87.6% of Garden City Is Concrete, Mercury Rising

Urbanisation effect: Heat archipelagos, shrinking green, blue spaces

- BOSKY KHANNA @Bengaluru

BENGALURU's concrete cover is a solid 87.6 per cent, having increased by 10 per cent over the past decade. This has had a multiple effect on the city, leading to the creation of many heat archipelagos, a rise in temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions, besides affecting citizens' health. A cluster of urban heat islands within a city or region is called an 'urban heat archipelago' and represents the combined effect of multiple localised heat islands, forming a broader area of elevated temperatures.

A micro-level study of Bengaluru's landscape 'Urban Heat Island Linkages with the Landscape Morphology', released on Tuesday, shows that lakes and trees cover a mere 12 per cent. The report, prepared by researchers from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, pointed out that increase in concretisation is also a reason for many diseases, including heart attacks and lifestyle disorders.