Assessment of Thermal Regulation before Urban Tree Cover Restoration in Verona, Italy

The éVRgreen project evaluates the cooling potential of urban green spaces in Verona, Northern Italy, establishing a baseline for future tree-cover restoration to mitigate urban heat island effects. Land cover categories (blue/green versus grey) were assessed across over 200,000 random locations using i-Tree Canopy software. Additionally, 50 monitoring stations were installed to record air temperatures at 2.5 metres above ground, allowing for the estimation of blue/green space percentages within 200-metre radial buffers. The study integrated land surface temperatures (LST) retrieved from the Landsat 8 satellite to analyse summer conditions (16 July 2024) alongside winter air temperatures (January 2025). Results indicate a substantial cooling effect: the median summer LST was 37 °C in tree-covered locations compared to 45 °C in areas with impervious surfaces (p<0.001). Furthermore, winter daily air temperatures were on average 0.49 °C lower in areas exceeding 49% blue/green cover (p<0.001). These findings demonstrate that urban vegetation possesses significant thermal regulation capabilities, with ground-level temperature differences reaching 8 °C during hot summer days, confirming tree cover restoration as an effective public health strategy for cities facing climate change.