Guangzhou city in South China has experienced an accelerated urban development since the 1980s. This paper examines the impact of the urban development on urban heat islands through a historical analysis of urban-rural air temperature differences. Remote sensing techniques were applied to derive information on land use/cover and land surface temperatures and to assess the thermal response patte...

Many environmental challenges are exacerbated within the urban landscape, such as stormwater runoff and flood risk, chemical and particulate pollution of urban air, soil and water, the urban heat island, and summer heat waves. Urban trees, and the urban forest as a whole, can be managed to have an impact on the urban water, heat, carbon and pollution cycles. However, there is an increasing need...

The impact of 1973–2005 land use–land cover (LULC) changes on near-surface air temperatures during four recent summer extreme heat events (EHEs) are investigated for the arid Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) in conjunction with the Noah Urban Canopy Model. WRF simulations were carried out for each EHE using LULC for the years 1973, 1985,...

Urbanisation and a changing climate are leading to more frequent and severe flood, heat and air pollution episodes in Britain's cities. Interest in nature-based solutions to these urban problems is growing, with urban forests potentially able to provide a range of regulating ecosystem services such as stormwater attenuation, heat amelioration and air purification. The extent to which these bene...

Although water and land pollution are very dangerous, air pollution has its own peculiarities due to its transboundary dispersion of pollutants over the entire world. In any well planned urban set up, industrial pollution takes a back seat and vehicular emissions take precedence as the major cause of urban air pollution. In the present study, Air pollution tolerance index was calculated for var...

In China, rapid economic growth and increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) is the driving force for urbanization, and transformation of urban spatial structures and transportation. Frequent interactive economic activities among the neighboring cities reinforce the already spatially clustered cities. In this paper we tried to extract the key urban transportation characteristics of seventy ma...

This study investigates the effects of compact urban development on air pollution, taking into account both the spatial distribution of pollutants resulting from an increase in inner urban densities and the dispersion of pollutants associated with an increase in outer green open spaces. The empirical analysis is based upon a panel data model covering 17 cities in Korea from 1996–2009; this appr...

A study on the relationships between ambient air pollutants (PM2.5, SO₂ and NO₂) and hospital emergency room visits (ERVs) for respiratory diseases from 2013 to 2014 was performed in both urban and suburban areas of Jinan, a heavily air-polluted city in Eastern China. This research was analyzed using generalized additive models (GAM) with Poisson regression, which controls for long-time trends,...

Urban air pollution is a major concern in many cities worldwide. Atmospheric pollutants are responsible for health problems ranging from asthma to cancer. Air pollution also causes environmental damages. Monitoring airborne pollutants is of utmost importance to reliably assess the impact of air pollution on the human health, enable urban planners to craft and accurately evaluate new policies, a...