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ANÁLISIS ESPACIOTEMPORAL DE ISLAS DE CALOR APLICADO EN LA CIUDAD COSTERA DE SAN FRANCISCO DE CAMPECHE, MÉXICO
ROMÁN CANUL-TURRIZA, KARIANNA AKÉ-TURRIZA, OSCAR MAY-TZUC, MARIO JIMÉNEZ-TORRES
REVISTA URBANO Nº 49 / MAYO 2024 - OCTUBRE 2024
PÁG. 8 - 23
ISSN 0717 - 3997 / 0718 - 3607
I. INTRODUCTION
Urbanization is one of the human processes with the
most significant environmental and climate impact.
55% of the world’s population lives in cities, which is
expected to increase to 68% by 2050 (Ma et al., 2023).
Harmful agents for health are emitted, which affect local
meteorology. At the same time, urban growth, economic
development, and changes in land use are also a threat
to humans and the ecosystem (Xu et al., 2021), as cities
contribute to global warming, mainly due to the effect
of Urban Heat Islands or UHI.
For example, in the coastal regions of the world, the
effect of the UHI is extreme, changing the regional
meteorology with extreme heat waves and floods,
and the phenomenon is expected to intensify (Qiu et
al., 2023). In these regions, the complexity increases
as a result of the sea breeze that leads the UHI several
kilometers inland until its dissipation (Yun et al., 2020).
It is necessary to understand the phenomenology to
allow the formulation of policies supporting decision-
making and scenario planning that consider: a) Analysis
of the time scale; b) Inclusion of landscape and urban
form, proportion of green and blue areas, improvement
of the albedo, modal distribution of transport; c)
Passive technologies in the building envelope; d) Active
technologies considering artificial climate control; and
e) Public health and citizen participation (Degirmenci et
al., 2021). Therefore, focusing on urban decentralization,
expansion control, green coverage rate, and building
density will improve the thermal environment and air
pollution (Luo & He, 2021).
Currently, there is a lack of knowledge about the
spatio-temporal variation of the intensity of daytime
and nighttime surface UHI. Similarly, resources still
need to be improved to cope with the rapid impacts
of urbanization. In recent years, satellite images have
been used as an alternative to detect UHIs due to
their availability, free access, and extensive registration
history. San Francisco de Campeche is an essential
region because it belongs to the World Heritage list and
is located in a coastal area with rapid urbanization, so
conducting a study focused on the UHI, using satellite
images from the period 1990 – 2020, will quantify
the historical changes in surface and atmospheric
temperature, as well as changes in vegetation cover, to
identify and characterize the UHI. It is also hypothesized
that the results of this study will reveal the areas with
the most significant changes in temperature and
vegetation cover, thus providing a basis for proposing
actions to mitigate the effects of UHI in San Francisco de
Campeche.
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Urban Heat Islands (UHI)
UHI are thermal anomalies resulting from the
temperature difference between a surrounding
urban and rural area, where the additional heat
emitted increases the atmospheric temperature (Ortiz
Porangaba et al., 2021). These increase summer cooling
loads and consequent energy consumption, which
leads to higher greenhouse gas emissions (Khare et
al., 2021). This thermal process affects the population
by increasing the local temperature and by releasing
pollutants into the atmosphere and air pollution.
Therefore, it is vital to understand how the components
of cities relate to UHIs to establish improvement
measures in the urban thermal environment and to
reduce air pollution (Kim & Brown, 2021; Liang et al.,
2021). With the rapid spread of urbanization worldwide,
the urban heat island effect substantially and adversely
impacts cities, including energy, environment,
and health conditions. Unfortunately, constructive
geometry and human activities severely intensify the
phenomenon of UHIs (Xu et al., 2021).
It has also been observed that UHIs and air pollution are
responsible for significant health impacts. According
to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, indoor
air pollution caused approximately 3.8 million deaths
in 2016, and about 4.2 million deaths were attributed
to air pollution in the same year. In addition, it is
estimated that 91% of the population lives where the air
quality index exceeds the limits of the WHO guidelines.
Therefore, regarding the figures provided by the WHO,
regulating urbanization could have two-way benefits
(Singh et al., 2020). Urbanization coincides with notable
environmental changes, including vegetation, soil, and
climate (Vasenev et al., 2021). Therefore, understanding
how the components of cities affect UHIs has become
a great challenge for societies that seek to improve the
quality of life through the implementation of urban
planning criteria (Hidalgo García & Arco Díaz, 2021).
The selection of urban planning indicators such as
building density, built area, and green coverage rate,
among others, during the preparation phase for
urban planning, can regulate the intensity of urban
development and the configuration of the urban
thermal environment after the application of the
planning proposal (Luo & He, 2021). This understanding
of the relationship between urban planning indicators
and the formation of the term environment allows
addressing, in greater detail, the thermal aspect in
the planning stage, which helps optimize the urban