Geographical Sciences
• Dr Rodolfo Bezerra Nóbrega, School of Geographical Sciences
• Dr Martin De Kauwe, School of Biological Sciences