Understanding the characteristics and microclimate regulation efficiency of traditional Javanese home gardens in the rural settlement area

This paper examines the potential of traditional home gardens in enhancing climate change resilience by understanding the characteristics and efficiency of microclimate regulation in rural settlement areas. This study combines empirical methods with field measurements, including the identification of vegetation structures and the measurement of microclimate parameters in the field, as well as remote sensing techniques for extracting land surface temperature (LST) images. The influence of tree coverage was used as a basis for analysis, aiming to delve deeper into the characteristics of the cooling effect at two spatial scales: house compound units and rural settlement areas. The results show that Javanese home gardens are productive private landscapes that have a cooling effect on house compound units, with an average decrease in air temperature of 1.7 °C. This study found that every traditional Javanese home garden features an agroforestry system with various productive tree species, but shares similarities in its configuration and balanced composition of open areas and tree coverage, which enables efficient microclimate regulation in the surrounding area. Furthermore, home gardens in village settlement areas are integrated and form networks that contribute to the distribution of cooling effects within the village settlement area.