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Understanding Alteration to Surface Cover in Developing Urban Heat Island: Enhancing City Climate Change Adaptation Capacity, Quezon City, Philippines


The Philippines and its cities are at their fastest pace towards urbanization. For example, Quezon City (QC) is developing aggressively, and the effects of urbanization, that is, the replacement of vegetation by building structures, change the microclimate, which as a result, raises summer temperatures by up to 7 °C. Primarily, two major impacts have been identified and extensively studied. First, urbanization affects climate; where cities tend to expel more heat than nearby rural areas. This is known as Urban Heat Island (UHI); the second is that urbanization affects hydrology where cities have an increased surface runoff rate, resulting in flooding. If Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) is to be attained by future cities, people must learn to minimize the onslaught of these effects. It is done by mapping Urban Morphology Types (UMT) of Barangay Greater Lagro, QC, using Geographic Information System (GIS). The findings revealed that 84 percent of Barangay is currently impervious, 7 percent is bare soil, and 9 percent is evapotranspiring. Further, surface temperature and runoff (STAR) tools are used. It is revealed that at 90 percent probability with "green infrastructure to land cover scenario," the indicative maximum surface temperature in 2050 is at 37.2 °C. On the other hand, in a "business as usual land cover scenario," the temperature spiked to 43 °C. With similar scenarios, there would be an increase in surface runoff resulting in higher flooding incidences with high precipitation. Thus, a Green Infrastructure Action Plan (GIAP) is recommended to prevent future surface runoff and to avert the development of expected UHI.


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