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He, C. ; Yin, P.* ; Chen, R.* ; Wang, L.* ; Wang, Y.* ; Schneider, A.E. ; Kan, H.* ; Zhou, M.*

Small accessible urban parks mitigate heat-related mortality.

Nat. Health 1, 129 - 137 (2026)
DOI
Open Access Green as soon as Postprint is submitted to ZB.
Increasing evidence suggests that a city’s green space coverage can effectively regulate heatwave-related health risk, but the spatial pattern of green spaces has not received sufficient attention. Here we investigated how different green space configurations modify heatwave-related mortality risk across 265 Chinese cities using five landscape metrics. We evaluated heatwaves using varying intensities and durations. Results showed that cities with higher green space coverage (percentage of landscape, PLAND), more dispersed distributions (higher splitting index, SPLIT) and more regular boundaries (lower landscape shape index, LSI) showed significantly lower heatwave-related mortality risks. For heatwaves with ≥92.5th percentile temperature for ≥2 consecutive days, mortality risks were substantially higher in cities with low PLAND (relative risk (RR) 1.11, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08–1.14), low SPLIT (RR 1.10, 95% CI 1.08–1.13) and high LSI (RR 1.13, 95% CI 1.10–1.18) compared with their counterparts with high PLAND (RR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01–1.07), high SPLIT (RR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01–1.08) and low LSI (RR 1.04, 95% CI 0.96–1.12), respectively; all P < 0.05. Notably, merely increasing green space quantity (patch density) or largest patch size (largest patch index) did not significantly reduce mortality risk. Our findings emphasize that green space configuration, beyond total coverage, plays a crucial role in mitigating heatwave-related mortality, suggesting that urban planning should prioritize strategically distributed, more dispersed green spaces with regular boundaries rather than simply focusing on quantity and the size of the largest green patches to enhance public health resilience against increasing heatwave threats.
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Publication type Article: Journal article
Document type Scientific Article
Keywords Work (physics) ; Population ; Urbanization ; Government (linguistics)
ISSN (print) / ISBN 3005-0693
e-ISSN 3005-0693
Journal Nature Health
Quellenangaben Volume: 1, Issue: 1, Pages: 129 - 137 Article Number: , Supplement: ,
Publisher Springer
Reviewing status Peer reviewed
Institute(s) Institute of Epidemiology (EPI)