Fig 5. Path diagrams showing the direct and indirect effects of forest change on annual land surface temperature (LST).

Indirect effects are assumed to be caused by changes in albedo and evapotranspiration (ET). Arrows are scaled in proportion to the absolute standardized path coefficients (numbers). Red and blue arrows indicate negative and positive coefficients, respectively. Coefficients for non-significant paths (p > 0.05) are not shown (NS). R² values indicate the coefficient of determination of the component models for each response variable.