INVESTIGATION ON THE EFFECT OF ANIMAL METABOLISM ON URBAN HEAT ISLAND PRODUCTION
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INVESTIGATION ON THE EFFECT OF ANIMAL METABOLISM ON URBAN HEAT ISLAND PRODUCTION
CHAPITER 1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Climate and energy are closely related to the built environment. According to Santamouris and Asimakopoulos (2001), the built environment is made up of more than just collections of buildings.
It also includes the physical outcomes of numerous economic, social, and environmental activities. When major cities suffer the construction of urban heat islands as a result of urban expansion, pollution growth, and the development of substantial industrial activity in metropolitan regions,
urban micro-climate change effects can be noticed (Ghazanfari et al., 2009). Land usage and land cover changes are encouraged by urbanisation. Investigating climate change at the urban scale necessitates considering human activity.
Because their concentrated impacts on the surrounding rural regions can vary greatly, human activities have a significant impact on urban climate.
Surface characteristics like heat capacity, heat conductivity, albedo, roughness length, maximum evaporative conductivity, heterogeneity, Leaf Area Index (LAI), and water features will all be significantly altered by changes in land cover (Mölders, 2011).
Metabolism in animals
The collective term for the physical and chemical processes necessary to sustain a bird’s life is “metabolism.” Any organism’s metabolism depends on an energy flow, and the sun is the primary source of energy for all birds. Birds obtain the sun’s energy by eating plants or by consuming other animals that eat plants, which is how green plants “capture” the sun’s energy.
The energy is utilised to power all of a living bird’s functions, including the construction of tissues, contraction of muscles, production of eggs, information processing in the brain, and reproduction. Enzymes, a class of biological catalysts, control the entire metabolic process.
They are twisted into distinctive three-dimensional structures from long, protein molecules that resemble chains. Enzyme molecules act much like templates, holding reacting molecules in place and holding them together to speed up interactions.
Enzymes that stop working (“denature”) stop doing their job, which results in a halt to metabolism and eventual death. The same is true for birds. Because boiling denatures enzymes, it kills.
Scientists assess the rate at which an animal would consume oxygen while at rest and under no stress in order to compare the rates at which various creatures use energy. Following that, the basal metabolic rate—which is calculated as the number of kilocalories of energy used per kilogramme of body weight, each hour—is determined using that consumption.
When compared to their amount of metabolising tissue, little birds have proportionately bigger surfaces (via which heat is dissipated) than do large birds. Due to its higher basal metabolism (which uses proportionately more energy), a Bushtit can sustain a body temperature similar to that of a Tundra Swan.
Hummingbirds have the greatest metabolic rates of all animals due to their small size and high levels of activity; they have rates that are around twelve times higher than pigeons and one hundred times higher than elephants.
Hummers need to regularly ingest around their weight in nectar to keep those rates up. A warm-blooded creature cannot actually be any smaller than a hummingbird or a shrew. The creature couldn’t eat quickly enough to keep its body temperature stable if it shrank any more.
Non-passerine birds’ basal metabolic rates are strikingly similar to some mammals’. However, for unknown reasons, passerines typically have 30-70% higher metabolic rates than either non-passerines or mammals. In most cases, birds consume less energy than mammals to complete the same task.
In fact, they frequently use less. For similarly sized and weighted animals, flying is both quicker and more energy efficient than walking or running. However, overall, the metabolism of birds and mammals is extremely similar. Birds naturally have higher metabolic rates during activity than they do at rest.
Hummingbirds can use up to eight times as much energy while hovering as they do while at rest. Hummingbirds may become torpid at night, which means they let their body temperature to drop, frequently until it is close to that of the surrounding air, at the other end of their activity range.
A person who is torpid may have a body temperature that is 50°F below normal (104°F) and a metabolic rate that is only a third of the basal metabolism. The temperature of torpid people is often controlled at a level that may be connected with their habitat, being higher in tropical species than in animals from temperate zones.
Hummingbirds do not always go into torpor at night. When surviving times of food constraint, the ability to “lower their thermostats” appears to have evolved as a tool for energy conservation.
Hummers face serious threats from adverse weather even at their basal metabolic rate, when they are only a few hours away from starving to death at their active metabolic rate. Some other birds, such swifts and poorwills, have lower metabolic states than hummingbirds, although these states have not been as fully investigated.
Hummingbird (sphinx) moths can be seen hovering about flowers and drinking nectar with their lengthy tongues when you are watching hummingbirds. There are startling similarities between the behaviour of these day-flying moths and hummers.
In fact, the largest sphinx moths weigh more than the smallest birds. The moths use metabolic heat produced by vibrating their wing muscles to elevate their temperature to as high as 104 degrees F. It’s interesting to note that both birds and moths operate at similar body temperatures when hovering and feeding. In order to save energy, “warm-blooded” (endothermic) birds lower their body temperature at night when they are sleeping.
When necessary to reach operational temperature for flying, “cold-blooded” (ectothermic) sphinx moths transform into endotherms and use metabolic heat to elevate their body temperature. All nontorpid birds need to work far harder than their basal metabolic rates during cold weather in order to keep their body temperatures stable.
Small species that spend the winter in temperate and subarctic regions, including Black-capped and Boreal Chickadees, are particularly vulnerable to freezing. They must constantly consume during the brief daylight hours to keep their metabolic fires burning since they have relatively vast surface areas through which to lose heat.
If they don’t, they won’t have enough energy stored up to last them the entire long night. A wintering chickadee would need to spend around twenty times as much time feeding each day as it would in the warmth of spring to survive.
Only somewhat warmer than mammals, birds’ body temperatures range from 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for penguins and whip-poor-wills to 104 degrees for most resting birds. Though they live quite different lifestyles, the two groups’ average temperature ranges and overall metabolisms are strikingly comparable.
Both have evolved to work at temperatures that are just a little bit below those at which the essential protein enzymes start to lose their stability, change their shape, and stop working (denature).
Thus, keeping a consistent body temperature is not just a challenge for birds in cold weather; it becomes an even bigger challenge when the air temperature climbs above that of the body. Birds therefore need to prevent overheating and unexpected demise.
Small birds’ relatively broad body surfaces easily absorb external heat (and lose cooling water). Because they seek shelter and become sedentary, songbirds are less common at midday during heat waves. To avoid the noon heat and the denaturation of their proteins in the chilly air of high altitudes, soaring birds, in contrast, may take advantage of thermals, rising packets of warm air.
Why, given the expenses associated with doing so, do birds (and mammals) take on these risks to maintain a high, consistent temperature? Compared to an ectothermal lizard of the same weight that warms to its operating temperature in the sun and cools again at night, a little bird must eat several times more food.
The ability of mammals and birds to be active at night and in cold weather is a clear benefit of their constant temperatures. They are able to enter spaces and engage in activities that are off-limits to reptiles.
The myriad of temperature-sensitive reactions that make up the metabolism can be better coordinated if they are in a generally constant thermal environment, which is another benefit of consistency.
But why are endotherm temperatures (and ectotherm temperatures when they are active) so close to the overheating point? In addition to speeding up chemical reactions, high temperatures also enable crucial physical processes that depend on diffusion to proceed more quickly.
The diffusion of transmitter molecules in nerve synapses is accelerated by heat. A bird can process crucial information and send commands to its muscles more quickly the hotter it is. Birds can respond more quickly as a result. Therefore, high operating temperatures provide obvious benefits for both avian predators and prey;
additionally, unlike hands and other ectotherms, birds do not require the warmth of the sun to reach these temperatures. Additionally, it has been proposed that keeping the brain’s temperature elevated helps with learning and memory.
URBAN HEAT ISLAND
Urbanisation has become increasingly prevalent during the previous century. Around 150 million people in 1900 resided in cities with a population of 20,000 or more. This represented fewer than 10% of the global populace. According to Akbari et al. (2012), this population has increased to over 2.2 billion, or about 50% of the world’s total. Approximately 80% of Americans today live in metropolitan regions (Heisler and Brazel, 2010).
Rapid urbanisation has led to significant changes in the population, economy, land use, and climate. In order to accommodate the expanding population, the growth and extension of our urban centres necessitate the construction of new roads, buildings, and other man-made constructions,
which leads to the eradication of the natural ground cover and landscape. According to Jiang et al. (2007), this urbanisation of the natural landscape can have significant meteorological effects, creating urban heat islands with elevated air temperatures of 2–8°F,
increased energy needs, and elevated pollution concentrations compared to rural surrounding areas. An example of a typical heat island profile for a city may be found in Figure 1.1.
An example of a typical heat island profile for a metropolitan area is shown in Fig. 1.1.
STATEMENT OF THE ISSUE
Global environmental quality is significantly impacted by urban expansion, including air quality, temperature rise, and traffic congestion. According to Santamouris and Asimakopoulos (2001),
building itself is impacted by global changes in urban temperature, energy consumption rate, raw material use, pollution, waste production, conversion of agricultural land to developed land, biodiversity loss, and water shortages.
However, the “urban heat island” is a climate and environmental issue that has arisen as a result of the concentration of anthropogenic activity in metropolitan regions. In order to better understand how urban heat islands emerge and how they effect energy use, this research looks at some of the key components.
1.3 The Study’s Objectives
The goal of this experiment is to determine how animal metabolism affects the urban heat island phenomena in the rural Imo State community of Orji.
1.4OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The goals of this study are to look into;
The impact of animal metabolism on Orji, Imo State’s urban heat island generation.
Relationship between the time of day and how animal metabolism affects the development of urban heat islands.
the temperature disparities in a rural Imo State centre between an animal farmyard and a vegetative farmyard.
1.5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
What impact does animal metabolism have on the creation of urban heat islands in Orji, Imo State?
Is there a statistically significant connection between the time of day and how animal metabolism affects the development of urban heat islands?
What variations in temperature are there between the farmyards housing animals and those housing plants in a rural area in Imo State?
1.6 RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
H0: The formation of urban heat islands is unaffected by animal metabolism.
H1: The development of urban heat islands is influenced by animal metabolism.
H0: There is no statistically significant connection between the time of day and how animal metabolism affects the development of urban heat islands.
H1: There is a statistically significant connection between the time of day and how animal metabolism affects the development of urban heat islands.
1.7 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Understanding linked health, economic, and environmental challenges requires an understanding of urban heat island. For accurate comparisons to be made and for effective communication among those involved in researching and mitigating urban heat island, it is crucial to define terms and methods of studies properly.
1.8 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
In this study, the Orji rural community in Imo State’s Urban Heat Island intensity was evaluated. The study is restricted to local farms raising poultry and growing vegetables that provided temperature readings.
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