Abstract
Satellite remote sensing data that lacks spatial resolution and timeliness is of limited ability to access urban thermal environment on a micro scale. This paper presents an unmanned airship low-altitude thermal infrared remote sensing system (UALTIRSS), which is composed of an unmanned airship, an onboard control and navigation subsystem, a task subsystem, a communication subsystem, and a ground-base station. Furthermore, an experimental method and an airborne-field experiment for collecting land surface temperature (LST) were designed and conducted. The LST pattern within 0.8-m spatial resolution and with root mean square error (RMSE) value of 2.63 °C was achieved and analyzed in the study region. Finally, the effects of surface types on the surrounding thermal environment were analyzed by LST profiles. Results show that the high thermal resolution imagery obtained from UALTIRSS can provide more detailed thermal information, which are conducive to classify fine urban material and assess surface urban heat island (SUHI). There is a significant positive correlation between the average LST of profiles and the percent impervious surface area (ISA%) with R2 around 0.917. Overall, UALTIRSS and the retrieval method were proved to be low-cost and feasible for studying micro urban thermal environments.
Highlights
With accelerated urbanization processes, a tremendous amount of rural land is covered with buildings, roads, and other impervious surfaces, which generally has higher solar radiation absorption and a greater thermal capacity and conductivity [1,2]
Satellite remote sensing techniques have been increasingly applied in urban climate and environment studies and have made immense achievements, mainly for analyzing the land surface temperature (LST) patterns and their relationship with surface characteristics and for evaluating surface urban heat islands (SUHI) [5,6,7]
Satellite remote sensing is applicable for investigation of SUHI effect at a macro or meso scale rather than at a micro scale
Summary
A tremendous amount of rural land is covered with buildings, roads, and other impervious surfaces, which generally has higher solar radiation absorption and a greater thermal capacity and conductivity [1,2]. Satellite remote sensing techniques have been increasingly applied in urban climate and environment studies and have made immense achievements, mainly for analyzing the land surface temperature (LST) patterns and their relationship with surface characteristics and for evaluating surface urban heat islands (SUHI) [5,6,7]. Yuan, et al [8] used four TM/ETM+ images in different seasons from 2000 to 2002 in Minnesota, USA to analyze the relationship among LST, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and impervious surface coverage. Some studies have demonstrated that the correlation between temperature and vegetation on profiles was positively correlated to the diversity of underlying surface land use types [10,11,12]
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