title: Carbon savings resulting from the cooling effect of green areas: a case study in Beijing.
abstract: Green areas cool the climate of a city, reduce the energy consumption caused by the urban heat island (UHI) effect, and bring along carbon savings. However, the calculation of carbon savings due to the cooling effect of green areas is still not well understood. We have used a Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) image of Beijing, to identify the cooled areas, compute the possible energy used to maintain the temperature differences between cooled areas and their surrounding heated areas, and calculate the carbon savings owing to the avoidance of energy use. Results show that a total amount of 14315.37 tons carbon savings was achieved in the study area and the amount was related to the biomass, the size and the shape of green areas. These results demonstrate the importance of carbon savings resulting from green areas' cooling effect.
authors: Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Urban-rural Ecological Planning and Green Architecture, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. linwq@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
authors: Wenqi
authors: W
authors: Lin
authors: Tinghai
authors: T
authors: Wu
authors: Chengguo
authors: C
authors: Zhang
authors: Ting
authors: T
authors: Yu
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002244:Carbon / Q000032:analysis; D058572:Carbon Footprint / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057965:Carbon Sequestration; D002681:China; D002947:Cities; D002958:City Planning / Q000379:methods*; D016468:Forestry / Q000379:methods*; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon