Abstract
Under the assumption that the temperature of one location is closely related to land use characteristics around that location, this study is carried out to assess the impact of urban land use patterns on air temperature. In order to investigate the relationship, GIS techniques and statistical analyses are utilized, after spatially connecting urban land use data in Seoul Metropolitan Area with atmospheric data observed at Automatic Weather Stations (AWS). The research method is as follows: (1) To find out important land use factors on temperature, simple linear regressions for a specific time period (pilot study) are conducted with urban land use characteristics, (2) To make a final model, multiple regressions are carried out with those factors and, (3) To verify that the final model could be appled to explain temperature variations beyond the period, the model is extensively used for 5 different time periods: 1999 as a whole; summer in 1999; 1998 as a whole; summer in 1998; August in 1998. The results of simple linear regression models in the pilot study show that transportation facilities and open space area are very influential on urban air temperature variations, which explain 66 and 61 percent of the variations, respectively. However, the other land use variables (residential, commercial, and mixed land use) are found to have weak or insignificant relationship to the air temperatures. Multiple linear regression with the two important variables in the pilot study is estimated, which shows that the model explains 75 percent of the variability in air temperatures with correct signs of regression coefficients. Thus, it is empirically shown that an increase in open space and a decrease in transportation facilities area can leads to the decrease in air temperature. After the final model is extensively applied to the 5 different time periods, the estimated models explain 68 ∼ 75 percent of the variations in the temperatures is significant regression coefficients for all explanatory variables. This result provides a possibility that one air temperature model for a specific time period could be a good model for other time periods near to the period. The important implications of this result to lessen high air temperature we: (1) to expand and to conserve open space and (2) to control transportation-related factors such as transportation facilities area, road pavement and traffic congestion.
