Planting trees along urban streets is one of the most important strategies to improve the urban thermal environment. However, the net impacts of urban street trees on human thermal comfort and physiological parameters are still less clear. On three similar east–west orientated streets with different degrees of tree cover—low (13%), medium (35%), and high (75%), urban microclimatic parameters and human physiological indices for six male students were simultaneously measured on three cloudless days in summer 2018. The results show that the differences in tree cover were predominant in influencing urban thermal environment and comfort. The street with the highest tree cover had significantly lower physiological equivalent temperature (PET) and more comfortable than the other two streets. The frequency of strong heat stress (PET > 35 °C) was 64%, 11%, and 0%, respectively, for streets with low, medium, and high tree cover. For the six male university students, human physiological indices varied greatly across the three streets with different tree cover. Systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and pulse rate increased with decreasing tree cover. The results also suggest that urban thermal environment and comfort had considerable impact on human physiological parameters. Our study provides reasons for urban planners to plant trees along streets to improve the thermal environment and promote urban sustainability.
The new development mode represented by the digital economy has provided new ideas for sustainable rural development. To comprehensively understand the status of digital rural development and propose scientific measures of rural revitalization in the Yellow River Basin (YRB), this study used counties as the research unit and data from 2020 to analyze the spatial differentiation characteristics and influencing factors by employing the Theil index, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and a geodetector model. The results showed that the digital rural development index in the YRB is slightly higher than it is in China overall, but the sub-index for the digital economy is lagging. The levels of digital rural development in the different reaches were lower reaches > middle reaches > upper reaches. Additionally, municipal districts and county-level cities have higher statuses than t general counties. Moreover, the decomposition of the Theil index shows that the intra-group differences in the upper reaches and general counties are the most important cause of the total differences. Moreover, the levels of digital rural development demonstrate spatial differences, with high and low levels in the east and west, respectively. An obvious reliable spatial correlation exists, and the spatial agglomeration featured with a similar level is significant. Finally, the influencing factors of spatial heterogeneity of digital rural development in the YRB and different reaches were different, with government expenditure being the main leading factor in the YRB and its upper reaches, while educational attainment and industrial structure are the leading factors in the middle reaches and lower reaches, respectively. The explanatory power of the interactions between the factors far exceeds that of a single factor, as shown through double-factor and nonlinear enhancement. This study provides a scientific reference for facilitating more targeted policy measures to achieving the goal of digital China and rural revitalization.
5 January 2026 in Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy