Abstract Urban forests have been widely recognized as a nature-based solution to address urban environmental changes like urban heat islands. Although previous studies have explored the cooling effects of urban forests, the extent of this effect and related influencing factors remain unclear and have not been comprehensively synthesized yet. To fill this research gap, we conducted a systematic literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) method with 20 keywords and their combinations in Web of Science to address 3 main research questions: (1) what is the cooling range of urban forests; (2) what are the factors that may affect the cooling effects; and (3) how can we better manage urban forests to optimize cooling effects? We systematically reviewed 73 peer-reviewed articles selected from an initial pool of 4,072 search results following the PRISMA method. We found that urban greenspaces generally have cooling effects, but it is challenging to draw a clear conclusion on the cooling range due to variation in study design, measurement approaches, spatial scales, and local climate contexts. Moreover, the main influencing factors include land cover compositions, tree cover and canopy structures, leaf area index, forest types and tree species, and spatial arrangements of urban vegetation. Additionally, the cooling benefits of urban forests might be affected by local background climate and weather conditions, as well as distances from water bodies. These findings can help guide urban greening efforts (e.g., land cover types, tree species selection, and spatial arrangements) to achieve a greener and cooler future.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.