Traces of urban forest in temperature and CO2 signals in monsoon East Asia

Abstract

Cities represent a key space for a sustainable society in a changing environment, and our society is steadily embracing urban green space for its role in mitigating heat waves and anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This study reports 2 years of surface fluxes of energy and CO2 in an artificially constructed urban forest measured by the eddy covariance method to examine the impact of urban forests on air temperature and net CO2 exchange. The urban forest site shows typical seasonal patterns of forest canopies with the seasonal march of the East Asian summer monsoon. This study shows that the urban forest reduces both the warming trend and urban heat island intensity compared to the adjacent high-rise urban areas and that photosynthetic carbon uptake is large despite relatively small tree density and leaf area index. During the significant drought period in the second year, gross primary production and evapotranspiration decreased, but their reduction was not as significant as those in natural forest canopies. We speculate that forest management practices, such as artificial irrigation and fertilization, enhance vegetation activity. Further analysis reveals that ecosystem respiration in urban forests is more pronounced than for typical natural forests in a similar climate zone. This can be attributed to the substantial amount of soil organic carbon due to intensive historical soil use and soil transplantation during forest construction, as well as relatively warmer temperatures in urban heat domes. Our findings suggest the need for caution in soil management when aiming to reduce CO2 emissions in urban areas.