A multi-temporal Landsat data analysis of land use and land cover changes on the land surface temperature

Abstract

The changes in land use and land cover (LULC) determine the change of the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and of the land surface temperature (LST) which characterise the environment at a given moment. This study examines the LULC changes affecting the LST-NDVI relationship, using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images acquired in 1987, 2000, and 2009 in the metropolitan area of Brasov, Romania. The images were classified into seven LULC classes through the supervised classification method. NDVI maps and LST maps were obtained on the basis of the three images, atmospherically and radiometrically corrected. The relationship between LST and NDVI was analysed by linear regression for each image and for each LULC class. The results obtained show that there is a negative correlation between LST and NDVI for all the LULC classes considered together as well as for each class considered separately.