Assessing climate impacts of planning policies-An estimation for the urban region of Leipzig (Germany)

Abstract

Local climate regulation by urban green areas is an important urban ecosystem service, as it reduces the extent of the urban heat island and therefore enhances quality of life. Local and regional planning policies can control land use changes in an urban region, which in turn alter local climate regulation. Thus, this paper describes a method for estimating the impacts of current land uses as well as local and regional planning policies on local climate regulation, using evapotranspiration and land surface emissivity as indicators. This method can be used by practitioners to evaluate their policies. An application of this method is demonstrated for the case study Leipzig (Germany). Results for six selected planning policies in Leipzig indicate their distinct impacts on climate regulation and especially the role of their spatial extent. The proposed method was found to easily produce a qualitative assessment of impacts of planning policies on climate regulation. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Climate regulation; Urban heat island; Spatial planning; Leipzig; Urban planning

Published in

Environmental Impact Assessment Review
2011, volume: 31, number: 2, pages: 97-111

SLU Authors

• Haase, Dagmar

  • Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)

UKÄ Subject classification

Other Earth Sciences

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2010.02.002

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/89676