Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Urban Forestry & Urban Greening journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ufug Modelling the relationships between urban land cover change and local climate regulation to estimate urban heat island effect Thomas Elliot a,b,c, *, Javier Babí Almenar a,d,e , Benedetto Rugani a a RDI Unit on Environmental Sustainability Assessment and Circularity (SUSTAIN), Environmental Research & Innovation (ERIN) Department, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), 41 Rue du Brill, L-4422, Belvaux, Luxembourg b IN+, Centre for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Avenida Rovisco Pais, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal c MARETEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal d Institute of Molecular Sciences, University of Bordeaux, F-33400, Talence, France e Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano, 77, 38123 Trento, Italy ARTICLE INFO Handling Editor: T. Timothy Van Renterghem Keywords: Ecosystem services Local climate regulation Urban heat island Lisbon Cellular automata Land cover change ABSTRACT Urban land covers affect the thermal characteristics of the city, such as the urban heat island (UHI) effect, potentially increasing energy demand to maintain comfortable indoor and outdoor temperatures. As the land patterns change, the capacity of the landscape to regulate the UHI can change. The aim of this paper is to explore how simulating land cover changes (LCC) may affect UHI using an ecosystem service matrix approach. A LCC model, illustrated in the case study of Lisbon, Portugal, was implemented to estimate the UHI effects over time starting from the modelling of land cover changes associated with the supply of local climate regulation service. Our results show that the capacity of urban landscape to mitigate the UHI effect has decreased since 1990, and will continue to decrease slightly until 2022 although more smoothly than between 1990 and 2000. This is because no substantial land cover changes have occurred after 2000 that required the transition between highest to lowest ecosystem service supplier landscapes. The proposed modelling approach may be refined and used to aiding the decision making process for urban planners in the placement of built structures and green spaces that have the capacity to regulate local climate. 1. Introduction The urban heat island (UHI) is the phenomenon of higher (and sometimes lower) temperatures in urban areas compared to the sur- rounding peri-urban and rural areas (Mohajerani et al., 2017). UHI can cause discomfort for the people living in urban areas, and has an impact on energy use for cooling and heating. A location’s UHI intensity ty- pically varies depending on time of day, season, and dynamics related to the local ecology, such as plant foliage and the subsequent evapo- transpiration effects (Debbage and Shepherd, 2015; Pielke and Avissar, 1990; Pielke et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2012; Pielke et al., 2007). The urban effect on climate is not limited to the UHI; factors such as changes to rainfall, humidity, air pollution, wind stagnation, particulate matter emissions, and their combined effects on increased mortality are ex- amples of the extent to which complex urban systems generate negative local environmental impacts (Pielke et al., 2007; Boumans et al., 2014; Zhou and Shepherd, 2010). One of the main causes of UHI is the dense agglomeration of artificial materials and surfaces, which alter the thermal properties and air movement. For example, concrete, asphalt, plastics, metals, and other impervious materials – otherwise known as technomass – limit the flow of air, evapotranspiration rate, latent heat, and radiate and/or reflect heat energy (Boumans et al., 2014; Inostroza, 2014). These characteristics can concentrate heat energy which increases the tem- perature in local urban environments. The interweaving of green and blue structures among the artificial built environment can reduce the UHI, increasing thermal comfort in cities (Boumans et al., 2014) through the enhancement of local climate regulation (Haines-Young and Potschin-Young, 2018). While this eco- system service can be empirically measured (Soares et al., 2011; Magliulo et al., 2014), it is also interesting for future-proofing against UHI to simulate such urban landscape interactions with sophisticated models (patZhang et al., 2013; Elliot et al., 2019). This can help urban planning to determine the level of UHI that we can expect given certain urban landscape patterns (Boumans et al., 2014; Zhou and Shepherd, 2010; Kennedy et al., 2011). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2020.126650 Received 21 October 2019; Received in revised form 30 January 2020; Accepted 9 March 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: RDI Unit on Environmental Sustainability Assessment and Circularity (SUSTAIN), Environmental Research & Innovation (ERIN) Department, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), 41 Rue du Brill, L-4422, Belvaux, Luxembourg. E-mail address: thomas.elliot@list.lu (T. Elliot). Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 50 (2020) 126650 Available online 12 March 2020 1618-8667/ © 2020 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. T