We noticed an early leafing of
Tilia japonica (MIQ.) SIMONKAI growing along a street in the urban center of Sendai, in the northeast of Japan. The early leafing was assumed to be caused by an urban heat island. We attempted to elucidate how many days the leafing was in advance of usual leafing and to estimate the thermal difference between urban and suburban areas as shown by such responses in plants. The street where the trees in question are located is a 10-meter wide pedestrian mall lined with numerous buildings which extend north and south. A pair of terminal and lateral leaf buds was marked for investigation on each branch of three trees. The trees were about 5m in height. One of them was on the western side of the street and the other two were on the eastern side. Lengths of these six buds, and subsequently, lengths of new shoots after the buds had leafed were measured in the spring of 1988 by a caliper gauge. The measurements were conducted at intervals of approximately one week and continued until the shoots had finished elongating. Similar measurements were carried out for six other buds on a control tree in a private garden surrounded by open cultivated fields in a suburban area of Sendai.
It was about 8m tall. The trees examined and the control one are at about 40 and 20m above sea level, respectively.
After a period of slow swelling of the buds, rapid shoot elongation began on about April 10 and ended on about May 1 in the urban area. On the other hand, shoot elongation began on about April 20 and ended on about May 10 in the suburban area. Accordingly, leafing of T. japonica was approximately 10 days earlier in the urban area of Sendai than in the suburban area (Fig. 1). Unfortunately we could find no other specimens of T. japonica for comparison than the one investigated in the present study. However, we carried out other phenological investigations in the same year at a natural forest in Sendai (KIKUCHI and KIKUCHI, unpub-lished). According to our results, most deciduous trees had not leafed as yet on April 14, and had only partially leafed by April 30. This progress in leafing under natural conditions was very similar to that of the control tree in the present study. Thus, our finding that the three trees in the urban area of Sendai leafed 10 days earlier than normal should be judged as reasonable.
One of the present authors has reported that the leafing of several species of deciduous trees is delayed with an increase in altitude at a rate of three to five days per 100m (KANEKO (for-merly T. KIKUCHI), 1965). WATANABE (1988) also reported a three-day delay per 100m of altitude. Consequently, the ten-day difference in leafing between the urban and suburban areas of Sendai investigated in this study is equivalent to an altitudinal difference of 200 to 300m.
A thermal difference of 1 to 1.5°C can be calculated between such points based on the altitudinal regression rate of temperature. Thus, we can conclusively say that trees growing in the urban area of Sendai are under thermal conditions 1 to 1.5°C warmer than those in suburban or natural areas.
Maximum heat island intensity increases with an increase of urban population (OKE, 1973). Such intensity is about 4°C for a city such as Sendai with 600, 000 inhabitants (Fuxu-OKA, 1983; PARK, 1987; YAMASHITA, 1988). KAWAMURA (1985) summarized urban climatic conditions and mentions urban-rural differences in temperature in Tokyo and in other medium-sized cities: maximums of 8°C and 4-5°C, winter means of 3.5°C and 2°C, and annual means of 2.5°C and 1°C, respectively. In fact, heat islands 1.5 to 2°C warmer than suburban temperatures have been measured in Sendai (SITARA and HOSOKAWA, 1977; HosoKAWA and SITARA, 1977). The urban-suburban difference of 1 to 1.5°C on tree leafing in the present study seems to appropriately represent mean urban climate intensity of temperature.
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