Author(s)

Bo Hong

College of Landscape Architecture and Arts, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.

Residential greening constitutes a significant portion of the urban environment. Trees, as the largest entities in the tree-shrub-herb greening system, are the best choice for residential afforestation. Hence, tree arrangement in green space between buildings is significant, for which may exert negative impact on building sunshine. This study takes He Qingyuan residential area in Beijing as a case study to predict the growth in tree height between buildings to meet good sunshine requirements. The procedures were draw as follows: 1) models including building layout and trees were built using computer-aided design (Auto CAD). Afterwards, according to tree crown shape, tree height limits were determined for the same building layout; 2) and after that, the growth in tree height was predicted using the nonlinear height-diameter functions to meet the good sunshine requirements. The results allow us to determine which trees to plant between buildings in that the designers can predict the effects of future tree growth on building sunshine.

Tree Height, Building Sunshine, Residential District, Computer-Aided Design, Nonlinear Height-Diameter Function

Hong, B. (2015) Predicting the Growth in Tree Height for Building Sunshine in Residential District. Open Journal of Forestry, 5, 57-65. doi: 10.4236/ojf.2015.51007.