Quantifying the cooling effect and scale of large inner-city lakes based on landscape patterns: A case study of Hangzhou and Nanjing

The rapid urbanization worldwide has brought various environmental problems. The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is one of the most concerning issues because of its strong relation with daily lives. Water bodies are generally considered a vital resource to relieve the UHI. In this context, it is critical to develop a method for measuring the cooling effect and scale of water bodies in urban areas. In this study, West Lake and Xuanwu Lake, two famous natural inner-city lakes, are selected as the measuring targets. The scatter plot and multiple linear regression model were employed to detect the relationship between the distance to the lake and land surface temperature based on Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager/Thermal Infrared Sensor (OLI/TIRS) and Sentinel-2 data. The results show that West Lake and Xuanwu Lake massively reduced the land surface temperature within a few hundred meters (471 m for West Lake and 336 m for Xuanwu Lake) and have potential cooling effects within thousands of meters (2900 m for West Lake and 3700 m for Xuanwu Lake). The results provide insights for urban planners to manage tradeoffs between the large lake design in urban areas and the cooling effect demands.