URBAN HEAT ISLANDS AND COOLING STRATEGIES: A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF CHARLOTTE, NC AND NATIONAL COMPARISONS

The increasing threats posed by climate change and urbanization have elevated the importance of addressing Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon, a critical concern impacting cities across the United States. This dissertation comprises three articles that collectively investigate the effectiveness of trees and greenspaces in managing UHI, creating a Heat Health Score (HHS) to identify areas experiencing UHI effects and investigate the perceived effectiveness of policies and programs aimed at reducing UHI in cities, while providing recommendations for Charlotte, NC in particular. Article 1 shows that urban greenspaces consisting of trees can help reduce the UHI effect by creating shade and cooling spaces, potentially reducing energy costs, improving human living conditions, providing food and habitat to wildlife, and improving aesthetics and land values. In Article 2, measures to mitigate the effect of UHI are evaluated from select cities and a ratio of daily average high temperature between locations and the corresponding difference in land cover of tree and shrub areas, create the Heat Health Score (HHS) (a unique metric) which allows municipalities and community groups to gauge the heat health between locations. These results show that most urban locations remain hotter and with lower vegetative cover than their suburban or rural counterparts, however, changes in tree and shrub cover can impact these results in a positive way. Results from Article 3 elucidate the perceived successes and challenges of current policies through a qualitative survey. These responses offer practical recommendations for policymakers across the US but for Charlotte, NC in particular.
These results draw from the real-world experiences and lessons uncovered in the three articles, in aggregate, these provide a valuable resource for city leaders and policymakers striving to create a more sustainable and climate-resilient city. It stresses the importance of urban greenspaces and urban trees in particular, provides community leadership with an easily accessible, not previously defined tool to discern urban heat health through the use of free, open-source data to score heat health, and provides insight into the perceived effectiveness of policies and programs used to mitigate UHI in cities in the United States.