Browsing by Author "Salinas, Valentina"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Beyond the Canopy: In Situ Evidence of Urban Green Spaces’ Cooling Potential Across Three Chilean Cities
    (2025) Salgado Durán, Karina Ximena; Barrera, Francisco de la; Salinas, Valentina; González, Sergio; Reyes Paecke, Sonia; Truffello Robledo, Ricardo; Salvati, Agnese
    Vegetation in urban green spaces plays a critical role in mitigating surface heat, yet the magnitude of this effect remains uncertain across scales and measurement methods. This study assesses the cooling performance during the summer of 94 green spaces in three Chilean cities—classified in three types according to their size—combining satellite-derived land surface temperature (LST) data with high-resolution in situ thermal imaging. We performed comparisons of the cooling effects of green spaces and their components (vegetation, impermeable and semi-permeable surfaces). Spearman’s correlation analysis, the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn post hoc were used to evaluate associations and differences. Results demonstrate that vegetation quantity and composition—particularly tree and shrub cover—are key determinants of cooling performance. In situ measurements reveal that green spaces are on average 9.3 °C cooler than their urban surroundings, substantially exceeding differences captured by LST. Additionally, shaded surfaces within green spaces exhibit temperature reductions of 12 °C to 17 °C compared to sun-exposed areas, underscoring the role of vegetation in mitigating surface heat extremes. These findings challenge the sole reliance on remote sensing for urban heat assessments and highlight the value of integrating ground-based observations. This study advances understanding of vegetation’s localized cooling potential in Latin American cities and provides actionable insights for urban climate resilience planning.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Comparing green spaces provision and accessibility indicators over a latitudinal gradient and multiple climate zones
    (ELSEVIER GMBH, 2023) De la Barrera, Francisco; Reyes Paecke, Sonia; Truffello, Ricardo; De la Fuente, Helen E.; Salinas, Valentina; Villegas, Rodrigo A.; Steiniger, Stefan; CEDEUS (Chile)
    Monitoring urban green space (UGS) indicators is key to assessing progress against the UNs sustainable devel-opment goals (SDGs). Within these indicators, measuring the provision of UGS as well as its accessibility is considered a major objective. However, neither the relationship between the two indicators, nor differences related to different types of UGS have been adequately evaluated. In this paper, these two indicators are calculated and analyzed for four size-based types of UGS and for 69 municipalities, which are part of the 16 regional capital cities of Chile. For the provision indicator, the average calculated over all municipalities does not reach the often proposed standard of 11 sq.m/inhab., but only 5.29 sq.m/inhab. Regarding the accessibility indicator, when a walking speed of 4 km/h is considered, the smaller residential green spaces have the highest accessibility (65 % of the population have access), but accessibility for larger GS is low. When a walking speed of 2 km/h is assumed, then accessibility drops to 29 %, 5 %, 5 % and 5 % respectively. We found that calculation results for the four types of UGS are statistically different, and therefore one type cannot replace another in case of monitoring: Higher UGS provision does not guarantee higher accessibility.