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Scientia Silvae Sinicae ›› 2020, Vol. 56 ›› Issue (2): 32-39.doi: 10.11707/j.1001-7488.20200204

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Selection of Canopy Structure Index of Urban Forest Associated with Comfort Degree of Microclimate Within the Forest

Haixuan Liu,Ju Wu,Lijuan Xu,Chengyang Xu*   

  1. College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University Beijing 100083
  • Received:2018-04-26 Online:2020-02-25 Published:2020-03-17
  • Contact: Chengyang Xu

Abstract:

Objective: In order tooptimizethe structure of the urban forestsand to improve thermal environment, canopy structure indices related to comfort of microclimate were constructed and screened. Method: One dimension canopy structure indicators(including leaf area index, mean tilt angle of leat, canopy thickness, under branch height, ratio of canopy thickness to tree height, and the permeability of the canopy), highly correlatedwith urban forest cooling effect, were selected to construct multidimensional canopy structure indices on the basis of both air flow and energy exchange in and out of the forests. Furthermore, correlation analysis was used to select canopy structure indices with high explanation to the microclimate comfort in the forests. Result: The one dimension canopy structure indicators were weakly correlated with the comfort degree in the forest (S) and the relative variationin comfort (Sd), whose explanatory power to S was between 0 and 30.5%and the explanatory power to Sd was between 0 and 53.5%; The multidimensional canopy structure indices significantly improved the interpretation to S and Sd, which were 0 to 37.5%and 30.9% to 55.1% respectively; The synergistic effect on S of the structure index for vertical heat diffuse and the structure index for horizonta heat diffuse was 43.5% relatively large. The synergistic effect on Sd of the vertical canopy index and the canopy vertical evenness index was 63.9%, the highest, among others. Conclusion: The comfort and the relative variationin comfortin urban forests are influenced by several structureindicators and indices jointly. The multidimensional canopy structure indices (including structure index for vertica heat diffuse, structure index for horizontal heat diffuse, comprehensive structure index for heat diffuse, vertical canopy index, canopy uniformity index, canopy vertical evenness index and comprehensive canopy index), constructed in this paper are highly correlated with comfort degree and its relative variation, providing a reference for the optimization of urban forest structure.

Key words: urban forest, cooling effect, degree of comfort, canopy structure, leaf area index

CLC Number: