Impact of land use pattern on urban thermal environment in Wuhan, China

Traditionally, assessing impacts of urban land use on thermal environment is mainly depended on statistical analysis, which cannot exactly express the internal spatial correlation fundamental between urban land use and thermal environmental effects. This study introduces fractal theory to build radius dimension, and makes a quantitative description of the characteristics change from the center of the urban heat island effect on land use spatial pattern to the surrounding. The results suggested that those radius dimensions of five typical land use types are ranked in descending order: cropland, forest, water, bare land and built-up. It is indicated that built-up has positive effect on the performance of urban thermal environment, while forest, cropland and water have negative effect on urban thermal environment. The effect of bare land is not obvious. It is demonstrated that the radius dimension can effectively distinguish the gathered or mitigated effects from various land use spatial structure on urban heat environmental effects, which scientifically guides government to mitigate the UHI extant and degree by urban land use planning.