Multi-Scale Analysis of Plant Landscape and Its Regulatory Effect on Urban Microclimate
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Horticultural Science and Ornamental Plants".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 206
Editors
Interests: green space; microclimate; carbon sink; heat island; ecological restoration
Interests: climate change and adaptive planning; urban green space; air pollution; urban thermal environment; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: urban biodiversity; spontaneous plants; urban flora composition; biotic homogenization; plant functional traits
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Rapid urbanization and climate change have intensified urban heat islands and extreme heat events, posing serious risks to human health, energy consumption, and ecological sustainability. Plant landscapes—ranging from street trees and green roofs to urban parks and peri-urban forests—offer a nature-based solution to mitigate adverse microclimates through shading, evapotranspiration, and windflow modification. However, the regulatory effect of vegetation on urban microclimate is inherently multi-scale, spanning leaf-level processes (e.g., stomatal conductance), canopy-layer exchanges, neighbourhood airflow patterns, and city-wide thermal belts. Despite growing research, integrating these scales into a coherent analytical framework remains a challenge, limiting the practical application of plant landscape design for climate-resilient cities. Recent advances in remote sensing (e.g., UAV/LiDAR, thermal imagery), high-resolution climate modelling (e.g., ENVI-met, PALM), and distributed sensor networks have enabled unprecedented multi-scale investigation. This Special Issue responds to the urgent need for cross-scale understanding, bridging plant ecophysiology, urban climatology, and landscape planning to support evidence-based greening strategies.
This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances related to multi-scale analysis of plant landscape characteristics and their regulatory effects on urban microclimate. We consider contributions addressing theoretical developments, empirical case studies, modelling simulations, and design applications.
Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:
(1) Multi-scale modelling (leaf to canopy to city) of plant-microclimate interactions;
(2) Field measurements and long-term monitoring of vegetation effects on the urban thermal environment;
(3) Remote sensing and GIS-based assessment of plant landscape patterns and cooling efficiency;
(4) Influence of species composition, canopy structure, and spatial configuration on thermal environment;
(5) Coupling of plant physiological processes (e.g., transpiration, albedo) with microclimate models;
(6) Nature-based solutions and green infrastructure for heat mitigation under different urban morphologies;
(7) Multi-scale optimization of plant landscape layouts for climate adaptation and energy saving;
(8) Integration of plant landscape analysis with urban planning regulations and design guidelines.
Dr. Ming Chen
Dr. Xiong Yao
Dr. Weicong Fu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- urban microclimate
- plant landscape
- multi-scale analysis
- heat mitigation
- thermal comfort
- nature-based solutions
- remote sensing
- urban green infrastructure
- microclimate modelling
- landscape planning
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