assessing climate impacts of planning policies—an estimation for the urban region of leipzig (germany)外文.pdf

Environmental Impact Assessment Review 31 (2011) 97–111
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Environmental Impact Assessment Review
journal homepage:
Assessing climate impacts of planning policies—An estimation for the urban region of
Leipzig (Germany)
Nina Schwarz ⁎, Annette Bauer, Dagmar Haase
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
article info abstract
Article history: Local climate regulation by urban green areas is an important urban ecosystem service, as it reduces the
Received 30 October 2009 extent of the urban heat island and therefore enhances quality of life. Local and regional planning policies
Received in revised form 2 February 2010 can control land use changes in an urban region, which in turn alter local climate regulation. Thus, this paper
Accepted 5 February 2010
describes a method for estimating the impacts of current land uses as well as local and regional planning
Available online 19 March 2010
policies on local climate regulation, using evapotranspiration and land surface emissivity as indicators. This
method can be used by practitioners to evaluate their policies. An application of this method is demonstrated
Keywords:
Climate regulation for the case study Leipzig (Germany). Results for six selected planning policies in Leipzig indicate their
Urban heat island distinct impacts on climate regulation and especially the role of their spatial extent. The proposed method