Urban Fluxes in a Mediterranean City and a Modeling Framework for Developing Low Carbon Planning Strategies

Urban fluxes will be measured in a town located in the Sardinian region (Italy), an island in the Mediterranean basin. The project aims to develop a methodology framework, including inventory tools, direct measurements and models for identifying and planning future urban low carbon scenarios. The micrometeorological technique Eddy Covariance, as well as a meteorological station and radiometers, will be applied to monitor energy, water, and carbon fluxes the city center. A modeling framework will be used to study the impact of different urban planning strategies on carbon emission rates. The system is composed by (1) a land surface model (Advanced Canopy-Atmosphere-Soil Algorithm, ACASA) to simulate the urban metabolism components at local scale, (2) a Cellular Automata model to simulate the urban land-use dynamics in the near future, (3) a transportation model to estimate the variation of the transportation network load, and (4) the coupled model WRF-ACASA to simulate the urban metabolism components for the entire municipality. From the model outputs, we will evaluate the impact of changes in the land use demand and transportation network load in the town at different scales. A detailed description of project activities and methods will be reported here, as well as the temporal variation of urban fluxes measured by the Eddy Covariance tower, and the identification of the main carbon emission sources.