Hot in the city: Thermal and urban ecological fieldwork along Singapore’s Nature Ways

Nicole Dorville
12 minutes ago
5 min read

Wan Lin and Nicole (left); Nicole and Sonia (right)

Hi there! We are Nicole Dorville, Ng Wan Lin and Sonia Lee from the TEE Lab! Nicole is a PhD student studying the microclimates and habitats along the Nature Ways, Wan Lin is the Project Officer of the project, and Sonia is a Research Associate. Nicole has recently finished her fieldwork, and so we’d come together to share with you how this process has been.

A little bit of context – Nature Ways are everyday pedestrian walkways in Singapore that have been “revamped” by NParks to support urban biodiversity and connect important ecological areas across the island. Under the Singapore Green Plan 2030, they are a means of green infrastructure to mitigate the effects of climate change while providing avenues for nature appreciation and recreation. Starting in 2013 with 4 Nature Ways under 60 km, it has expanded to 54 Nature Ways stretching 240 km island-wide! Their target is 300km, so they’re almost there!

The Nature Ways of Singapore. Learn more about Nature Ways here

Exciting as it sounds, this landscaping undertaking has not been thoroughly evaluated against its multi-faceted goals, with few theses, some editorial commentaries and news mentions, and 0 scientific publications. Building on the soon-to-be-published honors' work of a previous student (Alexis Goh), Nicole’s project thus aims to examine the microclimate and biodiversity along these pathways to see if and how many of these optimistic goals have been met for its various users.

Let’s wind the clock back to March 2024 when it all began. It’s very, very warm, but that’s we wanted – the start of the inter-monsoon where the hottest days of the year (usually over 32°C) were often recorded. Nicole and Wan Lin went around 9 Nature Way stretches of different urbanization gradients and collected temperature data using a thermal camera and a handheld ambient weather meter. We took readings at designated points at 4 different times (dawn, midday, dusk, midnight) to capture a day’s full temperature profile. Much of this bout of field work involved waking up at 4am for the dawn survey or goin to bed at 3am after the midnight survey, but thankfully not on the same day. Still, the erratic sleep schedule took some getting used to, along with the curious and sometimes wary questioning during the late hours by random members of the public. Working during these late hours also meant briefly encountering F&B, construction and street cleaning, which helped us appreciate a overlooked side of our very developed, clean and efficient city.

The sights during early morning and late night field work.

The next set of field work at the end of the year was easier on our sleep schedules: daytime vegetation surveys of the 9 Nature Ways. We measured the urban and natural features of the Nature Way (e.g., size, horizontal and vertical vegetation cover, overhead cover etc.) at the same designated points where the thermal images were captured. These measurements of vegetation/urban features compared with the previous climatic variables would help use to explore any particular driving factors of temperature. Indeed, our data analyses currently show that highly-urbanised, not-well vegetated Nature Ways experience more extreme temperature changes than their inverse counterparts. Preliminary vegetation variable analyses also show that that overhead cover and vegetated ground have the most effect on mitigating high and uneven temperatures, especially during midday.

Our field work toys: Our densiometer, which measures canopy cover (left) and hypsometer,

which measures the height of objects using lasers and trigonometry (right)

In 2025, Sonia joined us and we started the intensive biodiversity and footfall traffic survey in pairs along the Nature Ways during 11am – 3pm. This involved 9 rounds of repeated diurnal surveys across 12 Nature Ways (9 from the previous and 3 new), across the insect pollinator active seasons in the year (i.e., March – October). We conducted 50-minute observational walking surveys along each 500 m stretch, where we recorded presence, behavioural and thermal data from any birds, butterflies, diurnal moths, bees and wasps occurring along or within a 5 m radius of the Nature Way pavement path. We also recorded all bicycle, PMV and recreational foot traffic along these areas during these times, as well as ambient climate data. This bout of field work was to collect data and observe any trends of Nature Way “users” during the insect pollinator active hours, which also happened to be the hottest time of the day, typically unfavourable to endotherms such as birds and humans.

Some fun and interesting sights during field work

We observed species from 36 bird and 17 insect taxonomic families. Peak insect observation occurred in early May while peak bird observation occurred in the later part of May and early August. Our preliminary findings suggest that (unsurprisingly) insect abundance, richness, and activity were higher in well-vegetated corridors embedded within less urbanized areas. On the other hand, oddly, bird data did not reflect this – abundance, diversity and activity were higher in well-vegetated but highly urbanized corridors. Most wildlife was often observed either choosing to meander within the Nature Way, or flying straight along it, as opposed to resting or foraging.

Some of the species we recorded.

Photos 2025 Nicole Dorville, Crescentia Aw, Amelia Lee, Ng Wan Lin, Daisy Lam, Constance Liew

During some lulls in the survey, we distracted ourselves by looking at other biodiversity along the transect, e.g., spiders, fungi and cool or cute vertebrates like squirrels and snakes. Much to Nicole’s delight, we found a temporary bat roost! Notable and “rare” records are also two local celebrities – the comedian Jackie Ng (Sembawang Nature Way) and “Queen of Caldecott Hill” actress Zoey Tay (Yio Chu Kang Nature Way). Sadly, the are no image records of these 2 creatures as we were too shy to approach them...

Some of the other species we saw along the way

Photos 2025 Nicole Dorville, Sonia Lee, Bertram Lim, Amelia Lee, Daisy Lam

Our findings provide empirical evidence that “good quality” (i.e., well-vegetated) Nature Ways close or connected to areas of green cover (i.e., parks, undeveloped land) can possibly: 1) provide thermal refugia to the humans and wildlife that use these nature ways, and 2) contribute to habitat provisioning for insects and birds. These insights can guide future streetscape planning and biodiversity-resilient urban design in rapidly warming tropical cities. Additionally, while recording the other taxa it felt almost like we were conducting a BioBlitz, and it would be interesting if someone else could use the existing data or replicate this with other species to build a more holistic picture on how the various Nature Ways ecosystems function for different organisms.

All in all, this was a really fun and interesting experience, although some of it felt like “a nice walk during a not-so-nice timing”. We also enjoyed bonding through the many meals and conversations, which definitely made the walks in the baking heat more bearable on the hottest days. Although the 3 of us made the core of the group, we would also like to thank our many regular volunteers for their help, especially those that braved the late nights, early mornings, and rainy days with us: Jerome, Shen, ChenGuang, Bertram, Izzul, Amelia, Daisy, Abby, Constance, Lin Yee, Tim, Joylynn, Phyo, Misha, Travis, Zick and our lab mate Tharaka.

We would like to give a shoutout to the MVP of this entire endeavour: our humble lab trolley, which held all our expensive, heavy and/or awkward equipment and only gave out at the start of round 9 of the biodiversity survey in 2025. We have replaced the wheels since and it completed the last biodiversity round and the remaining 3 vegetation surveys. Thank you for literally saving our backs!