Hi all,
I am running the InVEST Urban Cooling model to explore the urban heat island effect in a municipality under different urban greening scenarios. I am running four different scenarios, each representing a different % canopy cover across the municipality: 22% canopy cover, 33%, 38%, and 44%. The 38% scenario is the “baseline” (i.e., the municipality currently has 38% canopy cover). The way I simulated increased canopy cover in each scenario is by adjusting the shade proportion in the biophysical parameter table for specific LULC classes (focusing mostly on developed classes). I also altered some of the Kc and albedo values to account for changing impervious surface cover values with reduced or increased canopy cover. However, when I run the models, I am getting very minimal cooling with increased canopy cover. For example, an increase in canopy cover from 22% to 38% only results in about 0.1 degrees cooling (both across the urban core as a whole, and within each developed land use class). And again, an increase in canopy cover from 38% to 44% only results in about 0.1 degrees of cooling. This seems remarkably low, especially considering the large increases in canopy cover that I am simulating. I am wondering if anyone else has run similar scenarios with InVEST and what their results have been, or if anyone has any suggestions on better ways to simulate urban greening using the InVEST tool.
Thank you!!
EDIT: to clarify, I have only run daytime temperature scenarios (working on nighttime temperature input data at the moment)