As my final report for Tunza I feel like this topic is very interesting. An urban heat island is an area of certain level of urbanization due to which the heat level of the area has risen from its surrounding rural areas.

The temperature change as can be understood from the word ?urban? is caused by the rise in human activities in the area and normally has a different degree of difference from during the night than the day time.

The reason that urban areas are at a larger exposure to becoming a heated island is because of the large scale construction that removes a lot of green land and trees and replaces them with cement surfaces, metal roofs and the likes which are more heat absorbent. 

Relating to the cutting of large amount of trees is another cause which is the loss of shade for the area provided by trees which results in direct exposure of the area to sun light.

The unnatural change of heat levels also has an effect on animals of the area. For some animals that can adapt to the temperature this may not have much effect but for those that cannot resist the rise in heat this causes large relocations of the animals and may also cause large numbers of deaths for those species.

Urban heat islands also have large influence on the health of the civilians of the area. With unnatural rise in heat people are at more risk to heat wave related health effects as this could result in the increase of the magnitude of the heat waves which would put many at risk. People of age, heart problems, pregnancy and so on may not be able to handle the rise in health and may result in problems for their health.     

Although Urban Heat Islands are not a large scale problem in Ethiopia, in current years the large scale urbanization of Addis Ababa has shown the rise in direct sun light exposure of the city. This in large part due to the cutting of the trees in the area for modern construction, even though this has not been a large problem and there have been actions to preserve green areas in the city, efforts to protect the city should be kept at work and strengthened as there is no larger problem than environmental problems which will affect many generations to come.