Microclimate and Thermal Comfort of an Urban Forest Fragment in Curitiba, Parana State, Brazil

The aim of this research was to compare the microclimate and thermal comfort provided by an urban forest fragment with other environments in the Campus III of the Federal University of Parana - UFPR: lawn, parking lot, and pine grove. To this end, meteorological data were collected in the four seasons. The results indicated that the urban forest fragment was statistically different from the other environments, which showed higher values of air temperature (mean of 3.5 °C) and lower values of relative humidity (mean of 16%). In all seasons, the pine grove showed the same category of thermal comfort of the urban forest fragment, with predominance of the “no stress” class. The results emphasize the importance of tree cover, because both the forest fragment and the pine grove provide more thermally comfortable microclimates than the other environments: lawn and parking lot.