Exploring a Just and Diverse Urban Forests’ Capacity for Mitigating Future Mean Radiant Temperatures

The Pittsburgh Metropolitan Region in Western Pennsylvania, U.S., like many cities globally, historically has an inequitably distributed urban forest and faced street tree biodiversity challenges. Additionally, Pittsburgh faces several barriers and threats to maintaining and expanding its urban tree cover, including pests, diseases, social acceptance, built environment obstacles, and climate change. To address these concerns, in 2012, Pittsburgh created an Urban Forest Master Plan setting equitable forest cover and biodiversity benchmarks. This paper documents the status of achieving these benchmarks and uses microclimate simulations to assess the capacity of these benchmarks in mitigating future mean radiant temperatures. Results demonstrate that the story of Pittsburgh’s urban forest cover, street tree biodiversity, and age diversity is complex, but inequities are primarily driven by income. However, if Pittsburgh can achieve its forest cover benchmarks, it can reduce its neighbourhoods’ 2050 mean radiant temperature below 2010 temperatures, even under climate change-fuelled extreme heat events. The process and results reported in this paper allow designers and decision-makers to calibrate localized urban forest benchmarks more effectively based on various future scenarios while ensuring the equitable distribution of heat mitigation.

Files

Metadata

Work Title Exploring a Just and Diverse Urban Forests’ Capacity for Mitigating Future Mean Radiant Temperatures
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Travis Flohr
  2. Lara Garcia
  3. Caio Figueiredo
  4. Mehdi Heris
  5. Margaret Hoffman
  6. Justine Lindeman
  7. Hong Wu
  8. Lilliard Richardson
Keyword
  1. Urban forest
  2. Urban heat island
  3. Climate change
  4. environmental justice
  5. simulation
License Public Domain Mark 1.0
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture
Publication Date September 2024
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.14627/537752028
Deposited September 03, 2024

Versions

Analytics

Collections

This resource is currently not in any collection.

Work History

Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added 537752028.pdf
  • Added Creator Travis Flohr
  • Added Creator Lara Garcia
  • Added Creator Caio Figueiredo
  • Added Creator C Figeueredo
  • Added Creator Mehdi Heris
  • Added Creator J Lindemann
  • Added Creator Margaret Hoffman
  • Added Creator J Lindemann
  • Added Creator L Richardson
  • Added Creator Justine Lindeman
  • Added Creator Hong Wu
  • Added Creator Mehdi Heris
  • Added Creator Lilliard Richardson
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Urban forest, Urban heat island, Climate change, environmental justice, simulation
    Publication Date
    • 2024-01-01
    • 2024-09
  • Deleted Creator C Figeueredo
  • Deleted Creator J Lindemann
  • Deleted Creator J Lindemann
  • Deleted Creator L Richardson
  • Deleted Creator Mehdi Heris
  • Updated Creator Mehdi Heris
  • Updated Creator Margaret Hoffman
  • Updated Creator Justine Lindeman
  • Updated Creator Hong Wu
  • Updated Creator Lilliard Richardson