ABSTRACT
Microclimate improvement is frequently stated as one of the benefits generated by urban forestry. However, there are still few studies that quantitatively approach this issue. The goal of this study was to quantify the microclimatic difference between streets with and without trees, for each season and landscaping type. For this, three locations were chosen. Each location showed different species composing landscaping types: Tipuana tipu, Handroanthus chrysotrichus, and Lafoensia pacari with Parapiptadenia rigida. A Kestrel® mini station was placed on a street with trees and another one on a street without trees. The daily period for collecting this data was from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with monitoring intervals of 1 minute, repeated during the four seasons of the year, beginning in the winter of 2011. The microclimatic variables analyzed were temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. The results indicated that the streets with trees always had lower temperatures and greater relative humidity values than the streets without trees. The greatest temperature difference was observed in the summer (2.5 oC) and the smallest one in the winter (1.2 oC). For relative humidity, the differences were between 6.4% (spring) and 5.6% (winter), and for wind speed the greatest difference was found in the winter (0.17m/s). Landscaping that uses Tipuana tipu on both sides of the street, planted in a way such as to make their canopies entangle and form a tunnel, is the best choice for a more pleasant microclimate in all seasons of the year.
Keywords:
microclimate; streets with trees; landscaping types
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