Jia Wang

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Verified

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Urban heat island effect in most cities is likely to be exacerbated in future years due to the synergetic effects of urbanization and global climate change. Numerous studies have shown cooling effects of urban vegetation. However, the magnitude of temperature reduction by one-unit (e.g., 1% of tree cover) increase of vegetation abundance, defined a...

We used land cover data derived from Landsat thematic mapper (TM) and land surface temperature (LST) data from moderate-resolution imaging spectro-radiometer (MODIS) satellite images to study the variations in LST in July of different land cover types in Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan urban agglomeration. Ordinary linear regressions (OLS) models and geog...

Urban greenspace has significant cooling effects on urban heat. Recent studies investigating the effects of spatial configuration of greenspace show significant, but inconsistent results, including both positive and negative effects. To investigate the causes of this inconsistency, we compared Baltimore, MD and Sacramento, CA, USA, two cities with...

Numerous studies have shown an increased surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) in many cities with urban expansion. Few studies, however, have investigated whether such intensification is mainly caused by urban warming, the cooling of surrounding nonurban regions, or the different rates of warming/cooling between urban and nonurban areas. Thi...

Urban heat mitigation is a pressing concern for cities. Intense urban heat poses a threat to human health and urban sustainability. Tree planting is one of the most widely employed nature-based heat mitigation methods worldwide. Therefore, city policy makers require knowledge of how much temperature will be reduced by increasing urban tree canopy (...

Human health, energy and comfort are determined by the climate that remains in the physical environment. Regarding urban climate, few studies assess the urban heat island effect, heat stress, and public health as geographical representations. This study seeks to fill this gap by selecting Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Shenzhen, China, comparatively, two...

Quantifying spatial disparities of accessibility to basic services is fundamentally important for achieving the SDGs goal of universal access to these services. Trajectory big data shows great potential to address such disparities , but we know little about its efficacy. Here, taking patients from residential neighborhoods to healthcare in Beijing,...

Increasing urban tree canopy (UTC) has been widely recognized as an effective means for urban heat mitigation and adaptation. While numerous studies have shown that both percent cover of UTC and its spatial configuration can significantly affect urban temperature, the pathways governing these relationships are largely unexplored. Here we present a...

Previous studies have shown that changes in local land cover can significantly influence air temperature. What remains unaddressed is whether, and at which point, such within-city changes would become insignificant with cities continuing to expand. Here, we identify annual urban expansion and local land cover change in Beijing from 1985 to 2018, us...

The local rise in urban temperature is increasingly exacerbated due to the combined effect of urban heat islands and global climate change. Numerous studies have shown that green roofs (GRs) have great potential for facilitating urban heat mitigation. However, little is known about whether such cooling effects can be achieved under extreme heat con...

Available space and other resources associated with urban greening initiatives are limited, yet demand for urban cooling to mitigate high urban temperatures is growing. Consequently, identifying the best locations for urban greening to maximize the cooling effects of the urban tree canopy (UTC) is taking on new urgency. We present a cross‐city comp...

Cities are home to around half of the global population but face intensified and unevenly distributed heat stresses. Trees are utilized to adapt to urban heat; however, most tree planting is prioritized by either biophysical or social metrics, rather than an integration of the two. It therefore remains unclear how to maximize ecological and social...

An increasing number of studies have focused on the response and adaptation of plants to urbanization by comparing differences in leaf functional traits between urban and rural sites. However, considerable uncertainties remain because differences in land-use type have not frequently been taken into account when assessing the effect of urbanization...

Urban vegetation can be highly dynamic due to the complexity of different anthropogenic drivers. Quantifying such dynamics is crucially important as it is a prerequisite to understanding its social and ecological consequences. Previous studies have mostly focused on the urban vegetation dynamics through monotonic trends analysis in certain interval...

Urban trees provide a range of ecological services for urban dwellers. This is particularly true in residential areas where these services are known and valued. The abundance and diversity of trees determine and indicate the provision of ecological services by trees, while various characteristics of residential areas determine and indicate the abun...

Intensity of urban heat island (UHII) is a key indicator to quantify the magnitude of UHI effect. Change in UHII, however, can be affected by change in urban or rural temperature, or both. Numerous studies have investigated the change of UHII, but how it relates to change in urban and rural temperature is poorly understood. Here we present a contin...

Urban trees provide important cooling effects and lower the human health risks associated with UV radiation through shading. However, maximizing the shade potential of trees to improve the benefits to the health and sustainability of cities is not well studied. To explore whether optimizing the spatial pattern of buildings and trees could improve t...

Urban expansion and renewal are one of the major drivers affecting urban landscapes worldwide. Considerable research has been conducted to understand how urban greenspace (UG) changes in response to urbanization at various scales from individual patches to landscapes. However, most of these studies have been conducted at a single scale, and little...

Content Urban residential greenspace is considerably contributing to sustainable cities and residents’ well-being. An increasing number of studies have examined the greenspace inequalities and species biodiversity in relation to social theories in private gardens of US and European cities; however, much less studied is landscape configurations, esp...

Context Accurately quantifying changes in urban greenspace (UG) is the prerequisite for understanding ecosystem service. In addition to quantifying the “real” change of UG, it’s crucial to evaluate the change in quality of UG that is associated with quantitative change in area. Objectives (1) Present a new index, dynamic index of UG (UGDI) that me...

Numerous studies have showed that landscape composition and configuration can significantly affect land surface temperature (LST). Most of these studies focus on the horizontal dimension of landscape structure. Few studies, however, have explored the effects of vertical dimension of urban landscape. This study aims to fill this gap. We focused on t...

Increasing urban greenspace, particularly trees, has been widely recognized as an effective means for urban heat mitigation. Lots of uncertainty, however, occurs on how spatial configuration of trees affects their cooling effectiveness. A frequently asked question from urban planners is that whether a large greenspace patch has better cooling effec...

Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the characteristics of urban sprawl at multiple scales, ranging from neighborhood, to city, and metropolitan statistical area. However, few studies have investigated urban sprawl in a megaregion, particularly from a multiple spatial and temporal scale perspective. Focusing on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei...

Landscape changes associated with urbanization can lead to many serious ecological and environmental problems. Quantifying the vertical structure of the urban landscape and its change is important to understand its social and ecological impacts, but previous studies mainly focus on urban horizontal expansion and its impacts on land cover/land use c...