QUANTIFYING THE COOLING IMPACT OF URBAN HEAT ISLAND MITIGATION STRATEGIES AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD SCALE

Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) are more likely to occur in historically redlined communities that have been systemically denied necessary infrastructure to reduce heat. In the UHI neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, the community has responded to a lack of cooling infrastructure by opening fire hydrants and building community gardens, which are both Blue/Green Infrastructure (BGI) known to mitigate UHIs by evapotranspiration. In seeking to quantify the cooling impact of hydrants and community gardens, the satellite data from Landsat 8 was evaluated for its ability to capture the cooling impact of these small-scale BGI's at a 30 meter resolution. Quantifying these cooling effects empowers community-based efforts of heat mitigation in spaces where the existing municipal urban infrastructure is inadequate to protect neighborhoods, and it validates what the community members of Bed-Stuy already know: that community gardens and open fire hydrants are inherently valuable as climate change exacerbates the UHI effect.