Abstract
Thermal imagery is widely used to quantify land surface temperatures to monitor the spatial extent and thermal intensity of the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Previous research has applied Landsat images, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) images, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images, and other coarse- to medium-resolution remotely sensed imagery to estimate surface temperature. These data are frequently correlated with vegetation, impervious surfaces, and temperature to quantify the drivers of the UHI effect. Because of the coarse- to medium-resolution of the thermal imagery, researchers are unable to correlate these temperature data with the more generally available high-resolution land cover classification, which are derived from high-resolution multispectral imagery. The development of advanced thermal sensors with very high-resolution thermal imagery such as the MODIS/ASTER airborne simulator (MASTER) has investigators quantifying the relationship between detailed land cover and land surface temperature. While this is an obvious next step, the published literature, i.e., the MASTER data, are often used to discriminate burned areas, assess fire severity, and classify urban land cover. Considerably less attention is given to use MASTER data in the UHI research. We demonstrate here that MASTER data in combination with high-resolution multispectral data has made it possible to monitor and model the relationship between temperature and detailed land cover such as building rooftops, residential street pavements, and parcel-based landscaping. Here, we report on data sources to conduct this type of UHI research and endeavor to intrigue researchers and scientists such that high-resolution airborne thermal imagery is used to further explore the UHI effect.
Highlights
The data reported here were collected from the MODIS/ASTER airborne simulator (MASTER) superspectral sensor that flew over the Phoenix metropolitan area on 12–13 July and 15–16 July
All the georeferenced MASTER image and other related data set from Zhao et al (2015) [28] are available at United States Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network data portal [38] and Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAPLTER) data portal [39]
With the availability of high-resolution multispectral remotely sensed imagery and detailed social and health survey data, MASTER images can serve as an important surface temperature data source to analyze urban heat island (UHI) effects with health conditions, water usage, energy consumption, and various social factors
Summary
With more than 50% of the world’s population living in cities [1], a well-known phenomenon defined as the urban heat island (UHI) effect is negatively impacting human lives. Compared to in-situ field measurements and surface energy balance simulations, satellite thermal imagery provides rich spatial and temporal temperature information and serves as a complementary data source to other methods. The Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Operational Land Imager/Thermal Infrared Sensor (OLI/TIRS) and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) thermal imagery all have a moderate spatial resolution around 100 m These data sources are widely used to understand seasonal or yearly changes of UHI effects across different land cover types because the temporal resolution of the thermal images is limited due to cloud cover and satellite revisit period (16 days) [18,19,20,21]. These examples illustrate the research opportunities that MASTER thermal infrared imagery serves as the data source for researchers to conduct micro-level urban surface temperature analysis
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