Land Surface Temperature Analysis in an Urbanising Landscape through Multi- Resolution Data

Abstract

Rapid changes in the land use and land cover of a region have become a major environmental concern in recent times. This has lead to unsustainable development with the reduction of green spaces and also changes in local climate and formation of urban heat islands (UHIs). Monitoring and management of land use dynamics would help in land use planning and mitigation of environmental impacts.The main goal of this paper is to quantify the changes in the land cover and consequent changes in land surface temperature. Land use and land cover dynamics were assessed using temporal remote sensing (Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper) data of Himachal Pradesh, India. The thermal infrared bands of the Landsat data were used to retrieve land surface temperature. The results revealed that there was a huge increase in urban area (including barren land), which is the causal factor for the changes in land surface temperature. Overall, remote sensing and geographic information system technologies were effective approaches for monitoring and analyzing urban growth patterns and evaluating their impacts on land surface temperature.