Davidson Health and Air Quality II​: Assessing Urban Heat and Tree Canopy to Inform Urban Planning in Davidson, North Carolina​

The Town of Davidson, North Carolina strives to make their community more sustainable through the implementation of a robust Climate Action Plan (CAP). The CAP included goals to improve the local ecosystem through a comprehensive urban forestry plan and enhancing Davidson’s resilience to urban heat. However, from examining land imagery, many wooded areas have been cut down to make way for constructing new developments from 2015 to 2025. Davidson staff previously lacked the resources to assess tree canopy coverage and other factors affecting local temperatures, so therefore outsourced these tasks to private companies. The DEVELOP team analyzed observations from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), Landsat 9 OLI-2 and TIRS-2, and International Space Station’s ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station to investigate how urbanization has affected the community’s environment and contributed to changes in the local climate. Maps created using these observations highlighted changes in tree canopy, vegetation health, and urban heat. Further analysis of the area incorporating aerial imagery and social vulnerability data aided in identifying locations most vulnerable to heat. Davidson staff can use our results to conduct their own in-house analyses and focus their heat mitigation efforts where they are most needed.